MCT Fall 2023 Poster

Please join us for the 2023-24 this year for the MCT series on contemporary theory and its engagements. Lectures will be held in Tuesdays from 5:15 to 6:45pm in Greg 213, a well-ventilated venue that holds almost 150 people, thus accommodating those who prefer to avoid crowded spaces. Lectures will not be streamed for off-site viewers, although some may be taped (contingent on permission from the speaker). Wearing face masks is encouraged. 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 

9/5 Liat Ben-Moshe “Decarcerating Disability: Prison Abolition and Deinstitutionalization” (Criminology, Law and Justice, UIC)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Ben-Moshe, Liat. Why prisons are not the new asylums. Punishment and Society 19 (3), pp. 272 - 289, 2017 
  • Ben-Moshe, Liat. Dis-Epistemologies of Abolition. Critical Criminology, 26(3), 341-355, 2018
  • Ben-Moshe, Liat. "Introduction: Intersecting Disability, Imprisonment, and Deinstitutionalization," Decarcerating disability: Deinstitutionalization and prison abolition. U of Minnesota Press, 2020.

9/12 Craig Koslofsky “Skin and Epidermalization” (History, UIUC)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Broeck, Sabine. "Never Shall We Be Slaves: Locke's Treatises, Slavery, and Early European Modernity." In Blackening Europe: The African American Presence. Edited by Heike Raphael-Hernandez. London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 235-247.
  • Holt, Thomas C. "Marking: Race, Race-Making, and the Writing of History." The American Historical Review100, 1 (1995): 1-20.
  • Karayiannides, Efthimios. "‘Aberrations of affect,’ the Critique of Ontology and the Specificity of the Colonial Relation in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks." Subjectivity 13 (2020): 337-354.
  • Mazzolini, Renato. "Skin Color and the Origin of Physical Anthropology (1640-1850)." In Reproduction, Race, and Gender in Philosophy and the Early Life Sciences. Edited by Susanne Lettow. Albany: SUNY Press, 2015, pp. 131-161.

Supplemental Readings

  • Ahmed, Sarah. “A Phenomenology of Whiteness.” Feminist Theory 8, 2 (2007): 149–168.
  • Gordon, Lewis R. What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to his Life and Thought. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015.
  • Hall, Stuart. “The After-life of Frantz Fanon: Why Fanon? Why Now? Why Black Skin, White Masks? In The Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation. Edited by Alan Read. Seattle: Bay Press, 1996, pp. 13-37.
  • Song, Seunghyun. “Bridging Epidermalization of Black Inferiority and the Racial Epidermal Schema: Internalizing Oppression to the Level of Possibilities.” DiGeSt. Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies 4, 1 (2017): 49–61.
  • Stephens, Michelle. "What Is this Black in Black Diaspora?" Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 13, 2 (2009): 26-38.
  • Wilderson, Frank B. “Afro-Pessimism and the End of Redemption.” Humanities Futures. Franklin Humanities Institute: Duke University, 2015. https://humanitiesfutures.org/papers/afro-pessimism-end-redemption/.
  • Wynter, Sylvia. "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, after Man, its Overrepresentation—An Argument." CR: The New Centennial Review 3, 3 (2003): 257-337.

9/19 Mónica Jiménez “Toward a Legal Genealogy of Racial Exclusion: Law and the Making off Puerto Rico” (History, UT Austin)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

9/26 Helmut Puff “Architectures of Waiting: The Time of the Antechamber” (History, Michigan)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Bourdieu, Pierre.  “Social Being, Time and the Sense of Existence,”Pascalian Meditations, trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000, 207-45. 
  • Burke, Peter. “Performing History: The Importance of Occasions,” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 9(2005): 35-52.
  • Kracauer, Siegfried. “Those Who Wait,” in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, 129-40, 362-63. 
  • Puff, Helmut, and Bernardo Zacka. “Architectures of Waiting: Helmut Puff and Bernardo Zacka in Conversation,” Contemporary Political Theory 21 (2022): 1-18.  

