Selling the Humanities: Essays

by Jeffrey R. Di Leo, H. Aram Veeser (Afterword), Harold Bloom (Primary Contributor)

Selling the Humanities explores the challenges facing literature, philosophy, and theory at a time when the humanities appear to some as burnt out.  There is incredible pressure to demonstrate the value of the humanities within institutions dedicated to economic feasibility and job placement, not intellectual power and social commitment.  This situation is further intensified
by the demand that one must always be prepared to sell the humanities to others in an effort to save them.  But is it even possible to commodify the humanities?  And if so, might our efforts to sell the humanities also have the potential to kill them in the process?

222 pages, Paperback

Published November 22, 2023

About the author

Jeffrey R. Di Leo is Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English and Philosophy at the University of Houston–Victoria. He is editor and founder of the critical theory journal symplokē, editor and publisher of the American Book Review, and Executive Director of the Society for Critical Exchange.

Di Leo is a past member of the Modern Language Association Delegate Assembly (Teaching as Profession), and is the former president of the Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts.

He received a BA in Philosophy and Economics from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and an MA in Philosophy, an MA in Comparative Literature, and a dual PhD in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from Indiana University, Bloomington. He has taught at Georgia Tech and the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Di Leo was born and raised in Vineland, New Jersey. He lives in Victoria, Texas with his wife, Nina, and their two sons.