[In this post, Emanuel Rota, a Unit for Criticism affiliate and Assistant Professor of Italian, writes on a recent debate over events in Egypt.]"Riz Khan - Tariq Ramadan and Slavoj Zizek on the future of Egyptian politics"Written by Emanuel Rota (Italian)History is on...

Dear Colleagues,Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Happy New Year! I hope you are keeping warm and snug, and I know you are keeping busy as we all rev up for another full-throttle semester in Champaign-Urbana. This spring the Unit for Criticism’s organizing theme is “Freedom and Its...

[On Thursday, December 9, the Unit for Criticism held the second of its Fall 2010 Author’s Roundtables. Dana Polan discussed his forthcoming Duke UP book, Julia Child's The French Chef. In our previous post we...

[On Thursday, December 9, the Unit for Criticism held the second of its Fall 2010 Author’s Roundtables. Dana Polan discussed his forthcoming Duke UP book, Julia Child's The French Chef. The below contributions are from all three respondents: ...

[On Monday, November 29, 2010, the Unit for Criticism hosted “Moving Beyond Preservation: 'Traditional' Music, Arts Institutions, and Modernity in Papua New Guinea,” a lecture by Gabriel Solis, a professor of musicology and African American studies at the University of Illinois. Below we publish the second of two posts related to...

Gabriel Solis (above)[On Monday, November 29, 2010, the Unit for Criticism hosted “Moving Beyond Preservation: 'Traditional' Music, Arts Institutions, and Modernity in Papua New Guinea,” a lecture by Gabriel Solis, a professor of musicology and African American studies at the University of Illinois. Below we publish Professor Jodi Byrd'...

[On November 1, 2010, the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities presented “Poverty Capital: The Subprime Frontiers of Millennial Modernity,” a lecture by Ananya Roy of the University of California, Berkeley]Written by Ergin Bulut (Education Policy Studies)“This was one...

[The below post is an open letter to University of Illinois Chief of Police Barbara O’Connor which we publish at the request of several signatories. The letter responds to the use of the "Illini Alert" system by campus police.]November 15, 2010An Open Letter to Chief of Police Barbara O’Connor:We write with grave concern about your...

[On Friday, November 5, 2010, the Unit for Criticism collaborated with the Center for Advanced Study and the International Forum for US Studies in hosting "Exodus and the Americanization of Zionism," a CAS/MillerComm presentation by Amy Kaplan of the University of Pennsylvania]Amy Kaplan's "Exodus and the...

“The Enduring Human Spirit of Free Enterprise in The Road”Written by John Jimmy Reader *(Free Market Studies)*Note: John Jimmy Reader, PhD. in Free Market Studies, lives in an alternate post-apocalyptic world where tenure and institutional loyalty no longer exist at the University of Illinois – and the Tea Party has taken over the UIUC administration.Drawing on the critical theory of the Tea...

[On Thursday, October 28, 2010, the Unit for Criticism and Anna Stenport of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures hosted “What Does It Mean to Claim that Sex, Gender, and the Body are Socially Constructed?,” a lecture by Toril Moi of Duke University]Toril Moi’s “What Does It Mean to Claim that Sex, Gender, and the Body...

[Kritik is pleased to publish the third in a series of posts by Samantha Frost, associate professor in Political Science and Gender and Women’s Studies. As the recipient of a ...

[This second of two final entries in our multi-authored series of posts on the fourth season of Mad Men, prior to publishing...

[This first of two final entries in our multi-authored series of posts on the fourth season of Mad Men, was posted prior to the publication of...

artwork by Collier Schorr[On October 11, 2010 the Unit for Criticism and the Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies Initiative hosted "The Killer in Me is the Killer in You: Homosexuality and Fascism," a lecture by Judith Halberstam of the University of Southern California.]Judith Halberstam’s “The Killer in Me is...