Introduction - dialogue on every corner, Bakhtin in every class. Part 1 Bakhtin and literary studies: prosaic Bakhtin - "landmarks", anti-intelligentsialism and the Russian counter-tradition, Gary Saul Morson; inventing the novel, R. Bracht Branham; response and call - the African American dialogue with Bakhtin and what it signifies, Dale E. Peterson; moral perception and the chronotope - the case of Henry James, Lisa Echstrom. Part 2 Bakhtin and social theory: literature as social knowledge - Mikhail Bakhtin and the re-emergence of the human sciences, Stanley Aronowitz; the postmodern crisis - discourse, parody, memory, Vincent Crapanzano; the emergence of language from dialogue, John Dore; logosphere and semiosphere - Bakhtin, Russian organicism and the semiotics of culture, Amy Mandelker.