1: 'Occasions: Hard Times for the Humanities?'
2: 'Arguments: Good Times for Literature?'
3: 'Public Goods'
Rick Rylance is Professor of English and Director of the Institute
for English Studies in the School of Advanced Study at the
University of London. Until 2016, he was Chief Executive of the
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Chair of Research
Councils UK (RCUK). Prior to that he was Head of the School of
Arts, Languages and Literatures at the University of Exeter. He has
held a number of public roles including chairing the English Panel
in the 2008
Research Assessment Exercise. Current roles include the Governing
Board of the Global Research Council. In research, he is
particularly interested in the psychology of reading and its social
impacts, and
the possibilities of interdisciplinary research. Among other
publications, he is author of Victorian Psychology and British
Culture 1850-1880 (OUP 2000). He is currently writing volume 11 of
the Oxford English Literary History covering the years 1930-1970.
The discussion is wide-ranging, informative, and written in an
accessible and readable style.
*K. M. Newton (University of Dundee), The Modern Language
Review*
Rylance's contribution is expansive, reaching far beyond the
traditional parameters of what constitutes literature by situating
the book alongside discussions of the value of art and music within
society.
*Farah Chowdhury, British Society for Literature and Science*
This ability to categorise without being categorical gives this
timely essay its brilliance. Rylance understands the power and
reach of literature, and is as happy with numbers as he is in
sympathetic literary criticism.
*Sir David Eastwood, Times Higher Education*
Rylance has done a great service in his interrogation of what we
mean by literatures, publics and goods, all in the plural. In his
quest for a "literary humanitarianism" to replace the indulgences
of a "liberal humanism", Rylance has much to teach us about the
preservation of culture through the use of evidence, in all its
variegated forms.
*Research Fortnight*
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