Anthem symplokē Studies in Theory presents highly readable and relevant monographs which focus on both the uses of critical theory and how critical theory works. Books in this series adhere to a vision of theory that is rigorous yet accessible, cutting edge but not obscure, and metaprofessionally committed but not doctrinaire. Focused around the five key themes of comparative theory, metaprofessional studies, interdisciplinary theory, key concepts in contemporary theory, and key figures in contemporary theory, this series will examine contemporary critical theory that is at the edge of current thinking and sets the theoretical agenda for the future in the humanities.
Series Editor
Jeffrey R. Di Leo – Texas A&M University, Victoria, USA
Editorial Board
Charles Altieri – University of California, Berkeley, USA
Eyal Amiran – University of California, Irvine, USA
Emily Apter – New York University, USA
Lauren Berlant – University of Chicago, USA
Michael Bérubé – Penn State University, USA
Christopher Breu – Illinois State University, USA
Edward Casey – State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA
Andrew Cole – Princeton University, USA
Claire Colebrook – Penn State University, USA
Stanley Corngold – Princeton University, USA
Lennard J. Davis – University of Illinois, Chicago, USA
Robert Con Davis-Undiano – University of Oklahoma, USA
John Frow – University of Sydney, Australia
Henry A. Giroux – McMaster University, Canada
Robin Truth Goodman – Florida State University, USA
Karen Hanson – University of Minnesota, USA
Phillip Brian Harper – New York University, USA
Peter Hitchcock – City University of New York, USA
Vincent B. Leitch – University of Oklahoma, USA
Paisley Livingston – Lingnan University, Hong Kong
Sophia A. McClennen – Penn State University, USA
Paul Allen Miller – University of South Carolina, USA
Christian Moraru – University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA
Jeffrey Nealon – Penn State University, USA
Daniel O'Hara – Temple University, USA
David Palumbo-Liu – Stanford University, USA
Marjorie Perloff – Stanford University, USA
Gerald Prince – University of Pennsylvania, USA
Jean-Michel Rabaté – University of Pennsylvania, USA
Herman Rapaport – Wake Forest University, USA
Gerhard Richter – Brown University, USA
Alan Schrift – Grinnell College, USA
Paul H. Smith – George Mason University, USA
Henry Sussman – Yale University, USA
Mark C. Taylor – Columbia University, USA
Jeffrey J. Williams – Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Proposals
We welcome submissions of proposals for challenging and original works from emerging and established scholars that meet the criteria of our series. We make prompt editorial decisions. Our titles are published in print and e-book editions and are subject to peer review by recognized authorities in the field. Should you wish to send in a proposal for a monograph (mid-length and full-length), edited collection, handbook or companion, reference or course book, please contact us at: [email protected].

W. Lawrence Hogue
A reconfiguration of modern American history, showing how multiple movements at different times challenged a singularly defined modern America, and a re-representation of the modern American novel, accenting the different critical literary voices to effect a fundamental recasting of the modern Americanist paradigm.
Hardback
9781785272592
January 2020
£ 80.00 / $ 125.00

Blake Stricklin
A critical account of the 1975 Schizo-Culture conference, which Michel Foucault called “the last countercultural event of the 1960s,” and its direct and indirect connection to American experimental literature.
Hardback
9781785277221
March 2021
£ 80.00 / $ 125.00

Edited by Sidney Homan
In describing their personal encounters with works that have stayed with them, scholars and artists here address the aesthetic, philosophical, and historical reasons that inform what T. Eliot has called great art’s “experience both of a moment and of a lifetime.”
Hardback
9781839993008
February 2025
£ 80.00 / $ 110.00

Dr. Carol Mastrangelo Bové
This book makes an argument critical to literary theory and sexuality in 2025. It argues that Colette’s fiction portrays a woman struggling to live in the throes of the incest taboo, understood in its psychological implications for power relations both private and public, then and now.
Hardback
9781839990489
January 2025
£ 80.00 / $ 110.00

Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
This book is designed as an academic monograph but is intended for a general audience.
Paperback
9781839994227
August 2025
£ 20.99 / $ 24.95

Jeffrey T. Nealon
Elegy for Literature is an overview of the current crisis within the academic study of literature. It suggests a way forward for rethinking the work that literary studies can do – less as a set of literary objects, and more as a way of life.
Paperback
9781839983955
March 2022
£ 20.99 / $ 24.99

Bryan Counter
This book examines the novels of Joris-Karl Huysmans, Marcel Proust, Tom McCarthy and Rachel Cusk to reconsider aesthetic experience as it has been articulated in Western philosophy.
Hardback
9781839993435
April 2025
£ 80.00 / $ 110.00

Dinda Gorlée
Literary translation can be retranslated into new ways of thinking about music and the other arts. In artistic transduction, Woolf called the word the poetical cry, Berlioz the singing lyric, and Brecht the rhyming slang.
Hardback
9781839989087
October 2023
£ 80.00 / $ 110.00

Terry Smith
Exploring viral imagery of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Presidents Trump and Biden, Black Lives Matter, as well as the rise of a “black aesthetic” in white artworlds, this book shows that iconopolitics—especially constellations of visual images—has become pervasive within contemporary life. It questions the implications for critical thought and political action.
Paperback
9781839990007
November 2023
£ 25.00 / $ 35.00

John Mowitt
A reading of Theory that in tracing when and where Theory arises in the event of reading, proposes how Theory might best be handled in the context of higher education today.
Paperback
9781839982347
April 2022
£ 25.00 / $ 40.00

Nathalie Camerlynck
This book is about Raymond Federman and his incredible textual obsession with Samuel Beckett. Federman was a scholar of Beckett, postmodern theorist, a self-translator and avant-garde novelist.
Hardback
9781785277955
July 2021
£ 80.00 / $ 125.00

Jeremiah Bowen
Largely erased from disciplinary memory, Paul de Man’s replacement of canon with literariness as the object of literary studies preserved a discourse of devotion and disqualification homologous with Reaganism. This negative moralism shelters professional privilege and competition from scrutiny, supported by misrecognitions like hermeneutic suspicion, materiality, and identity politics.
Hardback
9781785272783
July 2020
£ 80.00 / $ 125.00