What happens when we read imaginative literature? What do we learn from reading such texts? Reading complements our experience, sharpens our perceptions, gives us insight into how other humans live, enables us to understand other cultures and periods, and gives us aesthetic pleasure. In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century is a passionate and beautifully written defense of the pleasures of reading. With clarity and eloquence, the author, influential literary critic, and award-winning Daniel R. Schwarz shares his insights on why we read, how we read, and what transpires when we undertake what he calls "the odyssey of reading." Other topics covered include the ethics of reading, humanistic criticism, and the history and future of studying literature. The author explores various forms of resistant readings and discusses changes in reading, writing, and teaching in the electronic age. In Defense of Reading concludes with an optimistic look into the future of literary studies. In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century embraces the joys of the written word while teaching us to be better readers and imparting wisdom that will resonate with teachers and lovers of literature everywhere.

Daniel R. Schwarz is Frederic J. Whiton Professor of English and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1968. He is the recipient of Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences Russell Award for Distinguished Teaching. Schwarz has published numerous books, including Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890-1934 (2004), Broadway Boogie Woogie: Damon Runyan and the Making of New York City Culture (2003), Rereading Conrad (2001), the critically acclaimed Imagining the Holocaust (1999), Reading Joyce's Ulysses (1987; new ed. 2004), and Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship Between Modern Art and Modern Literature (1997).

Preface. 1. The Odyssean Reader or the Odyssey of Reading: "Ourselves and our Origins". 2. How We Learn and What We Learn from Literary Texts. 3. Towards a Community of Inquiry: Is there a Teacher in the Class?. 4. Eating Kosher Ivy: Jews as Literary Intellectuals. 5. Professing Literature in the Twenty-First Century University. 6. Reconfiguring the Profession: The (Uncertain) Path to a Professorship. Conclusion: The Future of Literary Studies. Selective Bibliography. Index