An extension of conversations that originally took place at summer institutes devoted to literary theory (sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English), this book presents diverse critical perspectives on current topics of literature, such as post-structuralism, cultural criticism, reader-response theory, and issues of gender and canon. Articles, listed with their authors, are as follows: (1) "Literature and Authority" (Myra Jehlen); (2) "A Short Course in Post-Structuralism" (Jane Tompkins); (3) "The Turns of Reader-Response Criticism" (Steven Mailloux); (4) "The Master's Pieces: On Canon Formation and the Afro-American Tradition" (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.); (5) "Authority, Desire, and Canons: Tendentious Meditations on Cultural Literacy" (James C. Raymond); (6) "Our Missing Theory" (Janet Emig); (7) "A Passage into Critical Theory" (Steven Lynn); (8) "Contrarieties of Emotion, or, Five Days with 'Pride and Prejudice'" (Walker Gibson); (9) "Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Universal: A Case Study on 'Walden'" (Irene C. Goldman); (10) "Professor, Why Are You Wasting Our Time?" (Warren Rosenberg); (11) "Delivering on the Promise of Liberal Education" (Joel Wingard); (12) "Teaching Literature in the Post-Structuralist Era: A Classroom Teacher's Agenda" (Lloyd N. Dendinger); (13) "Dispatching 'Porphyria's Lover'" (Joseph Dupras); (14) "Reading 'Life in the Iron-Mills' Contextually: A Key to Rebecca Harding Davis's Fiction" (Jane Atteridge Rose); (15) "Local Canons: Professing Literature at the Small Liberal Arts College" (Bobby Fong); (16) "The Structuralist Community College Student in a Post-Structuralist Age: (Judy Arnold and Benjamin S. Howard); and (17) "Gender Differences: Both/And, Not Either/Or" (Nancy Vogel). (KEH)