AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Philosophizing in Languages, Political Theory, Translation theory and praxis sexuality and gender, critical theory, continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, gender and ontology, new French philosophy, political fiction, French fiction and poetics, periodization critique, history and theory of Comparative Literature, critical pedagogies.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Poetry; photography; literary theory; continental philosophy; visual culture; new media; trauma and testimony in all media in history, and culture; literature as a mode of knowing; globalization; environmentalism; texts and images of social justice
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Continental philosophy, philosophy and literature, ethical subjectivity, comparative literature, Spanish studies, Spanish studies, poetry, tragedy, psychoanalysis, rhetoric, the ethical and the political.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Ancient philosophy and literature; 20th century and contemporary continental philosophy; feminist/queer theory.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Black American film, literary and cultural studies, black film in Africa and Europe.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Comparative studies of the Americas, theory and history of the novel, Cuban and Caribbean Culture, nationhood and imperialism, syncretism and visual culture, memory and popular culture, national poets, public intellectuals and cultural genealogies, U.S. Latino cultures, North-South studies/cultural politics of the global South, gender and narrative, psychoanalysis and social mythologies.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Literature and philosophy; comparative early modern and Enlightenment studies; political theory; genre; poetics; psychoanalysis; critical theory.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
20th and 21st century U.S. literature; modern literature and literary theory, African American literary history, Black Atlantic theory, intellectual history; history and practice of American Studies; cultural criticism
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Modern Arabic, English and Anglophone literatures; postcolonial theory; cosmopolitanism; Mediterraneanism and Levantinism; South-South comparatism; Nahda and comparative modernities; Translation Studies; travel literature; globalization; urban cultures
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Slavic literatures and cinema; theory of representation; the body in culture
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Black studies; music; visual culture; poetry and poetics; philosophy
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
19-21st century French literature, comparative modernisms, narrative and the novel, critical theory, aesthetics, and translation studies.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Literary and other discourses; feminist and queer letters; philosophy; technology and media; psychoanalysis; deconstruction; performance art.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
African Literature, Literary Theory, Law and Literature, Philosophy and Literature, South African Literature and Intellectual History, Testimony, Autobiography, Ethics, Psychoanalysis.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Relationship of literature to other disciplines, arts, and media; aesthetics and politics, law, and policing; artistic and extra-artistic genres, in particular the novel, autobiography, and the police file/film; documentary/fiction/metafiction; archival art and theory; intermedia; literary and film theory and history; embodied cognition; Russian and Romanian twentieth century culture; immigration and cultural exchange
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Xudong Zhang’s research interests include critical theory; modernism and modernity; theories of representation, narrative, and interpretation; political philosophy; aesthetics; and twentieth century Chinese literature and culture. Of his ongoing concerns are literary criticism and theory as poetics, socio-ontology, and historiography in one; identity and identity-formation in politico-philosophical and cultural-civilizational contexts; a theory of comparison and comparability; and methodological reconsiderations of area studies. Publishing in both English- and Chinese-speaking worlds, he is currently at work on manuscripts on Hegel’s aesthetics; Lu Xun; and the second volume of/sequel to his 2005/06 book, Cultural Politics in the Age of Globalization.
