Professor McEleney Wins MLA Prize

Congratulations to Professor Corey McEleney, whose book Futile Pleasures: Early Modern Literature and the Limits of Utility received Honorable Mention for the 2018 MLA Prize for a First Book.

The MLA committee’s citation for Professor McEleney’s book reads:

“Futile Pleasures: Early Modern Literature and the Limits of Utility argues that the tensions inherent in Renaissance concepts of poetic value characterize the current crisis in the humanities and, indeed, have also shaped the terms in which that crisis can be addressed. Whereas the queer, the effete, the useless, and the idle have long been associated with pleasure, the robust, the masculine, the useful, and the active have been associated with literary utility and social and political relevance, and Corey McEleney shows that it is to this second side of the equation that defenses of literature invariably tend. Futile Pleasures is a subtle and eloquent investigation into the early modern roots of discussions about the most pressing academic debate of our time—the relevance of literary studies.”

For more about Professor McEleney’s marvelous book, click here: https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823272662/futile-pleasures/