Can Criticism Survive Outside the University?

Below you will find an edited and abridged transcript of the second panel of our recent conference at the University of Chicago, “The End of the University and The Future of Criticism.” The panelists are all writers, editors and critics who have found their way in the literary world outside the academy. Thomas Meaney is the editor of Granta and a writer whose essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, the London Review of Books and The Point; Ann Manovis a lawyer, a writer of fiction and criticism and the founding editor of The End; Jordan Castro is the author of the 2022 novel The Novelist and the forthcoming Muscle Man, as well as one of the editors of Cluny Journal; BrandonTaylor is the author of the novels The Late Americans and Real Life, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and a National Book Critics Circle award, and publishes nonfiction in outlets such as Bookforum and the London Review of Books, as well as on his Substack, Sweater Weather.