Response to College Literature's Forum on Thinking Literature Across Continents

With a couple of notable exceptions, the essays in this forum present little in the way of examples that show how their theories might function as actual help to reading literary works. Climate change has already led to widespread recent natural disasters, such as fires and mudslides in Santa Barbara County, California; sub-zero temperatures in the midst of especially warm winters in New England (paradoxically brought about by the melting of Arctic ice); more frequent and more devastating hurricanes, such as Hurricane Maria that so damaged Puerto Rico; glaciers melting worldwide, and so on. Bruni refers to the May 20, 2018, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education for an example on the way "The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has combined liberal-arts major with computer science while Assumption College has cut shrinking majors as it gambles on new career-focused programs." A recent Pew Research Center national poll conducted in the United States June 8–18, 2017, discovered that more and more Republicans think colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country.