Prof. Leitch has published essays and reviews in journals such as College English, Critical Inquiry, Comparative Literature, MLN, Philosophy and Literature, Profession, and SubStance. He has contributed articles and chapters to various book collections and reference works, including Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century (1983), Theory in the Classroom (1986), Feminism and Institutions (1989), Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (1993 and 2012 editions), John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (1994 and 2005 editions), Readers and Reading (1995), The Institution of Literature (2002), Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics (2005), Teaching Theory (2011), Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory (2019), and The Rebirth of American Literary Theory and Criticism: Scholars Discuss Intellectual Origins and Future Turning Points (2021).
Prof. Leitch served as the General Editor, along with a five-person editorial team, of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2001; 2nd edition 2010; third edition 2018). He received grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, Big XII Universities, the Fulbright-Hayes Commission, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Oklahoma Humanities Council.
Prof. Leitch's work focuses intersections of the history of criticism and theory, cultural studies, contemporary American culture, theories of postmodernity and globalization, poetry and comparative poetics, plus critical pedagogy. His interdisciplinary interests include contemporary continental philosophy, particularly French poststructuralisms, intellectual history and historiography, and recent visual culture, especially painting.
History of literary criticism and theory; cultural studies; poetry and poetics
Literary Criticism in the 21st Century: Theory Renaissance (Bloomsburg, 2014; published in New Delhi, 2016; translated into Chinese 2021)
Contemporary Literary Criticism: A Leitch Reader (Peking University Press, 2014) [a collection of 15 pieces translated into Chinese]
American Literary Criticism since the 1930s, 2nd edition (Routledge, 2010)
Living with Theory (Blackwell, 2008)
Theory Matters (Routledge, 2003)
Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, General Editor (W. W. Norton 2001, 2nd edition 2010, 3rd edition 2018)
Postmodernism--Local Effects, Global Flows (SUNY Press, 1996; translated into Spanish)
Cultural Criticism, Literary Theory, Poststructuralism (Columbia University Press, 1992; translated into Arabic)
American Literary Criticism from the 1930s to the 1980s (Columbia University Press, 1988; translated into Arabic, Chinese, Hungarian, Japanese, and Korean)
Deconstructive Criticism (Columbia University Press, 1982; published in London by Hutchinson, 1983; translated into Korean and one section into Polish)
