We invite you to attend the Fall 2026 MCT lecture series, featuring discussions on contemporary theory and its varied engagements. Lectures will be held every Tuesday from 5:15 to 6:45 PM in the Levis Faculty Center, Room 210. Face masks are encouraged for in-person attendance.
The MCT is coordinated with graduate seminars on critical theory across multiple departments but is open to all faculty, students, and others who may wish to join. Please note that the lectures will not be live-streamed for remote viewers, though some may be recorded (pending speaker permission). You can access previous MCT lectures in our video collections. To see the poster in a larger format, click here.
For participants not enrolled in one of the affiliated courses, see the Box folder of corresponding readings for each lecture. To receive the Box folder password or for more information, please email Unit-for-Criticism@illinois.edu. We are currently working with DRES to convert PDFs into screen reader-friendly versions. If you have any questions about these documents or require alternative forms of PDF accessibility, please contact the Unit at least two weeks in advance of the lecture in question so that we can appropriately address any concerns.
Schedule
9/1 WELCOME RECEPTION
Pizzeria Antica (10 E. Chester Street, Champaign), 5:15-7:00 pm
9/8 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE: Theory in the University
This event is sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Seminar and co-organized by the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Chad Wellmon (Germanic Languages & Literatures, University of Virginia)
- Jacques Derrida, "The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils," Diacritics 13, no. 3 (Autumn, 1983): 2-20.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Lectures I-III of Anti-Education: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions (New York Review of Books, 2015), pp 3-52.
9/15 DEMOCRACY
Danielle Chynoweth (Supervisor, Cunningham Township)
- Grace Lee Bogs, "These Are the Times to Grow Our Souls" in The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, Updated and Expanded Edition (University of California Press, 2012), pp 28-51.
- Danielle Chynoweth and Elizabeth Adams, "Analysis: Living in Contradiction," in Remaking Democracy: How We Make the Worlds We Want (Common Notions Press, 2026), pp 15-34.
9/22 SEMIOTICS
Jonathan Rosa (Education, Stanford)
- Joshua Babcock and Jay Ke-Schutte, "Toward a “Both-And” Semiotics of Intersectionality: Raciolinguistics beyond White Settler-Colonial Situations," Signs and Society 11, no. 1 (Winter 2023): 1-22.
- Susan Gal and Judith T. Irvine, "Introduction," in Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life (Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp 1-25.
- Miyako Inoue, "What Does Language Remember?: Indexical Inversion and the Naturalized History of Japanese Women," Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14, no. 1 (2004): 39–56.
- Siv B. Lie and Davindar Singh, "The Poetics of Race and Ethnicity," Annual Review of Anthropology 55 (2026): 235-51.
- Constantine V. Nakassis, "Voicing, Looking, Perspective," Current Anthropology 66, no. 6 (December 2025): 916-53.
Krystal A. Smalls, "Race, SIGNS, and the Body: Towards a Theory of Racial Semiotics," in The Oxford Handbook of Language and Race, ed. H. Samy Alim, Angela Reyes, and Paul V. Kroskrity (Oxford University Press, 2020), pp 232-60.
9/29 WALTER BENJAMIN
Lisa Saltzman (History of Art, Bryn Mawr)
10/6 VISUAL THEORY
Maryam Kashani (Gender & Women's Studies, UIUC)
10/13 POSTSTRUCTURALISM
John Lurz (English, Tufts)
10/20 GENDER
Greta LaFleur (American Studies, Yale)
- Cameron Awkward-Rich, "On Trans Use of the Many Sojourner Truths," in Feminism against Cisness, ed. Emma Heaney (Duke University Press, 2024), 37-55.
- Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Diana Fuss (Routledge, 1991), 13-31.
- Emma Heaney, "Introduction," in Feminism against Cisness, ed. Emma Heaney (Duke University Press, 2024), 1-33.
- Greta LaFleur, "'What's in a Name?': They/Them," Journal of the Early Republic 43, no. 1 (Spring 2023): 109-19.
C. Riley Snorton, "Introduction," in Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 1-14.
10/27 BIOPOLITICS
Rob Rushing (European Languages & Transcultural Studies, UCLA)
- Georgio Agamben, "Introduction to Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life," in Biopolitics: A Reader, ed. Timothy Campbell and Adam Sitze (Duke University Press, 2013), pp 134-44.
- Agamben, selection of "The Politicization of Life," in Biopolitics: A Reader, ed. Timothy Campbell and Adam Sitze (Duke University Press, 2013), pp 145-50.
- Hannah Arendt, "The Perplexities of the Rights of Man," in Biopolitics: A Reader, ed. Timothy Campbell and Adam Sitze (Duke University Press, 2013), pp 82-97.
- Roberto Esposito, "Introduction," in Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life, trans. Zakiya Hanafi (Polity Press, 2011), pp 1-20.
- Michel Foucault, "Right of Death and Power Over Life," in Biopolitics: A Reader, ed. Timothy Campbell and Adam Sitze (Duke University Press, 2013), pp 41-60.
- Foucault, "'Society Must Be Defended,' Lecture at the Collège de France, March 17, 1976," in Biopolitics: A Reader, ed. Timothy Campbell and Adam Sitze (Duke University Press, 2013), pp 61-81.
11/3 ORIENTALISM
Chi-Ming Yang (English, University of Pennsylvania)
11/10 INDIGENEITY
TBA
11/17 ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES
Thomas Davis (English, Ohio State)