Hemispheric Latin American and Latinx literary and cultural studies, music, popular culture, feminist and queer studies, psychoanalysis
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Postcolonial and subaltern studies; theories of the novel; narrative theory, realisms, modernisms, contemporary Anglophone and vernacular fiction.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Medieval literature in French, Occitan, and Latin, especially poetry; the history of philosophy, especially Aristotle and Scholastic thought; and modern theory, especially psychoanalysis
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Renaissance Studies and classical reception with certain theorists, thinkers, and practices of geography, ecology, and visual studies
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Modern European thought, history and critique of metaphysics, philosophy of religion, religion and violence, religion and media, literature and temporality
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Postcolonial literature and theory; spatial and architectural theory; questions of sovereignty and political modernity; Asia-Pacific literature and cultural studies; feminist and critical theory
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Postcolonial literatures and cultures; the history of colonialism and anti-colonialism; cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries; literary and cultural theory.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Hebrew and Comparative Literature and History of Ideas, Bible to Modern; literary theory; gender and cultural studies; psychoanalytic criticism; secularism and nationalism
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Caribbean literature and culture; Spanish American Independence; the Haitian Revolution; culture and politics in the nineteenth century; the history of political thought.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Cultural history, media and politics in contemporary Italy; cinema and photography.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Critical theory, digital media, continental philosophy, semiotics, aesthetics, networks, software, media art, games, and film.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Transnational queer and feminist studies; postcolonial studies; Asian diaspora studies; visual art; performance.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
20th-century literature; narration and the media; literature and politics; the avant gardes; theory of literary history
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Psychoanalysis; the history of induced insanity; theories of the fetish; paperwork, bureaucracy; analog media. Prof. Kafka is also a psychoanalyst in private practice.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Medieval Arabic language and literature; classical poetry and poetics; adab; narrative and fiction; recognition/anagnorisis in literature; Qur'an and Tafsir
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Nineteenth-century Russian prose; the rise of print culture; theories of the novel; Russian literature in comparative perspective; imaginary geographies.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Medical Anthropology; Social and Historical Studies of Medicine; Chronic Illness; Clinical Ethnography; Public Health; Visual Culture
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
20th and 21st century Korean literature, film, media, and culture; Interlingual and intercultural relations in East Asia; Theories of comparative literature, language and translation, intertextuality, interculturality; Psychoanalysis and trauma studies in relation to postcolonial and diaspora studies; interrelations of temporality and spatiality; Media studies with a special interest in mediality, visuality, and textuality; interplay between literature, film, and art; the links between media and culture; World literatures (Europe, Americas, and East Asia) with a focus on translingual, transmedial, transnational, and transcultural moments; East Asian diasporic literatures, comparative studies between Asian and Asian American literatures, concepts of race/ethnicity and representations of difference; Urban literatures and multilingualism, multiculturalism, and multimedia.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
madness; the history and theory of psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychiatry; medical humanities and psychoanalytic aesthetics.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Arab-Jews and Memory; Representation of Palestine and Israel; Hebrew Mizrahi Literature and Cinema; Iraqi Culture; Arab-American and Arab Diasporic Studies; Media/Cultural Studies; Visual Culture; Gender Studies; Postcolonial Studies.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
German Romanticism and Idealism; philosophy of technology/media; theories of the digital; Marxism and neoliberalism
EDUCATION
M.A., Indiana
Ph.D., California (Berkeley)
Studied at Oxford, the Sorbonne, and Paris VIII (Vincennes)
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
German Romanticism and Idealism; philosophy of technology/media; theories of the digital; Marxism and neoliberalism
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Temporalities of art: anachronism, archaism, typology, primitivisms; history of scholarship, esp. the disciplines of art history and archeology; folk art and folk literature; Märchen and Sagen; portraiture and especially “embedded” portraits (donors, votaries); votive objects and images, pilgrimages, relics; drawing and studio practice in the Renaissance; European art and the New World; art and replication technologies; magic and witchcraft in early modern Europe; art and the Protestant Reformation; iconoclasm; German art and culture in the 19th century; art and poetry of Romanticism.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Modern Chinese literature and the relationship between ideas of human and animal in modern and contemporary Chinese literature.
AREAS OF RESEARCH / INTEREST
Gender and Sexuality - Queer Theory - Queer and Feminist activism in the Americas - Contemporary Latin American Art and Literature - Drugs and Drug Culture in the Americas - Visual Culture - Theater
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
European literature of the Renaissance, poetic theory before 1700, postclassical history of Ancient genres.
FELLOWSHIPS/HONORS
President, Modern Language Association, 2003; Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 2000 – 2001; Investigadora Visitante, Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores de Antropología Social, Guadalajara, Méxcio, 1998-1999; Honorable Mention, James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association, 1993; Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Stanford University, 1992. Guggenheim Fellowship, 1987-1988.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
Classical and Renaissance literature, philosophy, and history; the Renaissance and inter-atlantic cultural exchanges; 18th century literature, history and politics; history and theory of theatre; Caribbean culture and political theory.
AREAS OF RESEARCH/INTEREST
French literature and culture of the 19th and 20th centuries; Francophone Caribbean literature; urban history, theory, and politics; literature, culture, and ideology; popular culture; History and Literature
EDUCATION
Ph.D. 1976, Harvard; B.A. 1970, Chicago