This year’s Critical Theory’s DE Writing Group continues its biweekly meetings starting February 5. Students enrolled in the Critical Theory DE program are encouraged to take advantage of this student-led opportunity to discuss aspects and challenges of the writing experience in an interdisciplinary context. Critical Theory DE students at all stages of the research and dissertation-writing process are invited to attend and contribute.
Spring 2016 Schedule
12-2 pm
340 Moffitt Library (next to the Free Speech Café)
Friday, February 5
Friday, February 19
Friday, March 4 (Location for this date is 1229 Dwinelle)
Friday, March 18
Friday, April 1
Friday, April 15
Friday, April 29
In the coming semester, The Program in Critical Theory is offering over a dozen courses from a broad range of fields throughout the humanities and social sciences, including film, sociology, French, political science, and history of art, among many others. New this spring is Critical Theory 298, “Interpretive Approaches in Critical Theory,” a course intended for advanced students who are preparing a long-term research project, prospectus, or dissertation.
Enrollment in Critical Theory courses is intended for UC Berkeley Ph.D. students in the Critical Theory DE. Visit Critical Theory’s course page for descriptions and schedules.
Each semester, The Program in Critical Theory offers a selection of courses from departments across the humanities and social sciences for Designated Emphasis students. The Program’s three core-course requirements are intended to establish an historical and normative framework for understanding critical theory in its current breadth. The Program also requires DE students to take two electives taught by Critical Theory faculty (or two courses that approach their materials from critical-theoretical perspectives in ways that would satisfy DE elective-course requirements). (more… )
Now in its seventh year, Critical Theory’s program of public lectures and events brings scholars from the United States and abroad to Berkeley to present new writing and scholarship. This season features lectures on the concept of violence in modern feminism, the intellectual connections between Adorno and Scholem, and the notion of eternal peace, among others. This year’s Animal Futures Working Group, organized by DE student Joshua Williams (Ph.D. Candidate, Performance Studies) explores the social, political, and theoretical implications of new scholarship in the burgeoning the field of animal studies. (more… )
Critical Theory’s Writing Group is a student-led effort that brings the Designated Emphasis (DE) community together to support all aspects of the writing process. Now in its third year, the group creates a space for Critical Theory DEs to discuss aspects and challenges of the writing experience in a cross-disciplinary context. The group supports all academic writing pursuits, including project development, dissertation chapters, journal articles, and conference presentations. DE students at all stages of the research and dissertation-writing process are invited to attend and contribute. Meetings are bi-weekly throughout the semester. Critical Theory DE Students may drop in as time permits. (more… )
Over the past twenty years, the burgeoning field of Animal Studies has re-oriented contemporary philosophy and critical theory towards the question of the human and its others. Scholars like Matthew Calarco have demonstrated just how deeply a preoccupation with the animal runs through the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, Agamben, Deleuze, and Derrida, to say nothing of their antecedents in the West and their contemporaries in the Global South. Much of this animal studies and “posthumanist” scholarship has been either historical or phenomenological, aimed at excavating the human-animal distinction’s extensive past or discerning its effects in contemporary political, social, and psychic life.
Recently, an emerging body of scholarship has begun to chart the topographies of the future and the animals that will—or won’t—reside there. This scholarship has profound social, political, and theoretical implications, given recent advances in animal biology and neuroscience, continuing struggles over who counts as fully human and which lives matter, and—looming over everything—the apocalyptic threat of climate change. Over the course of the 2015-16 academic year, the Animal Futures Working Group will explore this new terrain in dialogue with a number of distinguished scholars from Berkeley and further afield. The goal will be to work collaboratively, creatively, and speculatively on the future and the forms of life it might sustain. (more… )
The Program in Critical Theory is pleased to announce that UC Berkeley graduate student Chiara Ricciardone has been selected to receive the 2015-2016 Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship. The annual fellowship is awarded to a Critical Theory Designated Emphasis (DE) graduate student with a record of achievement and a promising dissertation project. The Fellowship’s funding is generously provided by the Magistretti Graduate Fellowship Fund, through the UC Berkeley College of Letters and Sciences, Division of Arts and Humanities.
Ricciardone is working towards her Ph.D. in Rhetoric with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory. Her dissertation, Disease and Difference in Three Platonic Dialogues, considers the philosophical significance and rhetorical function of disease in Plato’s Gorgias, Phaedo, and Timaeus. Other scholars have focused on Plato’s philosophical therapy, dismissing disease as a metaphor for disorder. In contrast, Ricciardone claims disease and lack of health in Plato are symptomatic of the philosophical problem of difference. To make this argument, she analyzes Plato’s rhetorical strategies for manifesting differences as pathological pains, showing that these experiences are generative of the philosophical subject. Ricciardone’s investigations explicitly challenge a bias, shared by Platonists as well as post-Structuralists like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, that Plato emphasized the identity of forms to the exclusion of the varieties of difference. Drawing on critical theory to overturn such limiting interpretations, she argues instead that Plato both cultivates and cures sensitivity to disease and difference in his texts.
