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. 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. 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
9/1 WELCOME RECEPTION
Pizzeria Antica (10 E. Chester Street, Champaign), 5:15-7:00 pm
9/8 Introductory Lecture: Theory in the University, co-organized with the Mellon Sawyer Seminar
Chad Wellmon (Germanic Languages & Literatures, University of Virginia)
9/15 Democracy
Danielle Chynoweth (Supervisor, Cunningham Township)
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)
11/3 Orientalism
Chi-Ming Yang (English, University of Pennsylvania)
11/10 Indigeneity
TBA
11/17 Environmental Humanities
Thomas Davis (English, Ohio State)