The Babcock Lecture
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2024–25 Babcock Lecture
Anna Kornbluh
“Historical Fictions, Heist Flicks, and other Climate Genres for a Burning World”
Thursday, October 17, 2024
7:00 p.m.
Anderson Theater, Anderson Center for the Arts
In the urgent emergency of climate crisis, is there any time for art? This talk considers some of the pressures on literature and culture at present, exploring the prevailing ways that artists, authors, and critics are conceiving artistic ties to the environment, and proposing some alternative ties with the help of popular genres like historical fiction and heist films.
Anna Kornbluh
Anna Kornbluh is professor of English and a member of the United Faculty bargaining team at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where her research and teaching focus on the novel, film, and critical theory. She is the author of Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Realist Form (Fordham University Press, 2014), Marxist Film Theory and “Fight Club” (Bloomsbury, 2019), The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space , and Immediacy, or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism , which was recently published by Verso. She has edited special issues for b2o: an online journal , Criticism , Mediations , and Syndicate , and is a frequent guest on The American Vandal and other podcasts. She is the founder of the V21 Collective and InterCcECT (Inter Chicago Circle for Experimental Critical Theory) and is the Director of Graduate Studies at UIC.
Past Lectures Include:
- Robert T. Tally Jr., “Mapping and Monsters: Critical Theory in the Teratocene”
- Paul Benzon, “The Poetics and Politics of the Paralegible”
- Amitava Kumar, “The Man Without a Country”
- Brian Greenspan, “The Mobile Sleuth: Stories for Urban Media”
About the Babcock Lecture
The Babcock Lecture is presented by the Babcock Chair in English, the Department of Literature Media and Writing, and the Visiting Writers Series at Hartwick College.
In 1941, Cora A. Babcock, a graduate of Hartwick Seminary, partially endowed the Babcock Chair in English to honor Dr. James A. Pitcher, whose inspired teaching of English and theology at the Seminary had influenced Babcock’s decision to teach and whose career as scholar, poet, and administrator had strengthened the Seminary. Later receiving further support from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to enhance instruction in the humanities at Hartwick College, the Babcock Chair’s endowment was increased “to reward outstanding achievement by a member of our own faculty.” The Babcock Chair is a three-year appointment that supports scholarly work, creative work, and pedagogical or curricular research of tenured faculty who have established a record of superior teaching and scholarly or creative work. The Babcock Professor also administers one or two major lectures a year, to be called the Babcock Lectures.
Questions?
For more information, please contact Associate Professor of English and Babcock Professor of English Bradley J. Fest at [email protected] or 607- 431-4921.
Additional opportunities to engage with inspirational writers.