An Innocent Abroad: Lectures in China

✍ Scribed by J. Hillis Miller

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 339
• Series: FlashPoints
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Since 1988, J. Hillis Miller has traveled to China to lecture on literary theory, especially the role of globalization in literary theory. Over time, he has assisted in the development of distinctively Chinese forms of literary theory, Comparative Literature, and World Literature. The fifteen lectures gathered in An Innocent Abroad span both time and geographic location, reflecting his work at universities across China for more than twenty-five years. More important, they reflect the evolution of Miller’s thinking and of the lectures’ contexts in China as these have markedly changed over the years, especially on either side of Tiananmen Square and in light of China’s economic growth and technological change. A foreword by the leading theorist Fredric Jameson provides additional context.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Editor’s Note - Richard Terdiman
Foreword - Fredric Jameson
Introduction
1. The Role of Theory in the Development of Literary Studies in the United States
2. Black Holes in the Internet Galaxy: New Trends in Literary Study in the United States
3. Effects of Globalization on Literary Study
4. Will Literary Study Survive the Globalization of the University and the New Regime of Telecommunications?
5. Promises, Promises: Speech Act Theory, Literary Theory, and Politico-Economic Theory in Marx and de Man
6. On the Authority of Literature
7. The (Language) Crisis of Comparative Literature
8. The Indigene and the Cybersurfer
9. “Material Interests”: Modernist English Literature as Critique of Global Capitalism
10. Who’s Afraid of Globalization?
11. A Comparison of Literary Studies in the United States and China
12. Globalization and World Literature
13. Cold Heaven, Cold Comfort: Should We Read or Teach Literature Now?
14. Mixed Media Forever: The Internet as Spectacle; or, The Digital Transformation of Literary Studies
15. Literature Matters Today
Appendix: J. Hillis Miller in China (1988–2012) - Prepared by Guo Yanjuan
Notes
Index