Past Events

Bill Brown
Graduate Studies/Wattis Institute Lecture Series
Tuesday, April 11, 7 pm

Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco campus
Info: 415.551.9251

Bill Brown has become legendary in scholarly circles for his recent writing on what he calls "thing theory." In the words of one critic, "'thing theory' benefits not so much from being a theory as a research disposition, a willingness to confront the contingent event, disruptive materiality, and related threats to overarching theoretical systems." Brown's work raises numerous compelling questions: How do inanimate objects enable human subjects to form and transform themselves? What role do objects play in the formation of gender, sexual, ethnic, and national subjectivity? What kinds of fetishism have yet to be explained by the logic of either the commodity or the erotic? Brown is professor of humanities at the University of Chicago and coeditor of the journal Critical Inquiry.

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