Graduate Summer 2024: Joseph Glinbizzi

Reading Beyond Reading: Literary Studies and the Problem of Method

Department of English; Department of Visual Studies

Over the last decade, many literary critics have begun foregrounding dimensions of reading left unaccounted for by long-practiced methods such as critique and close reading. Rather than contribute to this trend by discrediting a familiar method or proposing a fresh one, Reading Beyond Reading: Literary Studies and the Problem of Method questions the very methodological foundation on which literary-critical discussions of reading rest. By identifying reading as a kind of problem for literary studies, rather than the rote grist for the disciplineโ€™s methodological mill, this dissertation develops reading not merely as an activity to describe or do, but as a critical heuristic for grasping the way literary studies conceives of itself as a discipline. In effect, I offer a theorization of reading as what exceeds method, which demands, I contend, an approach to reading that moves beyond strictly disciplinary protocols. Examining a diverse set of objects, from works of phenomenology to contemporary US fiction and film, I position readingโ€™s theoretical excess as a more productive explanatory frame for the intersection of reading, technology, and capitalism in the contemporary US. Ultimately, in pursuing how reading is more than method, this project posits a more flexible, versatile framework that can move effectively across the complex terrain that characterizes reading in the twenty-first century.