Rita Felski's Books

The Limits of Critique

By: Rita Felski

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“Felski frees critics from relying on critique as the gatekeeper of literary studies and offers a prescient guide to life in a postcritical world.” —Los Angeles Review of Books Why must critics unmask and demystify literary works? Why do they believe that language is always withholding some truth, that the critic’s task is to reveal the unsaid or repressed? In this book, Rita Felski examines critique, the dominant form of interpretation in literary studies, and situates it as but one method among many, a method with strong allure—but also definite limits. Felski argues that critique is a sensibility best captured by Paul Ricoeur’s phrase “the hermeneutics of suspicion.” She shows how this suspicion toward texts forecloses many potential readings while providing no guarantee of rigorous or radical thought. Instead, she suggests, literary scholars should try what she calls “postcritical reading”: rather than looking behind a text for hidden causes and motives, literary scholars should place themselves in front of it and reflect on what it suggests and makes possible. By bringing critique down to earth and exploring new modes of interpretation, The Limits of Critique offers a fresh approach to the relationship between artistic works and the social world. “Perhaps the most ambitious reappraisal of the discipline to appear since theory’s heyday.” —Times Literary Supplement “A book that will get all of us to take another look at what we’ve been doing. The Limits of Critique will shock some and elate others. No one will feel neutral, and no one can afford not to read this book.” —Wai Chee Dimock, author of Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival

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237

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University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022629417X

ISBN 13

9780226294179

Character

Three Inquiries in Literary Studies

By: Amanda Anderson,Rita Felski,Toril Moi

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Character

Three Inquiries in Literary Studies

By: Amanda Anderson,Rita Felski,Toril Moi

Over the last few decades, character-based criticism has been seen as either naive or obsolete. But now questions of character are attracting renewed interest. Making the case for a broad-based revision of our understanding of character, Character rethinks these questions from the ground up. Is it really necessary to remind literary critics that characters are made up of words? Must we forbid identification with characters? Does character-discussion force critics to embrace humanism and outmoded theories of the subject? Across three chapters, leading scholars Amanda Anderson, Rita Felski, and Toril Moi reimagine and renew literary studies by engaging in a conversation about character. Moi returns to the fundamental theoretical assumptions that convinced literary scholars to stop doing character-criticism, and shows that they cannot hold. Felski turns to the question of identification and draws out its diverse strands, as well as its persistence in academic criticism. Anderson shows that character-criticism illuminates both the moral life of characters, and our understanding of literary form. In offering new perspectives on the question of fictional character, this thought-provoking book makes an important intervention in literary studies.

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177

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

022665866X

ISBN 13

9780226658667

Beyond Feminist Aesthetics

Feminist Literature and Social Change

By: Rita Felski

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Beyond Feminist Aesthetics

Feminist Literature and Social Change

By: Rita Felski

Felski presents a critical account of current American and European feminist literary theory, and analyzes contemporary fiction by women to show that no theorist can identify a specifically "female" or "feminine" kind of writing without reference to what gender means at a given historical moment. She argues that the idea of a feminist aesthetic is a non-issue needlessly pursued by feminists. She calls for a consideration of the social and cultural context in which these texts were produced and received, and demonstrates her method of an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of literature which can integrate literary and social theory. ISBN 0-674-06894-7: $25.00; ISBN 0-674-06895-5 (pbk.): $9.95.

