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Faculty Affiliate Brett Kaplan Receives Nannerl O. Keohane Visiting Distinguished Professorship at Duke and UNC
Brett Ashley Kaplan has been appointed as the Nannerl O. Keohane Visiting Distinguished Professor at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Professor Kaplan, an innovative scholar in memory studies, holds appointments in Comparative Literature, French, Jewish Studies...
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2024 Conrad Humanities Scholar Awards
The Unit for Criticism congratulates this year's recipients of the 2024 Conrad Humanities Scholars Award, John Levi Barnard (Comparative and World Literature, English) and Maryam Kashani (Gender and Women's Studies, Asian American Studies), who are both affiliated with the Unit. Barnard and Kashani...
Fall 2023 Event Archive
Modern Critical Theory Lectures Fall 2023
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9/5 Liat Ben-Moshe “Decarcerating Disability: Prison Abolition and Deinstitutionalization” (Criminology, Law and Justice, UIC)
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Nicholson Fellowship 2024 Awarded to Kei Kato and Tai Wakabayashi
Kei Kato (PhD student, Geography) and Taisuke L. Wakabayashi (PhD student, Landscape Architecture) have been awarded 2024 Nicholson Fellowship to attend School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. In an intensive six-week course of study,...
Marcel Proust
Professor: Francois Proulx
Meets: Tuesdays 3:00pm - 4:50pm
Seminar on Marcel Proust's multivolume novel A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, 1913-1927). Readings include excerpts from each volume of the novel and related critical texts from approaches including genetic criticism, digital humanities, Jewish and queer studies, philosophy, art history, musicology, and cognitive theory. Taught in French; seminar discussions will be conducted in French or English; students from graduate programs other than French Studies are welcome to read the...
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Gopashis Biswas “G’Son”
G'Son is a PhD student in the Department of Communication. His interests traverse through social media, media effects, and political communication. His research dissects the consequences of affective...
Read full story about Gopashis Biswas “G’Son”
Faculty Affiliation
The Unit works with faculty across disciplines who engage with critical theory.
Can the Puerto Rican Parrots Speak?
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Image of Puerto Rican Parrot; photo courtesy of El Yunque National Forest
On November 7, 2023, the croak of a coqui greeted me as I entered the lecture hall for Ramón E. Soto-Crespo’s Modern Critical Theory talk, “Environmental Humanities and the Caribbean.”
According to Soto-Crespo, the coqui and the Puerto Rican parrot are only two of the animals who fill the soundscape in the El Yunque National Forest. Both animals are on the verge of being silenced due to deforestation.
In the 1940s and 50s, Puerto Rico switched gears from sugar cane monoculture to a manufacture-based industry that would generate more wealth for the nation. Such modernization, Soto-Crespo...
