Keynote speakers: Professor Rachel Lee (UCLA), Professor Daniel Tiffany (USC)

Sir Peter: Aye, ever improving himself!--Mr. Surface, Mr. Surface...Well, well, that’s proper; and you make even your screen a source of knowledge...

Joseph Surface: Oh, yes, I find great use in that screen.

-Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal (IV.3)

What does it mean to take something “at face value?” Recent literary scholarship has ...