Critical Theory, Political Theory, and Philosophical Approaches to Cultural History

Given the outlined signature intellectual clusters, it is not surprising that RLL scholarship ranges widely across conceptual frameworks and critical traditions, from the classical aesthetic and political texts of the West to contemporary aesthetic, literary, political, and critical theory. In addition to a large group of scholars engaged in questions of postcolonial and globalization studies, as outlined among the other research clusters, RLL faculty maintain a critical relation to the traditions of post-Kantian thinking in general, as can be seen in our department’s overall engagement with the posthuman, critical race theory, feminist, queer, and gender theory, Marxism, post-Marxism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, subaltern studies, infrapolitics, cultural studies, performance studies, film and media studies, and more. We also provide graduate students with an array of theoretically and philosophically informed seminars on the regional traditions we cover.

In our department’s engagement with ‘theory’ we combine reflection on literature and culture with the fields of philosophy, history, political economy, sociological approaches to culture, visual culture, linguistics, anthropology etc., in a collective attempt to shed light on the shifting dynamics of the society/culture relation, and to engage in a global studies approach to the conceptual and institutional structures that determine and alter our understanding of culture, society, and the historicity of lived experience and its representation.

Faculty: Alberto, Arnall, Bharat, Binetti, Caron, Couret, García Santo-Tomás, Gutt, Hannoosh, Herrero-Olaizola, Highfill, Hoffmann, Jenckes, La Fountain-Stokes, Langland, León, Mallette, McCracken, Moreiras-Menor, Nemser, Riccò, Sabau, Sanjinés, Squatriti, Szpiech, Verdesio, Villalobos-Ruminott, Williams.