Born: 1944.

Education: University of Florida, PhD, 1972.

Leitch was a professor at Purdue and later was George Lynn Cross Research Professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he held the Paul and Carol Daube Sutton Chair in English. Prof. Leitch has been an analyst and historian of contemporary literary theory and criticism. He has served as the general editor, in a five-person editorial team (along with William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, John P. McGowan, and Jeffrey Williams), of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2001; 2nd edition, 2010; 3rd edition, 2018).

Publications

Deconstructive Criticism (1982), American Literary Criticism from the 1930s to the 1980s (1988), Cultural Criticism, Literary Theory, Poststructuralism (1992), Postmodernism—Local Effects, Global Flows (1996), Theory Matters (2003), Living with Theory (2008), American Literary Criticism Since the 1930s, 2nd edition (2010), Literary Criticism in the 21st Century: Theory Renaissance (2014), Contemporary Literary Criticism: A Leitch Reader (2014) (a collection of 15 pieces translated into Chinese). Influential articles include “A Primer of Recent Critical Theories,” College English (1977); “The Book of Deconstructive Criticism,” Studies in the Literary Imagination (1979); “The Lateral Dance: The Deconstructive Criticism of J. Hillis Miller,” Critical Inquiry (1980); “Costly Compensations: Postmodern Fashion, Politics, Identity,” Modern Fiction Studies (1996); “Postmodern Interdisciplinarity,” Profession (2000); “Theory Ends,” Profession (2005); “Work Theory,” Critical Inquiry (Winter 2005); and “Late Derrida: The Politics of Sovereignty,” Critical Inquiry (2007).

Professor Leitch submitted his responses electronically.

HAV: What were the big events in the history of theory? What do you consider the turning points, revelatory moments, major confrontations and other milestones of the theory period? I’m taking the 1966 Johns Hopkins conference as the conventional starting point for this story.

VBL: Well, I think I’ll just give you a retrospective list of highlights, favorites and landmarks—a timeline—with brief annotations based on my experience of the rise of theory. Most of these events have complex roots and branches.

Elsewhere I elaborate on parts of this history, notably in my American Literary Criticism Since the 1930s, 2nd edition (2010).