Prologue What is Literature? Moving Bodily Sideways Perspectivism and Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants From Hillsdale to the Swamp Teaching at the End of the World Starting Again with 20th-Century American Fiction Something Misplaced Shopping at Walmart (with Žižek) Teaching with Film Dropped My iPhone Down Below Humanities at the Airport Thinking Space Against Careerism, For College Total Satisfaction In Defense of Small Things Environmental Studies, with No Limits College, It’s a Mess Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking Unsettling Place David Foster Wallace: Don’t Believe the Hype Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts: A Book Review that Is Not One Don DeLillo’s Zero K: When Does the Person Become the Body? 30 Observations after Reading Sarah Manguso’s 300 Arguments Liberal Arts: A Safe Space? Sabbatical Walking It Off Trump in the Anthropocene Terminal Democracy Hunting for Morels, Finding a Mess Flying Through Nowhere Stuck Tick Thinking Dark River Balloon Landscape Ecology Back in the Classroom Epilogue Acknowledgments Bibliography Index

An urgent and searching reappraisal of what it means to read and to teach literature in this post-truth context ... [Schaberg's] slim and highly readable book is the product of a teacher’s attempt to become re-enchanted with his trade ... It is candid and relaxed, and full of insight, as well as Schaberg’s enthusiasm for and anxieties about literature and literary studies today.

Reflects on the value of literature and liberal arts/humanities education at a time when these traditions can seem quaint or outdated in comparison to social media communications and viral (and often fake) news