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From the Close Reading For The 21st Century Symposium, hosted by Emory University. Why is close reading best understood as a conversation? What are its evaluative standards? How does it extend the conversation beyond literary studies?
Date Recorded: November 7, 2025
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
Cast (in order of appearance): Johanna Winant, Matt Seybold, Farah Bakaari, Nathan Suhr-Sytsma, Dan Sinykin, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, Oren Izenberg, Beci Carver, Brian Glavey, Miranda Hickman, Patrick Sui, Jeff Dolven, Katie Kadue, Omari Weekes, Lisa Lee, Daniel Reynolds, Julie Orlemanski, Joshua Kotin
Featured Speakers
Kimberly Quioque Andrews is Associate Professor of English at University of Ottawa and the author of The Academic Avant-Garde: Poetry & The American University (John Hopkins UP, 2023)
Farah Bakaari is Assistant Professor of English at University of California, Berkeley and the founding editor of Mid Theory Collective.
Oren Izenberg is Associate Professor of English at University of California, Irvine and the author of Being Numerous: Poetry & The Ground of Social Life (Princeton UP, 2011)
Lisa Lee is Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University and author of Thomas Hirschorn from Graphic Design to Art (MIT Press, 2025)
Daniel Reynolds is Associate Professor of Film & Media Studies at Emory University and the author of Media in Mind (Oxford UP, 2019)
Dan Sinykin is Winship Distinguished Research Professor at Emory University and the co-editor of Close Reading for the 21st Century (Princeton UP, 2025).
Johanna Winant is Associate Professor of English & Humanities at Reed College, co-editor of Close Reading for the 21st Century (Princeton UP, 2025), and the author of Lyric Logic, forthcoming from Columbia UP.
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast.
Episode Bibliography
Rudolf Arnheim, Film (1933)
Rudolf Arnheim, Film As Art (1957) [50th Anniversary Edition]
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (1946)
Farah Bakaari, “Affectability, Temporality, & Postcolonial Subjectification in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born” Journal of African Literature Association (Summer 2023)
Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (U Texas, 1981)
T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life (1985) [1999 Princeton UP Edition]
Paul de Man, Blindness & Insight (U Minnesota, 1983)
Douglas Dowland, “The Problem of the Parlor” Los Angeles Review of Books (October 21, 2025)
Shannon Doyne, “Could You Spend Three Hours Looking at Just One Work of Art?” New York Times (November 14, 2025)
T. S. Eliot, “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921) in The Perfect Critic (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014)
Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter & Poetic Form (Random House, 1965)
Maxim Gorky, “The Kingdom of Shadows” (1896)
Peli Grietzer, “A Theory of Vibe” Glass Bead (2017)
John Guillory, On Close Reading (University of Chicago, 2025)
Fredric Jameson, “Reification & Utopia in Mass Culture” Social Text (Winter 1979)
Jonathan Kramnick, Criticism & Truth: On Method in Literary Studies (U Chicago P, 2023)
Auguste & Louis Lumière, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (1896)
Edouard Manet, Argenteuil (1875)
Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings (Harvard UP, 2005)
John Crowe Ransom, The New Criticism (New Directions, 1941)
Matthew Pelowski et al, “Beyond The Lab: An Examination of Key Factors Influencing Interaction with ‘Real’ & Museum-Based Art” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, & the Arts (2017)
I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism (1929)
Jennifer Roberts, “The Power of Patience” Harvard Magazine (Nov-Dec 2013)
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Anality: News From The Front” Studies in Gender & Sexuality (Summer 2010)
Matt Seybold, “You have to use it. You have to trust it.: Forced Adoption of AI is The Subtext of Davos” The American Vandal (January 23, 2026)
Matt Seybold et al, “BookTube, BookTok, Wattpad, & Audible Creation Exchange” The American Vandal (October 12, 2023)
Matt Seybold, et al, “The Racist Interpretation Complex” The American Vandal (August 28, 2023)
Dan Sinykin, “Sufficient Passion: An Epistemology of Historicist Close Reading” New Literary History (Summer 2025)
Dan Sinykin & Johanna Winant (Ed.) Close Reading for the 21st Century (Princeton UP, 2025)
Steven Spielberg, Jaws (1975)
Helen Vendler, The Odes of John Keats (Harvard UP, 1983)
Sylvia Wynter, We Must Learn To Sit Down Together & Talk About A Little Culture: Decolonizing Essays (Peepal Tree Press, 2022)
William Butler Yeats, “The Collar-Bone of a Hare” (1917)
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