Resonance and Method in Literary Studies

Abstract This article suggests directions and approaches for amplifying and deepening the work of the humanities in communities beyond the academy, with specific attention to public readerships and scholarship in literary studies globally. It argues that in the academic humanities, scholars work with materials that resonate with broad public audiences, but the scholarship they produce in their interpretation of those materials—in the case of literary studies, literary texts—does not often enough reach or resonate with wider audiences. Drawing upon the concept of “resonance” as distinctly theorized first by literary critic Wai Chee Dimock and more recently by sociologist Hartmut Rosa, this article describes how scholarship in literary studies might open itself up to the possibility of resonant relationships with readers who are not formally trained in the field but whose thoughtful and deeply held convictions, commitments, and articulations of experience are valuable to the exchange of ideas around which intellectual life is constructed. This article details two possible answers to the methodological question of what would be necessary for the further development of a publicly engaged literary criticism, one emphasizing interpretation as a broadly shared project in the humanities sector and the other focusing on targeted publicly engaged peer review.