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In March of 2015, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced a grant to University of California, Berkeley in conjunction with Northwestern University to fund an exploratory effort to establish programs and directions for the newly constituted International Consortium for Critical Theory Programs (ICCTP). The task of the grant will be to establish the groundwork for the consortium and its projects. The principal investigators are Judith Butler (Berkeley) and Penelope Deutscher (Northwestern). The task of this international consortium will be not only to preserve and promote the tradition of critical theory in a broad sense, but also to investigate innovations and revisions of that tradition in light of the global range of critical theories as well as the contemporary global challenges to the university and, by implication, to critical thought itself. Plans are already underway to document and connect programs and centers dedicated to the field of critical theory that have had no previous institutional forum for such an exchange. The European origins of critical theory have been crucial to its articulation and significant influence, but there are now diverse appropriations and revisions of that tradition that speak to the contemporary historical and economic conditions traversing Europe and other parts of the globe.
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The Program in Critical Theory welcomes fifteen new graduate students to the Designated Emphasis (DE) in Critical Theory. The incoming cohort represents diverse research and disciplinary backgrounds that add substantially to our community of over ninety Critical Theory DE students and fifty-five faculty. The Program congratulates our incoming students on their acceptance to the DE; we look forward to their participation in and contributions to the Program’s coursework and activities.
2015-2016 Critical Theory Designated Emphasis Students:
Phillip Campanile (Geography); Aurelia Cojocaru (Comparative Literature); David Delano (History); Alfonso Fierro (Spanish and Portuguese); Michael Harvey (Public Health); Donna Honarpisheh (Near Eastern Studies); Basit Iqbal (Anthropology); Andrew Key (English); Daryl Maude (East Asian Languages and Culture); Pedro Rolón (Comparative Literature); Gil Rothschild (Jurisprudence and Social Policy); Elisa Russian (Italian Studies); Maria-Fátima Santos (Sociology); Desmond Sheehan (Music); Camila YaDeau (Rhetoric)
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The Program in Critical Theory’s DE enables graduate students already enrolled in UC Berkeley Ph.D. programs from across the social sciences, arts, and humanities to obtain certification of a Designated-Emphasis specialization in Critical Theory. Students admitted to the DE who complete its requirements (three core courses and two electives) will receive a parenthetical notation to that effect on their doctoral degrees. The DE offers graduate fellowships, hosts international scholars, and presents lectures, seminars, and other events for the wider campus community and local public. Now serving over 90 graduate students from the humanities, social sciences, and arts at UC Berkeley, the DE in Critical Theory also maintains important collaborative relations with other critical theory institutes and programs nationally and internationally.
(more… )
The Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship is awarded to Critical Theory Designated Emphasis (DE) graduate students with records of achievement and promising dissertation projects. The fellowship supports dissertating students with up to $36,000 toward a stipend, fees, and summer funds.
Applications for the 2015-2016 Critical Theory Dissertation Fellowship are due Thursday, April 2, 2015. Eligible students must be enrolled in the Critical Theory DE and not receive significant (non-teaching) financial support from their Departments during the period of the award. Applicants must have completed their Qualifying Exams and have an approved dissertation prospectus.
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Critical Theory’s DE Writing Group is a student-led opportunity for Critical Theory DE students to write and support each other by discussing aspects and challenges of the writing experience. Critical Theory DE students at all stages of the research and dissertation-writing process are invited to attend and contribute.
Meetings are bi-weekly from 12-2pm. (340 Moffitt Library, next to the Free Speech Café). Meeting dates are as follows:
Friday, February 6
Friday, February 20
Friday, March 6 (Location for this date is 4125 Dwinelle)
Friday, March 20
Friday, April 3
Friday, April 17
Friday, May 1
Members are welcome to drop in as time permits. RSVP for the first meeting by contacting critical_theory@berkeley.edu.
Call for Applications for 2015-16 Academic Year
DE in Critical Theory Applications Due
Thursday, March 19 by 4 pm
Join The Program in Critical Theory’s faculty and students for a panel discussion and Q&A about the Designated Emphasis (DE) in Critical Theory. UC Berkeley Ph.D. students interested in applying to the DE are invited to attend. Refreshments and informal social to follow.
The Program in Critical Theory’s DE enables graduate students already enrolled in UC Berkeley Ph.D. programs from across the social sciences, arts, and humanities to obtain certification of a Designated-Emphasis specialization in Critical Theory. Students admitted to the DE who complete its requirements (three core courses and two electives) will receive a parenthetical notation to that effect on their doctoral degrees. The DE offers graduate fellowships, hosts international scholars, and presents lectures, seminars, and other events for the wider campus community and local public. Now serving over 90 graduate students from the humanities, social sciences, and arts at UC Berkeley, the DE in Critical Theory also maintains important collaborative relations with other critical theory institutes and programs nationally and internationally.
(more… )