Events
MCT25 Poster

We invite you to attend the Fall 2025 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. Face masks are encouraged for in-person attendance.

The series 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.

For participants not enrolled in one of the affiliated courses, see the Box folder of corresponding readings for each lecture (available soon). To access the box folder, please email us for the password. To see the poster in a larger format, click here. For more information, including the password to access the readings, please email Unit-for-Criticism@illinois.edu. If you require screen reader-friendly PDFs, please email the Unit at least two weeks in advance of the lecture so that we can work with DRES to convert files.

Schedule

9/2  WELCOME RECEPTION 

Pizzeria Antica (10 E. Chester Street, Champaign), 5:15-7:00 pm

 

9/9  INTRODUCTION TO THEORY (“What Is Theory? Inside the Fascist Sequence”) / Lincoln Hall 1000

Peter Coviello (English, University of Illinois Chicago)  

  • Puar, Jasbir K. The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Chapter 4: “Will Not Let Die,” pp. 127–154, plus notes. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
  • Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. Chapter 4: “The General Strike,” pp. 55–83. New York: The Free Press, 1998.
  • Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Chapters 2 and 6–9, pp. 83–89, 108–135. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
  • Clover, Joshua. “Passover.” Popula, April 17, 2019. https://popula.com/2019/04/17/passover/

 

9/16  MARXISM dialogue / Gregory Hall 213

Richard Gilman-Opalsky (Politics & International Affairs, University of Illinois Springfield) 

Matt Soener (Sociology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)  

 

9/23  WALTER BENJAMIN dialogue / Lincoln Hall 1000

Anna Hunt (German, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson (Philosophy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

  • Benjamin, Walter. "Toward the Critique of Violence" in Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition, edited by Julia Ng and Peter Fenves. pp. 39-61. Sanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021
  • Benjamin, Walter. "Theses on Philosophy of History" in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn. Schocken Books, 1969.
  • Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 1998. “Threshold,” pp. 41–43.
  • Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, translated by George Schwab. pp. 5-52. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005
 

10/7  POST-STRUCTURALISM / Lincoln 1000

François Proulx (French & Italian, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

  • Barthes, Roland. “La mort de l’auteur” (1968)
  • Barthes, Roland. S/Z (1970), from “I. L’évaluation” to “XII. Le tissu des voix"
  • Barthes, Roland. “Leçon” (1978)
  • Barthes, Roland. “Introduction” (séance du 2 décembre 1978), and “Le Roman” (séance du 9 décembre 1978), from La Préparation du roman I (audio recordings also available: https://revue.roland-barthes.org/audio/
  • Barthes, Roland. “Introduction” and “The Novel,” from The Preparation of the Novel, Lecture Courses and Seminars at the Collège de France, tr. Kate Briggs, Columbia University Press, 2010, p. 3-19.
  • Sedgwick, Eve K. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading,” from Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (2003)
 

10/14  FEMINISM (Latin America/Latinx Feminist Geographies) / Levis 210

Sofía Zaragocín (Geography & GIS, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

  • Rose, Gillian. "Feminism and geography: an introduction" in Feminism & geography: The limits of geographical knowledge. University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
  • Massey, Doreen. "General Introduction," Space, place and gender. John Wiley & Sons, 2013. pp. 1-16.
  • Silva, Joseli Maria, Marcio Jose Ornat, and Liz Mason-Deese. "Feminist geographies in Latin America: epistemological challenges and the decoloniality of knowledge." Journal of Latin American Geography 19, no. 1 (2020): 269-277.
  • Hanson, Anne-Marie. "Feminist Futures in Latin American Geography." Journal of Latin American Geography 19, no. 1 (2020): 215-224.
  • Zaragocin, Sofia, and Caretta, Martina Angela. 2020. “Cuerpo-Territorio: A Decolonial Feminist Geographical Method for the Study of Embodiment.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111 (5): 1503–18.
  • Glockner, Valentina, et al. 2023. “The Cuerpo-Territorio of Displacement: A Decolonial Feminist Geopolitics of Re-Existencia.” Geopolitics 29 (4): 1220–44.

 

10/21  Queer Theory in an Age of Urgency / Levis 210

Tim McCarthy (Education, Harvard University)  

  • Cathy Cohen, "Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics" (1997)
  • Jim Downs, "'Like People in History': Why Social History Matters to the LGBT Community" (2021)
  • Jen Manion, Female Husbands: A Trans History (2020), Introduction
  • Urvashi Vaid, "What Can Brown Do For You?: Race, Sexuality, and the Future of LGBTQ Politics" (2010)
  • Kenji Yoshino, Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights (2006), Introduction
Optional:

10/28  BIOPOLITICS / Levis 210

Ciro Incoronato (Italian, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

  • Foucault, Michel. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76. ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. tr. David Macey. New York: Picador, 2003.
  • Saviano, Roberto. "Introduction" and Part 2 from Gomorrah. A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System. tr. Virginia Jewiss. New York: Picador, 2008.

 

11/4  RACE: The Limits of Racial Critique / Levis 210

Stephen M. Best (English, University of California Berkley)

  • Nina Sun Eidsheim, "The Acousmatic Question: Who Is This?," The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre & Vocality in African American Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 1-37.
  • Kevin Quashie, "Aliveness and Aesthetics," Black Aliveness, or a Poetics of Being (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021), 57-82.
  • J. Reid Miller, "What Would a Philosophy of Inheritance Look Like?," Journal of World Philosophies 8 (Summer 2023): 91-101.

    

11/11  POSTCOLONIAL THEORY / Levis 210

Julian Go (Sociology, University of Chicago)  

  • Edward Said. 1978. Orientalism, pp. 1-28, 31-49, 53-68, 76-81, 86-87, 92-110, 149-157, 201-209, 221-225, 284-296, 320-328
  • Leela Gandhi. 1998. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, pp. 1-22 (Ch. 1 “After Colonialism”)
  • Dipesh Chakrabarty. 2000. Provincializing Europe, pp. 3-26 (“Introduction”)
  • Julian Go. 2023. “Thinking against empire: Anticolonial thought as social theory,” British Journal of Sociology (open access: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12993)
  • Julian Go. 2024. Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the United States pp. 1-30 (“Introduction”)

 

11/18  ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES dialogue / Levis 210

John Levi Barnard (English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Pollyanna Rhee (Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)  

  • Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): 197-222.
  • Walter Johnson, “On Agency,” Journal of Social History 37.1 (2003): 113-124.
  • Bathsheba Demuth, “On the Agency of Environmental History,” Journal of Social History 57.3 (2024): 398-403.
  • Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century (Oxford UP, 2014), 1-19.
  • Matthew Huber, Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 155-169.