Where Is the Future of Criticism? Conference

English and Creative Writing held a 2-day online conference about Substack, entitled “Where Is the Future of Criticism? Online Platforms and Literary Discussion” on 2 and 5 October 2026. The conference was lead by Dr Edmund King (English & Creative Writing) assisted by Dr Shafquat Towheed (Director of Research, Arts and Humanities) and Eleanor Dodd (PhD student in English & Creative Writing), and was hosted by the History of Books and Reading research collaboration. The conference arose from our sense that increasing volumes of conversations about reading, literature, and the publishing industry were taking place on platforms like Substack, but were not being talked about within the discipline of English Literature, which has hitherto regarded places like Substack as lacking seriousness. To what extent could conversations on a platform like Substack be regarded as cultural and literary criticism? To what extent is this form of exchange perhaps the future of criticism?

To dig into these questions, the conference organisers invited a range of speakers from academia, publishing, and the Substack criticism economy itself, including Sarah Brouillette (Carleton University), Justin Smith-Ruiu (University of Paris), Hollis Robbins (University of Utah), Catherine Liu (University of California, Irvine), and Simone Murray (Monash University).     

73 people registered for the conference (in addition to the 14 speakers), coming from not only the US, the UK, and Europe, but also Australia, India, Indonesia, and South Africa. The conference generated a good deal of discussion and attention on Substack itself. One of the conference papers (presented by Jeffrey Lawrence, Rutgers University) has already been published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. This testifies to how discussions at the conference are feeding into and informing current discussions about the future of universities and the discipline of English Literature.