Guillory has focused his scholarship on rhetoric,[4] the sociology of criticism,[5] the history of the humanities,[6] and early media studies,[7] especially the work of Marshall McLuhan,[8] Walter Ong,[9] and I.
[29] Guillory viewed the rigour of 'Theory' as an attempt by literary scholars to reclaim its cultural capital from a newly ascendant technical professional class.
"[31] While the title phrase "cultural capital" invokes the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Guillory has said that "The book that I’m always trying to point people toward is Alvin Gouldner’s work The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class.
"[34] In December 2024, Guillory delivered the keynote address at The Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) on "Scholarship, Activism, and the Autonomy of Social Spheres," described as "an attempt to clarify a longstanding controversy in the history of humanities scholarship in the university, namely its relation to political activism, and to the political in general.
At the same time, autonomous social spheres are periodically subject to re-politicization for various reasons, a tendency manifest in university scholarship at the present moment.
Guillory examines several recent arguments defending the identity of scholarship with political activism, attempting to grasp thereby the forces impelling politicization and depoliticization.