Session Abstract

What is the status of the relationship between history and literary studies. This seems to be an especially pressing question in the wake of recent turns in literary studies away from the new historicist approaches that had formerly prevailed, and towards instead new formalisms, surface reading, distance reading, etc. In the light of these recent shifts, where do literary studies stand in relationship to historical inquiry? If there is a place for historical inquiry in literary studies, what form should it take? When historians consider literary texts, how should they approach them?