I am really happy that my interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.—the first of two interviews I conducted in conjunction with The Babcock Lecture at Hartwick College, which I organized as Cora A. Babcock Chair in English from 2022–25—is now out in print. “Grateful and Generous Reading: An Interview with Robert T. Tally Jr.,” has just been published in the November 2025 issue of boundary 2 (vol. 52, no. 4).

It was a busy weekend—in the course of only a few days, Tally flew to Oneonta from Texas, delivered a lecture, sat down for an interview, and then moderated the final Zoom panel celebrating Fredric Jameson’s ninetieth birthday from my home office (all while he was in the middle of editing Verso’s “Jameson at 90” [2025] blog series)—and so I am deeply thankful to Tally for taking the time to come to Hartwick and chat.

Here’s an abstract of the interview:

This interview with literary critic Robert T. Tally Jr. was conducted on April 26, 2024, in conjunction with his delivery of the 2023–24 Babcock Lecture at Hartwick College. Tally is one of the premier critics presently working in the field of spatial literary studies and has published over a dozen books and over one hundred articles and book chapters on US and world literature, critical theory, and the history of criticism. Reflecting broadly on the trajectory of his career, Tally discusses the gratitude that has accompanied his scholarly writing, his interests in spatial literary studies, his relationship with the teaching and work of Jonathan Arac, Paul A. Bové, and Fredric Jameson, and the role of theory at the present time.

The second interview conducted in conjunction with the 2025 Babcock Lecture, my interview with Anna Kornbluh, will appear in the May 2026 issue of boundary 2.

And for previous interviews: “An Interview with Jonathan Arac,” “Something Worth Leaving in Shards: An Interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis,” and “Isn’t It a Beautiful Day? An Interview with J. Hillis Miller.”