Past Wellek Lecture Series
2019Georges Didi-Huberman — École des hautes études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
"How Try Tell? A Short Journey in the Papers of the Warsaw Ghetto"
2018
Wendy Brown — Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
"Authoritarian Liberalism and Moral Nihilism: Neoliberalism's Accidental Legacies"
Aijaz Ahmad - 2017
A Cartography of Origins
Lecture two: 20th-Century Nationalisms, Left and Right
Lecture three: Repressions, Repetitions
Katherine Hayles - 2016
"Precarious Narratives: The Risky Behaviors of Print Books No Longer Able to Tell Coherent Stories"
Catherine Malabou - 2015
"Metamorphoses of Intelligence"
Timothy Morton - 2014
Peter Sloterdijk - 2013
"Bastards, or: Self-made men and women. Reflections on genealogical disorders as a source of modern culture."
Donna Haraway (Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz)
"Playing Cat's Cradle with Companion Species"
2011
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine)
"The Hegelian Lord and Colonial Bondsman: Literature and the Politics of Knowing"
2010
Rosalyn Deutsche (Art History, Barnard College)
"Hiroshima after Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War"
May 2009
Joan W. Scott (Harold F. Linder Professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
"Politics and Academic Freedom"
May 2008
Elizabeth Grosz (Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers, The State Univerisity of New Jersey, New Brunswick)
"Chaos, Territory, Art"
May 2007
Talal Asad (Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center)
"Thinking about Suicide Bombing"
May, 2006
David Harvey (Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center)
"Geographical Knowledges/Political Powers"
May, 2005
Achille Mbembe (Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand)
"The Political Life of Sovereignty"
October, 2004
Angela Davis (History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz)
"Lectures on Abolition"
May 2003
Paul Gilroy (Sociology & African American Studies, Yale U)
“Elements of Post-colonial melancholia”
May 2002
Homi Bhabha (English & Afro-American Studies, Harvard U)
“The Quasi-Colonial: Scrambled Eggs and a Dish of Rice”
November 2001
Gayatri Spivak (English and Comparative Literature, Columbia)
“The New Comparative Literature.” 2000
Jean Baudrillard
“The VItal Illusion.” 1999
Judith Butler (Rhetoric, UC, Berkeley)
“Antigone's Claim: Kinship, Aberration and Psychoanalysis.” 1998
Harry Harootunian (East Asian Studies, History, New York University)
“History's Disquiet: Modernity and Everyday Life.” 1997
Étienne Balibar (Philosophie, Politique et Morale, U. Paris-X, Nanterre)
“On Politics and History: Presence, Cruelty and the Universals.” 1996
Rosalind Krauss (Art History, Columbia)
“Formless: A Feat.” 1995
Wolfgang Iser (English & Comparative Literature, UC Irvine)
“Variables of Interpretation: Iterations of Translatability.” 1994
Evelyn Fox Keller (Rutgers)
“Metaphors of Twentieth- Century Biology.” 1993.
Geoffrey Hartman (English and Comparative Literature, Yale)
“Three on ‘Culture.’” 1992.
Fredric Jameson (Literature, Critical Theory, Duke)
“The Constraints of the Postmodern.” 1991
Hélène Cixous (Writer and Professor, U. Paris, VIII)
“Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing.” 1990
Edward Said (English, Columbia)
“Musical Elaborations.” 1989
Murray Krieger (English and Comparative Literature, UC Irvine)
“A Reopening of Closure: Organicism Against Itself.” 1988
Louis Marin (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
“Pascalian Propositions for Today.” 1987
Jean-François Lyotard (French & Italian, UC Irvine)
“The Law, the Form, the Event.” 1986
J. Hillis Miller (English and Comparative Literature, Yale)
“The Ethics of Reading.” 1985
Jacques Derrida (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales)
“Mémoires: Three Lectures for Paul de Man.” 1984
Frank Kermode (Fellow, King’s College, Cambridge; Visiting Profession Columbia U)
“Forms of Attention.” 1983
Perry Anderson (Historian, Historical Sociologist; Editor, New Left Review)
“In the Tracks of Historical Materialism.” 1982
Harold Bloom (English and Comparative Literature, Yale) [or Humanities]
“The Breaking of the Vessels: In Defense of Antithetical Criticism.” 1981