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244

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674068955

ISBN 13

9780674068957

Uses of Literature

By: Rita Felski

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Uses of Literature

By: Rita Felski

Uses of Literature bridges the gap between literary theory and common-sense beliefs about why we read literature. Explores the diverse motives and mysteries of why we read Offers four different ways of thinking about why we read literature - for recognition, enchantment, knowledge, and shock Argues for a new “phenomenology” in literary studies that incorporates the historical and social dimensions of reading Includes examples of literature from a wide range of national literary traditions

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161

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

1405147237

ISBN 13

9781405147231

Hooked

Art and Attachment

By: Rita Felski

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Hooked

Art and Attachment

By: Rita Felski

“Examines the way we connect to novels, films, paintings and music, and argues that our enthusiasms should be an integral part of conversations about art.” —Helen Thaventhiran, London Review of Books How does a novel entice or enlist us? How does a song surprise or seduce us? Why do we bristle when a friend belittles a book we love, or fall into a funk when a favored TV series comes to an end? What characterizes the aesthetic experiences of feeling captivated by works of art? In Hooked, Rita Felski challenges the ethos of critical aloofness that is a part of modern intellectuals’ self-image. The result is sure to be as widely read as Felski’s book, The Limits of Critique. Wresting the language of affinity away from accusations of sticky sentiment and manipulative marketing, Felski argues that “being hooked” is as fundamental to the appreciation of high art as to the enjoyment of popular culture. Hooked zeroes in on three attachment devices that connect audiences to works of art: identification, attunement, and interpretation. Drawing on examples from literature, film, music, and painting—from Joni Mitchell to Matisse, from Thomas Bernhard to Thelma and Louise—Felski brings the language of attachment into the academy. Hooked returns us to the fundamentals of aesthetic experience, showing that the social meanings of artworks are generated not just by critics, but also by the responses of captivated audiences. “[Hooked] is an exposé aimed at critics who disavow their personal allegiances.” —Matthew Rubery, Public Books “There are many insights in Hooked that will facilitate a productive interdisciplinary conversation about aesthetics, politics, and the future of critique.” —Michael Gallope, nonsite.org

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214

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022672977X

ISBN 13

9780226729770

Literature After Feminism

By: Rita Felski

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Literature After Feminism

By: Rita Felski

Recent commentators have portrayed feminist critics as grim-faced ideologues who are destroying the study of literature. Feminists, they claim, reduce art to politics and are hostile to any form of aesthetic pleasure. Literature after Feminism is the first work to comprehensively rebut such caricatures, while also offering a clear-eyed assessment of the relative merits of various feminist approaches to literature. Spelling out her main arguments clearly and succinctly, Rita Felski explains how feminism has changed the ways people read and think about literature. She organizes her book around four key questions: Do women and men read differently? How have feminist critics imagined the female author? What does plot have to do with gender? And what do feminists have to say about the relationship between literary and political value? Interweaving incisive commentary with literary examples, Felski advocates a double critical vision that can do justice to the social and political meanings of literature without dismissing or scanting the aesthetic.

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205

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University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226241157

ISBN 13

9780226241159

Doing Time

Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture

By: Rita Felski

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Doing Time

Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture

By: Rita Felski

Nine essays that Felski (English, U. of Virginia) has revised from publication elsewhere grapple with whether people live in the same time, whether it is possible to talk about men's time and women's or Western and non-Western time, how to explain that individuals and groups may perceive time very differently and yet seem to inhabit the same time in crucial respects, and what the stakes are in either affirming or denying the contemporaneity and coevalness of others. c. Book News Inc.

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225

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0814727069

ISBN 13

9780814727065

The Limits of Critique

By: Rita Felski

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The Limits of Critique

By: Rita Felski

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237

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

022629417X

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9780226294179

Doing Time

Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture

By: Rita Felski

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Doing Time

Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture

By: Rita Felski

In Doing Time, Rita Felski argues that it makes little sense to think of the modern and postmodern as antithetical ideas. Rather, we need a historical perspective attentive to the leaky boundaries between different times as well as the many cultural and political differences within a single time.

