The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope brings together a number of winners of the Polanyi Prize in Literature – a group whose research constitutes a diversity of methodological approaches to the study of culture – to examine the rich but often troubled association between the concepts of the public, the intellectual (both the person and the condition), culture, and hope. The contributors probe the influence of intellectual life on the public sphere by reflecting on, analyzing, and re-imagining social and cultural identity.

The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope reflects on the challenging and often vexed work of intellectualism within the public sphere by exploring how cultural materials – from foundational Enlightenment writings to contemporary, populist media spectacles – frame intellectual debates within the clear and ever-present gaze of the public writ large. These serve to illuminate how past cultures can shed light on present and future issues, as well as how current debates can reframe our approaches to older subjects.

Joel Faflak is professor of English and Theory at Western University, where he was also the Inaugural Director of the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities.

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Jason Haslam is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame.

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“Focused on the troubled and animated discourse networks of culture, hope, and public intellectualism, this collection of essays by Polanyi Prize–winning scholars sets a new benchmark for the excellence and promise of humanities scholarship. Following Dr Polanyi’s ‘commitment to both research and social action as they epitomize the scholar as citizen,’ the editors have marshalled a series of essays by some of Canada’s most outstanding scholars that consider that task from a wide variety of perspectives and in a fully critical and self-conscious manner.”

Michael O’Driscoll, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta