The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory offers a series of public lectures on the history of critical theory every fall semester. These lectures, each of which will be followed by open discussion, will take place on Tuesdays from 5:15-6:45pm in-person. The lectures are coordinated with graduate seminars on critical theory in a number of departments, but are also open to other faculty or graduate students who may wish to attend. 

 

Schedule & Reading List 

9/13 Antoinette Burton “Gender History: A Very Short Introduction” (History, UIUC)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, 5 (1986).
  • Kimberlé Crenshaw, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics," University of Chicago Legal Forum 1, Article 8 (1989) and/or her 2016 video,  “The Urgency of Intersectionality” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOe5-UsQ2o
  • Afsaneh Najmabadi,  Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards (2005),  intro and chapter 2
  • Tadashi Dozono, “Teaching Alternative and Indigenous Gender Systems in World History: A Queer Approach,” The History Teacher 50,3 (2017)
  • Susan Stryker, “(De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies” in her edited collection, The Transgender Studies Reader (2006)
  • Howard Chiang, “Imagining Transgender China,” in Transgender China (2012)
  • Judith Butler, “Reflections on Gender Trouble Thirty Years Later: Reply to Hershatter, Loos, and Patel,” The Journal of Asian Studies 79, 4 (2020)

9/20 David Wilson “The Advanced Capitalist City: Conceptual Innovations” (Geography & GIS, UIUC)

Greg Hall 319

Required Readings

  • Cugurullo, F. (2018). Exposing smart cities and eco-cities: Frankenstein urbanism and the sustainability challenges of the experimental city. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 50(1), 73-92. 
  • Simone, A. (2004). People as infrastructure: Intersecting fragments in Johannesburg. Public culture, 16(3), 407-429.
  • Wilson, D., & Heil, M. (2022). Decline machines and economic development: rust belt cities and Flint, Michigan. Urban Geography, 43(2), 163-183. 

9/27 Rosalyn LaPier “Environmental Studies: Land as Text”

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Basso, Keith H. “‘Speaking with Names’: Language and Landscape among the Western Apache.” Cultural Anthropology 3, no. 2 (1988): 99–130. http://www.jstor.org/stable/656347.
  • Oliveira, Katrina-Ann R. Kapā’AnaokalāOkeola NāKoa. “Wahi a Kahiko: Place Names as Vehicles of Ancestral Memory.” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 5, no. 2 (December 2009): 100–115. https://doi.org/10.1177/117718010900500206.
  • Reuben Rose-Redwood, Natchee Blu Barnd, Annita Hetoevėhotohke’e Lucchesi, Sharon Dias, and Wil Patrick, "Decolonizing the Map: Recentering Indigenous Mappings," Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 2020 55:3, 151-162 https://doi.org/10.3138/cart.53.3.intro

Supplemental Readings

  • Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
  • Nabokov, Peter. Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places, Penguin, 2007.
  • In the Light of Reverence, Sacred Land Films, 2001. 

10/11 Cameron McCarthy “The Postcolonial Imagination: Tools of Conviviality” (Education, UIUC)

Greg Hall 319

Required Readings

  • Spivak, G. (1997). Three women’s texts and a critique of imperialism.  In, C. McCarthy et al. Race, Identity and Representation in Education (pp. 193-207). New York: Routledge.   
  • Hall, S. (2001). Museums of Modern Art and the End of History. In,  McCarthy, C.  et al. Spaces of New Colonialism: Reading Schools, Museums, and Cities in the Tumult of Globalization (pp. 285-294). 

Supplemental Readings

  • Goel, K.M. & McCarthy, C. (2020). Colonial Pasts and Global Presence in Citadels of Education: Crafting “World-Class” Futures by Digitalizing Traditions . In,  McCarthy, C.  et al. Spaces of New Colonialism: Reading Schools, Museums, and Cities in the Tumult of Globalization (pp. 211-239). 
  • Bhabha, H. (2004). Signs taken for wonders.  The Location of Culture (pp. 102-122). 

10/18 Amy Allen “Rosa Luxemburg and Marxism” (Philosophy, Penn State)

This lecture is on Zoom. Registration is required!

Required Readings

10/25 Rubén Gaztambide-Fernandez "The Pedagogies of Solidarity" (CTL, University of Toronto)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Sarah Ahmed, 2000, Strange Encounters, Chapter 7, Ethical Encounters: The other, others, and strangers.
  • Lilie Chouliaraki, 2013, The Ironic Spectator, Chapter 7, Theatricality, Irony, Solidarity
  • Lisa Lowe, 2015, The Intimacies of Four Continents, Chapter 1 (The Intimacies of Four Continents) and/or Chapter 5, (Freedoms Yet to Come).
  • Sherene H. Razack (2007) Stealing the Pain of Others: Reflections on Canadian Humanitarian Responses, The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 29:4, 375-394 

11/1 Zsuzsa Gille "The Materiality Turn" (Sociology, UIUC)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Bennett, Jane. 2004. “The Force of Things: Steps Towards an Ecology of Matter.” Political Theory. 32:347-72.
  • M’Charek, Amade. 2013. “Beyond fact or fiction: on the materiality of race in practice.” Cultural Anthropology. 28(3):420–442.
  • Mitchell, Timothy. 2002. “Can a Mosquito Speak?” In: Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. University of California Press.
  • Mukerji, Chandra. 2010. “The Territorial State as a Figured World of Power: Strategics, Logistics, and Impersonal Rule.” Sociological Theory. 28(4): 402-424.
  • Noortje Marres & Javier Lezaun. 2011. “Materials and devices of the public: an introduction. Economy and Society, 40:4, 489-509. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2011.602293 

11/15 Lisa Rosenthal “Feminism and the Visual Image: The Dynamics of Representation” (Art History, UIUC)

Greg Hall 319

Required Readings

  • Contemporary Comments on Seventeenth-Century Dutch (Painting) Source: Eric Jan Sluijter, Seductress of Sight (Waanders, Zwolle: 2000) pp. 9-14.
  • Edwards Snow, "Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems," Representations 25 (1989) pp. 30-41
  • Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen 16:3 (1975) pp. 6-18.
  • Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (Routledge, 1999) pp. 23-38.
  • Jacqueline Lichtenstein, “Making Up Representation: The Risks of Femininity,” Representations 20 (1987) pp. 77-87.  

11/29 Tamara Chaplin “Queering French History” (History, UIUC)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Doan, Laura. Chapter 1 “An Uncommon Project, The Discipline Problem Reconsidered,” and Chapter 2, “Genealogy Inside and Out,” in Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp.27-57 and pp.58-93.=
  • Duggan, Lisa, “The Discipline Problem: Queer Theory meets Lesbian and Gay History,” GLQ,  Vol. 2, (1995), pp. 179-191.
  • Faderman, Lillian, “Who Hid Lesbian History?” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3, Lesbian History (Autumn, 1979), pp.74-76.
  • Vicinus, Martha. “The History of Lesbian History,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Fall 2012), pp. 566-596.

Supplemental Readings

  • Abelove, Henry.  “The Queering of Lesbian/Gay History,” Radical History Review 62 (Spring 1995): 45-57.
  • Bennett, Judith M. “‘Lesbian-Like’ and the Social History of Lesbianisms,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 9, No. ½ (January-April, 2000), pp.1-24.
  • Garber, Linda. “Where in the World Are the Lesbians,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol 14. Nos. 12 January 2005/ April 2005 pp. 28-50.