Lauren Berlant
Encyclopedia
Lauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago
, where she has been teaching since 1984. Berlant received her Ph.D. from Cornell University
. She writes and teaches on issues of intimacy and belonging in popular culture
, in relation to the history and fantasy of citizenship
.
She is the author of The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, the title essay of which won the 1993 Norman Foerster Award for best essay of the year in American Literature. Her most recent book The Female Complaint: On the Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture was published by Duke University Press in 2008. Cruel Optimism is scheduled to appear late in 2011. She is also author of The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life (1991). She writes on public spheres as affect worlds, where affect and emotion lead the way for by rational or deliberative thought (Habermas
) in attaching strangers to each other and shaping the terms of the state-civil society relation; but this work also argues to see sentimentality, trauma, and related public modes not as the opposite of rationality but in line with other visceral, yet cultivated ways of knowing and being attached to the world.
She has pursued this line of thought and feeling as a member of Feel Tank Chicago
and on the way has edited books on Compassion (2004) and Intimacy (2001), which won an award for being the best special issue among all journals in the same year from the Academy of American Publishers, and which are interlinked with her work in feminist and queer theory
in essays like "Sex in Public" (Critical Inquiry (1999)), Our Monica, Ourselves: Clinton and the Affairs of State (with Lisa Duggan, 2001) and Venus Inferred (with photographer Laura Letinsky
, 2001). Berlant works with many journals, including as editor of Critical Inquiry and Public Culture
, and helped to found and has chaired the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago. Her newest monograph, Cruel Optimism, will be published in October, 2011, by Duke University Press.
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, where she has been teaching since 1984. Berlant received her Ph.D. from Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. She writes and teaches on issues of intimacy and belonging in popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
, in relation to the history and fantasy of citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
.
She is the author of The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, the title essay of which won the 1993 Norman Foerster Award for best essay of the year in American Literature. Her most recent book The Female Complaint: On the Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture was published by Duke University Press in 2008. Cruel Optimism is scheduled to appear late in 2011. She is also author of The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life (1991). She writes on public spheres as affect worlds, where affect and emotion lead the way for by rational or deliberative thought (Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
) in attaching strangers to each other and shaping the terms of the state-civil society relation; but this work also argues to see sentimentality, trauma, and related public modes not as the opposite of rationality but in line with other visceral, yet cultivated ways of knowing and being attached to the world.
She has pursued this line of thought and feeling as a member of Feel Tank Chicago
Feel Tank Chicago
Feel Tank Chicago is a Chicago-based group composed of activists, artists, and academics that engages both in critical research and political activism. It originally began as a cell in larger project called Feminism Unfinished: the cell was called Public Feelings, and has grown in other locales...
and on the way has edited books on Compassion (2004) and Intimacy (2001), which won an award for being the best special issue among all journals in the same year from the Academy of American Publishers, and which are interlinked with her work in feminist and queer theory
Queer theory
Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
in essays like "Sex in Public" (Critical Inquiry (1999)), Our Monica, Ourselves: Clinton and the Affairs of State (with Lisa Duggan, 2001) and Venus Inferred (with photographer Laura Letinsky
Laura Letinsky
Laura L. Letinsky is a contemporary photographer, best known for her still lifes.Much of Letinsky's work alludes to human presence, without including any actual figures. For example, in the Morning and Melancholia , and the I Did Not Remember I Had Forgotten Laura L. Letinsky (born Canada, 1962)...
, 2001). Berlant works with many journals, including as editor of Critical Inquiry and Public Culture
Public Culture
Public Culture is a reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal of cultural studies, founded in 1988 by anthropologists Carol Breckenridge and Arjun Appadurai...
, and helped to found and has chaired the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago. Her newest monograph, Cruel Optimism, will be published in October, 2011, by Duke University Press.