How do we today define literary studies as an academic discipline and literature as a relevant, discrete object of study? Beyond arguments that insist upon the continued importance of literature via the broad category of culture on the one hand and nostalgic, traditionalist oppositions to materialist study of literature aimed to safeguard the autonomy of literature from the social, the economic, and the political on the other, Literary Materialisms gathers thirteen essays by established and emerging scholars that trace the medially and disciplinarily specific future of literary studies in an updated and newly historicized attention to materialism.

Literary Materialisms addresses what has become a fundamental concern in the last decade: how do we today define literary studies as an academic discipline and literature as a relevant object of study? Avoiding unproductive proclamations, this volume unites new materialist critical thinking with a commitment to fundamental principles.