 10/3 Shirl Yang “A Labor Theory of Suspense” (English, Wash U)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic (excerpt)
  • Hong, Renyi. Passionate Work: Endurance After the Good Life (Chapter 1: "From Happiness to Passion")
  • McClanahan, Annie. "The Spirit of Capital in an Age of Deindustrialization"
  • Liu, Andy. The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (Chapter 1: "The Idea of Knowledge Work")  

10/10 Shelley Weinberg "Descartes and Locke on the Certainty of Knowledge" (Philosophy, UIUC)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Rules 2, 3, 7, 11.
  • René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditations I, II
  • William Alston (1986). "Epistemic Circularity," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47:1, 1-30.
  • Alan Gewirth (1941). "The Cartesian Circle" The Philosophical Review 50:4, 368-395.
  • Keith DeRose (1992). "Descartes, Epistemic Principles, Epistemic Circularity, and Scientia," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 73: 3, 220-238.
  • John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book 4, Ch. 1, Secs. 1-8; Bk 4, Ch 2, Secs 1-7; Bk 4, Ch 11, Secs. 1-3.

10/17 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.

10/24 Ned O'Gorman "Arendt and the Question of Technology" (Communication, UIUC)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Arendt, Hannah, "Chapter Five. The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie" in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951, pp. 129-57.
  • Arendt, Hannah, excerpts from The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958, pp. 136-92.
  • Arendt, Hannah, "Introduction: War and Revolution" in On Revolution, New York: Penguin Books, 1990, pp. 11-20.
  • Dewey, John, excerpt from "Renascent Liberalism" in Liberalism and Social Action, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1935, pp. 56-83.

Supplemental Readings

  • Heidegger, Martin, "The Question Concerning Technology" in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1977, 3-35.
  • Hill, Samantha Rose, "The best books on Hannah Arendt," interview by Nigel Warburton, Five Books, https://fivebooks.com/best-books/hannah-arendt-samantha-rose-hill/.
  • Marcuse, Herbert, "Introduction to the First Edition: The paralysis of criticism: society without opposition" in One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society, New York: Routledge Classics, 2002, pp. xxxix-xlviii.

10/31 Penelope Deutscher “Revocability, Exception, Disqualifying Qualification: Grammars of Power After Foucault and Roe” (Philosophy, Northwestern)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Hartman, Saidiya. The Burdened Individuality of Freedom
  • Goodwin, Michele. Policing the womb: Invisible women and the criminalization of motherhood. Cambridge University Press, 2020.
  • Foucault, Michel. Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78. Springer, 2007.
  • Deutscher, Penelope. "Qualifying Disqualification and Its Inversions: Power after Foucault and the Distributions of Incapacity." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 43, no. 1 (2022): 3-30.

11/7 Ramón Soto-Crespo “Environmental Humanities and the Caribbean” (English, UIUC)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • CARSON, RACHEL, and CHRISTOF MAUCH. “Silent Spring (1962).” The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change, edited by Libby Robin et al., Yale University Press, 2013, pp. 195–204. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vm5bn.24. Accessed 18 Sept. 2023.
  • Emmett, Robert S. and David E. Nye.” “The Emergence of the Environmental Humanities” The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017. 1-21. https://doi-org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003…
  • Latour, Bruno. Down to Earth : Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Trans. Catherine Porter. English edition. Cambridge, UK ; Polity Press, 2018. Excerpts pp.1-40. Print.
  • Latour, Bruno. “Some advantages of the notion of “Critical Zone” for Geopolitics”
    Procedia Earth and Planetary Science 10 (2014): 3 – 6.
  • Mouffe, Chantal. “A Green Democratic Revolution” Towards a Green Revolution. London: Verso, 2023. 51-67.

11/14 Bob Markley “Problems in Theorizing the Origins of Capitalism” (English, UIUC)

Greg Hall 213

Required Readings

  • Duplessis, Robert S, Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe: Economies in The Era of Early Globalization, c. 1450 – c. 1820 (excerpts). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

11/28 AbdouMaliq Simone “Non-arrival: The Spiritual Dispositions of the Urban Surrounds” (Urban Institute, University of Sheffield)

ZOOM

Required Readings

  • Simone, AbdouMaliq. "Making use of everything: Tangier and its Southern, peripheral practices." South Atlantic Quarterly 122, no. 2 (2023): 339-359.
  • Carter, J. Kameron. "Other worlds, nowhere (or, the sacred otherwise)." Otherwise worlds: Against settler colonialism and anti-Blackness (2020): 158-209.
  • Wakefield, Stephanie. "More of the same?: Life beyond the liberal one world world." In Resilience in the Anthropocene, pp. 162-178. Routledge, 2020.