Abstract: James English is the John Welsh Centennial Professor of English and founding Faculty Director of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as Chair of Judges for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2016. His book, The Economy of Prestige (Harvard UP), a study of the history, functions, and effects of prizes in literature and arts, was named Best Academic Book of 2005 by New York Magazine. His economic theory of cultural prestige has exerted extensive influence in the fields of literary theory, cultural sociology and cultural economics. On behalf of Foreign Literature Studies, Rui Xiaohe, a Fulbright visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania (2019—2020), interviewed English in January 2020 on issues of interdisciplinary studies of literature and economics, the development of theories of literary economics after Bourdieu and Jameson, and the application of Digital Humanities as well as other methods. English points out that interdisciplinary studies of literature and economics should center on the system of production of literary value. Intersecting with economics and sociology, literary studies should focus on non-monetary dimensions of literary economics, which involve cultural prestige and social capital in the context of the whole social field, where literary value is produced. In addition, he analyzes the challenges facing literary prizes today.

Key words: literary economics, sociology, cultural prestige, capital, Digital Humanities