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225

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NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0814727077

ISBN 13

9780814727072

Hooked

Art and Attachment

By: Rita Felski

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Hooked

Art and Attachment

By: Rita Felski

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214

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

022672977X

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9780226729770

Character

Three Inquiries in Literary Studies

By: Amanda Anderson,Toril Moi,Rita Felski

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Character

Three Inquiries in Literary Studies

By: Amanda Anderson,Toril Moi,Rita Felski

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177

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

022665883X

ISBN 13

9780226658834

Literature after Feminism

By: Rita Felski

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Literature after Feminism

By: Rita Felski

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207

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University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226241165

ISBN 13

9780226241166

The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine

By: Rita Charon

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The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine

By: Rita Charon

The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine articulates the ideas, methods, and practices of narrative medicine. Written by the originators of the field, this book provides the authoritative starting place for any clinicians or scholars committed to learning of and eventually teaching or practicing narrative medicine.

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361

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199360197

ISBN 13

9780199360192

The Gender of Modernity

By: Rita FELSKI

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The Gender of Modernity

By: Rita FELSKI

In an exploration of the complex relations between women and the modern, this work challenges conventional male-centred theories of modernity. It examines the gendered meanings of such notions as nostalgia, consumption, feminine writing, the popular sublime, evolution, revolution and perversion.

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257

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Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674036794

ISBN 13

9780674036796

Uses of Literature

By: Rita Felski

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Uses of Literature

By: Rita Felski

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161

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John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

1444359630

ISBN 13

9781444359633

Strangers at Home

American Ethnic Modernism Between the World Wars

By: Rita Keresztesi

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Strangers at Home

American Ethnic Modernism Between the World Wars

By: Rita Keresztesi

Strangers at Home reframes the way we conceive of the modernist literature that appeared in the period between the two world wars. This provocative work shows that a body of texts written by ethnic writers during this period poses a challenge to conventional notions of America and American modernism. By engaging with modernist literary studies from the perspectives of minority discourse, postcolonial studies, and postmodern theory, Rita Keresztesi questions the validity of modernism's claim to the neutrality of culture. She argues that literary modernism grew out of a prejudiced, racially biased, and often xenophobic historical context that necessitated a politically conservative and narrow definition of modernism in America. With the changing racial, ethnic, and cultural makeup of the nation during the interwar era, literary modernism also changed its form and content. ø Contesting traditional notions of literary modernism, Keresztesi examines American modernism from an ethnic perspective in the works of Harlem Renaissance, immigrant, and Native American writers. She discusses such authors as Countee Cullen, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Anzia Yezierska, Henry Roth, Josephina Niggli, Mourning Dove, D?Arcy McNickle, and John Joseph Mathews, among others. Strangers at Home makes a persuasive argument for expanding our understanding of the writers themselves as well as the concept of modernism as it is currently defined.

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247

Publisher

U of Nebraska Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0803227671

ISBN 13

9780803227675

Silence and Rage in Miriam Toews’s Mennonite Novels

By: Rita Dirks

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Silence and Rage in Miriam Toews’s Mennonite Novels

By: Rita Dirks

This book focuses on six of Miriam Toews’s Mennonite novels—Swing Low: A Life (2000), A Complicated Kindness (2004), Irma Voth (2011), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), Women Talking (2018), and Fight Night (2021)—, so called because they portray fictional and autobiographical events, set in Mennonite communities in Canada, Mexico, and Bolivia. Rita Dirks argues that through the exploration of difficult subjects such as the physical and emotional abuse of teenaged girls, women, and children , Toews gives a voice to victims and survivors who are otherwise silenced in that sequestered culture. In addition, Dirks shows that in the Mennonite novels, Toews’s rage at the injustices experienced by her protagonists becomes a transformative art that gives a voice to all stories, especially those of women within authoritative patriarchal communities that openly proclaim pacifism.

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157

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1793647488

ISBN 13

9781793647481

Narrative Medicine

Honoring the Stories of Illness

By: Rita Charon

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Narrative Medicine

Honoring the Stories of Illness

By: Rita Charon

Narrative medicine emerged in response to a commodified health care system that places corporate and bureaucratic concerns over the needs of the patient. This book provides an introduction to the principles of narrative medicine and guidance for implementing narrative methods.

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