This book explores how recent changes in university culture and administration have affected and will continue to affect the "next generation" of literary critics. How have these recent shifts in material conditions inflected the criticism, sense of the profession, and modes of scholarship of this next generation? If the sixties produced "Theory," then what have the eighties and nineties produced? How has the corporatization of the academy affected hiring practices, and how will it shape the careers of those hired? What will be the impact of computers, the internet, and the various proposed "virtual" universities? In addressing these and other questions, the book marks a profound moment of institutional crisis, and will serve as a resource to all who are concerned with the future direction of literary studies and of higher education in general.

Contributors include Crystal Bartolovich, Michael Berube, Jeffrey R. Di Leo, David Galef, Gerald Graff, Susan Johnston, Neil Larsen, Sharon O'Dair, Barbara Riebling, Jesse Swan, and Jeffrey Williams.