Eighties in Theory & Practice (Spring 2013)

a faculty/grad seminar and conference on the 1980s.

The 80s in Theory & Practice is a faculty/grad seminar organized by the Unit for Criticism and faculty in a number of disciplines. Your hosts for the seminar—as well as the organizers of the conference—are Lauren M. E. Goodlad (Director of the Unit for Criticism/English), J. B. Capino (Unit/English), Jennifer Greenhill (School of Art & Design), Justine Murison (English), Gabriel Solis (Musicology/African American Studies), and Terri Weissman (School of Art & Design).

 

Monday, February 25

Session Co-Leaders: Gabriel Solis (Musicology) and Lauren Goodlad (English/Unit for Criticism)

Jeremy Gilbert, "After '68: Narratives of the New Capitalism," New Formations65 (2008): 34-53.

Travis A. Jackson, "Post-Punk Sound and Vision: Empire, Pastiche, Primitivism." Draft Lecture: Do not cite or distribute without permission of the author. Circulating via email.

Monday, March 25

Session Co-Leaders: Terri Weissman (Art History) and Jennifer Greenhill (Art History)

Johanna Burton, "Subject to Revision," Artforum, 43.2 (2004): 259-305.

Johanna Burton, "A Few Troubles with 'The Eighties'," in This Will Have Been: Art, Love, and Politics in the 1980s, ed. Helen Molesworth, Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2012. 244-256.

Howard Singerman, "Pictures and Positions in the 1980s," in A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones, Malden: Blackwell, 2006, 83-106.

Howard Singerman, "The Myth of Criticism in the 1980s," X-tra 8.1 (Fall 2005):3-16.

Monday, April 15

Session Co-Leaders: Richard T. Rodríguez (Latina/Latino Studies/English) and J.B. Capino (English/Unit for Criticism)

Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed, "Introduction: In the Interest of Time," in Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2012, 1-37.

Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed, "Chap. 4: Queer Theory is Burning: Sexual Revolution and Traumatic Unremembering," in Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past, Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2012, 145-174.

Roger Hallas, "Chapter Two: The Embodied Immediacy of Direct Action: Space and Movement in AIDS Video Activism," in Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009, 77-111; 266-271 (notes).

Monday, April 29

Session Co-Leaders: Lilya Kaganovsky (Slavic/Comparative Literature), Justine Murison (English) and Siobhan Somerville (English/Gender & Women's Studies)

Nancy Condee, "From Emigration to E-Migration: Contemporaneity and the Former Second World," in Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, eds. Terry Smith, Okwui Enzewor, and Nancy Condee, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008, 235-249.

Jonathan D. Katz, "'The Senators Were Revolted:' Homophobia and the Culture Wars," in A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones, Malden: Blackwell, 2006, 231-248.

*Kembrew McLeod, "Copyright Criminals: This is a Sampling Sport." in Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity,New York: Doubleday, 2005. 62-113.

*The UIUC library is currently adopting a new service when accessing copyrighted content. Some of the ereserves for the Unit for Criticism have been affected. In order to access these double protected readings, you must create an SIPX account. These accounts are available for those affiliated with UIUC. Here are some instructions for how to access ereserves that are protected by SIPX from the library:

"Some links below may take you to a new service called SIPX we are using to help provide access to some copyrighted content. You will need to provide your university email address to create a SIPX account. Make sure to use your @illinois.edu email address when signing up to verify you are a U of I student and enable full access."

Optional Readings:

Johanna Burton, "Fundamental to the Image: Feminism and Art in the 1980s," in Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, ed. Cornelia H. Butler and Alexandra Schwartz, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. 429-443.

Jeremy Gilbert, "Chap. 7: Beyond the Activist Imaginary: Nomadic Strategies for the New Partisans," in Anticapitalism and Culture: Radical Theory and Popular Politics, Oxford: Berg, 2008. 203-235.

 

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture at 25: Theories for the New Millennium (Spring 2013)

A faculty/grad seminar and a February 8 symposium celebrating the 25th anniversary of Marxism & the Interpretation of Culture

Marxism & the Interpretation of Culture at 25 is a faculty/grad seminar organized by the Unit for Criticism to create an interdisciplinary conversation about the history of Marxist theory and its future for the new millennium. Your hosts for the seminar—as well as the organizers of the Marxism & the Interpretation of Culture at 25 symposium—are Lauren M. E. Goodlad (Director of the Unit for Criticism/English) and Michael Rothberg (Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies/English)

 

Monday, January 21

Session Co-Leaders: Ericka Beckman (Spanish, Italian & Portuguese, Comparative & World Literature), Peter Garrett (English), Jim Hansen (English)

Gopal Balakrishnan, "Speculations on the Stationary State," New Left Review59 (2009): 5-59.

Carolyn Lesjak, "Reading Dialectically," Essay forthcoming in Criticism(2013): 1-47.

Shu-mei Shih, "Comparison as Relation," in Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses, eds. Rita Felski and Susan Friedman, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, forthcoming in 2013, 1-32.

Monday, February 4

Session Co-Leaders: Tariq O. Ali (History), Christopher Freeburg (English), Emanuel Rota (Spanish, Italian & Portuguese)

Laura Chrisman, "Whose Black World Is This Anway? Black Atlantic and Transnational Studies after The Black Atlantic," in New Perspectives on The Black Atlantic: Definitions, Readings, Practices, Dialogues, eds. Bénédicte Ledent and Pilar Cuder-Domínguez, Bern, Germany: Peter Lang, 2012, 23-57.

David Kazanjian, "Hegel, Liberia: A Review of Susan Buck-Morss' Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History," Diacritics 40.1 (Spring 2012): 6-41.

Nikhil Singh, "Racial Formation in an Age of Permanent War," in Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, eds. Daniel Martinez HoSang, Oneka LaBennett and Laura Pulido, Los Angeles: U of California P, 2012. 276-301.

 

Highlights from Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture

Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson, "Introduction: The Territory of Marxism," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson, Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 1-16.

Fredric Jameson, "Cognitive Mapping," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson, Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988, 347-360.

Ernesto Laclau, "Metaphor and Social Antagonisms," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson, Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988, 249-258.

 

Optional Additional Readings:

Timothy Brennan, "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, and Paul Nizan: Communist Novelist (review)," Modern Fiction Studies 35.2 (1989): 367-370.

David Harvey, "Commonwealth: an exchange." Artforum International 48.3 (2009): 210+. Academic OneFile. Web. 17 Jan. 2013.

Michael Heinrich, "Chap. 3: Value, Labor, Money," in An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, New York: Monthly Review, 2012.

Fredric Jameson, "Ch. 16: Utopia as Replication," in Valences of the Dialectic,New York: Verso, 2010. 410-434.

---, "Ch. 5: Capital in Its Space," in Representing Capital: a commentary of volume one, New York: Verso, 2011. 109-126

David Kazanjian, "The Speculative Freedom of Colonial Liberia," American Quarterly 63.4 (December 2011): 863-893.

Andrew Parker, "Futures for Marxism: An Appreciation of Althusser," Diacritics,15.4 (1985): 57-72 .

Jennifer Pitts, "A Liberal Geoculture?" in New Left Review 78 (2012): 136-144.