More than six decades after The Rhetoric of Fiction, in which Wayne Booth foregrounds the reciprocal relationship between literary creation and literary reception, the disciplinary divide between creative writing and literary criticism has nonetheless become increasingly entrenched. Yet if we trace contemporary literary criticism back to its Aristotelian origins in ethics and poetics, we encounter a tradition in which the knowledge and practice of artistic making remain deeply intertwined. For both Aristotle and Booth, craft is simultaneously reason-informed, aesthetically meaningful, and ethically exploratory.

This seminar invites participants to explore several interrelated questions concerning the future of contemporary literary criticism. First, what does it mean to conceive of theoretical criticism as a form of literary craft, with all the complexities and possibilities implied by literariness and beauty? Second, what does it mean to foreground the aesthetic virtues of writing—in all its forms—within contemporary academic scholarship? Third, in what ways does professional literary criticism resonate with, as well as differ from, creative nonfiction, including philosophical essays on the experience of reading? Fourth, how might we envision productive interdisciplinary exchanges between the systematic theory-building of postclassical narratology and the serious investigation of creative-writing craft, including the critical conversations represented by Graywolf Press's The Art of series? These questions culminate in a broader one: if both creative writing and literary studies seek to shape the future of critical practice, what shared conception of literary craft might unite theoretical rigor with moral imagination?

Accordingly, this seminar seeks to bring together scholars and writers interested in the craft of literary theory, narrative theory, creative fiction and nonfiction, and literary criticism more broadly. Just as Martha Nussbaum has extended Booth's humanistic concerns into both philosophy and the public sphere, this seminar asks how interdisciplinary conversations might revitalize the creative and intellectual possibilities of critical craft around a shared set of concerns that is not exhausted by the questions formulated above.