On September 30, 2009 Robert Warrior, writing on behalf of the American Indian Studies faculty (several of whom, including Warrior, are affilaites of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory), circulated a statement which appears below. The statement responds to the Friday, October 2 event at Assembly Hall depicted in...
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- On Monday, 9/28 the Unit for Criticism held the first of three Fall 2009 Author's Roundtables featuring Darieck Scott, Assistant Professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, discussing his forthcoming book Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American...
- The extent to which the abject might be recuperated for some kind of political potential has been an occasional focus of queer studies; Darieck Scott’s forthcoming book specifies that question, and raises its stakes considerably, by asking it of “black abjection,” or the history of debasement under slavery and Jim Crow. Scott argues that two responses have dominated black literary and critical...
- Above photo: Emily Skidmore and Ricky Rodriguez.I want to begin by thanking Professor Darieck Scott for sharing his work with us this evening. However, it is important that my gratitude be supplemented with a sense of indebtedness. And while I don’t want to make this response all about me, I do want...
- I truly enjoyed the opportunity of reading Darieck Scott’s work, as I found it provocative and insightful. I particularly enjoyed the ways in which het seamlessly brought together a broad range of sources—from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, to Samuel R. Delany’s pornographic novel, The Mad Man. These texts discuss a wide array of historical and cultural...
- From yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education, a thought-provoking analysis, "What's the Matter with Cultural Studies?," from a former University of Illinois colleague, Michael Berube.Here are two excerpts:In 1990, my first year as an...
- A few weeks ago, inspired partly by some columns that the New York Times published on the topic, I decided to write a short essay on Mad Men, the AMC television series about the world of advertising in...
- Dear Colleagues,As most of you know from a previous email, Michael Rothberg has stepped down from the Unit for Criticism to direct a new Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies initiative. I’m sure that all of you join me in wishing Michael the greatest success knowing that he will bring the same insight, verve, and...
- Written by Andrea Ferber (Art History)Pamela T. Boll’s most recent film Who Does She Think She Is?(2008) was screened Thursday May 7th as part of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory’s Feminist Futures conference. The documentary focuses on women balancing motherhood and creative drives. Although well-intended...
- Written by Samantha Frost (Political Science)In responding to Penelope Deutscher’s Monday presentation, “Biopoliticized Maternity and the Trope of Immunization,” I want to briefly outline the questions and insights that animate her main argument and...
- Written by Michael Verderame (English)In responding to Melissa Orlie’s paper “There Is No Alternative,” respondent Eric Freyfogle jokingly remarked that she had, in the course of the evening, insulted her entire audience. Indeed, listening to Orlie’s paper was at times an uncomfortable experience, as she drove home the myriad ways in which all of our choices in purchasing and consuming food on...
- Written by Ryan M. Jones (History)Tim Dean’s Unlimited Intimacy provided a provocative experience on Monday, December 8, one that I was honored to participate in. I read the section of this book with a certain bias—two people I know recently found themselves facing life-changing news due to their sexual experiences, and as such, reading about a subculture that actively cultivates the HIV virus as...
- Written by Amity Reading (English)Shortly after listening to Renée Trilling’s paper and the provocative discussion it sparked, I found myself trying to very roughly summarize her ideas for an undergraduate in my medieval literature and culture course. I explained as succinctly as I could that Trilling was exploring the aesthetic function of nostalgia both within modern constructions of the...
- Written by Manisha Basu (English)As I began to read Eva Illouz’s 2007 book Cold Intimacies, I realized that this was one of those rare books that spoke around and across the boundaries of distinct regimes of knowledge. Indeed, as it moved deftly from modern selfhood to postmodern role-playing to the ontic self produced in the conjunction between psychology and new media, and again...
