Lee Edelman
Encyclopedia
Lee Edelman is a professor and chair of the English Department at Tufts University
. Lee Edelman began his academic career as a scholar of twentieth-century American poetry. He has since become a central figure in the development, dissemination, and rethinking of queer theory. His current work explores the intersections of sexuality, rhetorical theory, cultural politics, and film. He holds an appointment as the Fletcher Professor of English Literature and he is currently the Chair of the English Department. He gained international recognition for his books about queer theory
, post-structuralism
, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural studies. He has a Ph.D. from Yale University
, a M. Phil. from Yale, an M.A. from Yale, and a B.A. from Northwestern University
.
Leo Bersani wrote of his most recent book, No Future, "In consistently brilliant theoretical discussions (for the most part, psychoanalytically inspired), as well as in strikingly original readings of Dickens, George Eliot, and Hitchcock, Lee Edelman argues that in a political culture dominated by the sentimental illusions and frequently murderous moral imperatives of 'reproductive futurism, ' homosexuality has been assigned—and should deliberately and defiantly take on—the burden of a negativity at once embedded within and violently disavowed by that culture. The paradoxical dignity of queerness would be its refusal to believe in a redemptive future, its embrace of the unintelligibility, even the inhumanity inherent in sexuality. Edelman's extraordinary text is so powerful that we could perhaps reproach him only for not spelling out the mode in which we might survive our necessary assent to his argument."
Lee Edelman is married to noted critic and novelist Joseph Litvak.
2005 Named Fletcher Chair of English Literature
1998 Awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award by Tufts University
1994 Tufts Class of 1994 Recognition for Excellence
1993 Chosen by Alumni of Class of 1986 as one of Tufts' Most Influential Teachers
1989 Crompton-Noll Award of the MLA for "Redeeming the Phallus"
1989 Lillian and Joseph Leibner Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
. Lee Edelman began his academic career as a scholar of twentieth-century American poetry. He has since become a central figure in the development, dissemination, and rethinking of queer theory. His current work explores the intersections of sexuality, rhetorical theory, cultural politics, and film. He holds an appointment as the Fletcher Professor of English Literature and he is currently the Chair of the English Department. He gained international recognition for his books about 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...
, post-structuralism
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural studies. He has a Ph.D. from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, a M. Phil. from Yale, an M.A. from Yale, and a B.A. from Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
.
Leo Bersani wrote of his most recent book, No Future, "In consistently brilliant theoretical discussions (for the most part, psychoanalytically inspired), as well as in strikingly original readings of Dickens, George Eliot, and Hitchcock, Lee Edelman argues that in a political culture dominated by the sentimental illusions and frequently murderous moral imperatives of 'reproductive futurism, ' homosexuality has been assigned—and should deliberately and defiantly take on—the burden of a negativity at once embedded within and violently disavowed by that culture. The paradoxical dignity of queerness would be its refusal to believe in a redemptive future, its embrace of the unintelligibility, even the inhumanity inherent in sexuality. Edelman's extraordinary text is so powerful that we could perhaps reproach him only for not spelling out the mode in which we might survive our necessary assent to his argument."
Lee Edelman is married to noted critic and novelist Joseph Litvak.
Awards
2006 Lerman-Neubauer Award for Outstanding Teaching and Advising2005 Named Fletcher Chair of English Literature
1998 Awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award by Tufts University
1994 Tufts Class of 1994 Recognition for Excellence
1993 Chosen by Alumni of Class of 1986 as one of Tufts' Most Influential Teachers
1989 Crompton-Noll Award of the MLA for "Redeeming the Phallus"
1989 Lillian and Joseph Leibner Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising