On Resonance: Stoner and Theory

A 20^th / 21^st Century Research Seminar. Open to Durham University community only.

Could the idea of “resonance” speak to both aesthetic experience and the analysis of political or institutional conditions? My talk draws out affinities between the ideas of German social theorist Hartmut Rosa and novels about academia by John Williams and Dionne Brand. Both novels capture those transformative moments when words crackle, reverberate, come alive, while also portraying academia in an often critical light. Resonance, I conclude, might clarify the force of attachments to both literature and theory, rather than pitting one against the other.

Rita Felski is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at the University of Virginia and Niels Bohr Professor at the University of Southern Denmark. Her books include The Gender of Modernity (1995), Uses of Literature (2008), The Limits of Critique (2015) and Hooked: Art and Attachment (2020). She is currently writing a book about the relation between literary studies and the contemporary Frankfurt School.

To book a place, please contact Joshua Pugh (david.j.pugh@durham.ac.uk) or Noreen Masud (noreen.masud@durham.ac.uk)

Contact david.j.pugh@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.