The Critical Theory Workshop is a student-organized seminar initiated in 2021 under the auspices of the Institute for Critical Theory. The workshop invites junior and mid-level professors, working in areas of interest to our graduate students, to head a one-day workshop. Assistant Professor Nima Bassiri, co-director of the Institute, is the faculty facilitator for this group, and students choose the workshop leaders. At this time, workshops are only open to the faculty and graduate students of the Literature Program and invited departments. And while faculty are welcome to attend, the sessions are primarily for the students and will remain their initiative and responsibility.
Workshop participants can contact wweiher@duke.edu in advance of each session for a link to the speaker’s essay.
2024-2025 (Fall Semester)
Salome Aguilera Skvirsky, Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the College, University of Chicago will discuss her draft article “The Lynching Film” at 4pm on December 6, 2024.
HeeJin Lee, Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages, Literatures & Cultures discussed her article “The Future of Intellectual Resistance: South Korean Fiction and the Critique of Cold War Knowledge Production” on October 18, 2024.
2023-2024
Calvin Warren, Associate Professor, African American Studies, Emory University joined us remotely to discuss his draft article “Turned into a Black Penis” on April 12, 2024.
Parisa Vaziri, Assistant Professor, Comparative Literature & Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University discussed the Introduction to her book Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery and her draft article “Autopoiesis at the End of Worlds” on February 23, 2024.
Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, Associate Professor, Department of English at University of Ottawa discussed her draft article “Disciplinarity’s Temporal Forms” and the coda to The Academic Avant-Garde on December 1, 2023.
2022-2023
Paul Nadal, Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at Princeton University discussed the draft introduction to his book in progress “Remittances, Literary and Economic” on March 3, 2023.
Luka Arsenjuk, Associate Professor, Program in Cinema and Media Studies, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of Maryland, College Park discussed his essay in progress “Between History and the Discord of Time: The Figure of the Migrant in A Seventh Man and Transit” on Feb 10, 2023.
2021-2022
Karen Ng, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University discussed her forthcoming article “Humanism: A Defense”, in Philosophical Topics (Vol. 49, No. 1, Spring 2021, Social Visibility). April 1, 2022.
Ikyo Day, Elizabeth C. Small Associate Professor of English and Chair of Critical Social Thought and Gender Studies at Mount Holyoke College discussed her draft article “Nuclear Antipolitics and the Queer Art of Logistical Failure”. February 25, 2022.
Pooja Rangan, Associate Professor of English in Film and Media Studies, Amherst College and 2020-21 ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Fellow discussed her draft chapter “Listening in Crip Time” of her in-progress book On Documentary Listening. November 5, 2021.
Chris Chen, Associate Professor, Literature Department, UC Santa Cruz joined us remotely to discuss his draft article “Remappng the Race/Class Problematic,” on September 24, 2021.
2020-2021 (Spring Semester)
Annie J. McClanahan, Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies at University of California, Irvine discussed her forthcoming essay “Microwork, Automation, and the Insecurity of Contemporary Labor” about Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, conceptual poetry, and the history of automation, virtually on April 30, 2021.
Fumi Okiji, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at University of California, Berkley discussed a draft of her essay “Blind spot: Adorno and the (black) folkic” virtually on April 2, 2021.
Brian R. Jacobson, Professor of Visual Culture at California Institute of Technology discussed a chapter of his book in progress, Art in an Age of Oil virtually on March 12, 2021.
Martín Arboleda, PhD from the School of Sociology, Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile discussed his essay “Circuits of Rent Extraction” virtually on February 19, 2021.
