Lauren Berlant

Lauren Berlant (31 October 1957, Philadelphia - 28 June 2021, Chicago) was George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago. Her national sentimentality trilogy — The Anatomy of National Fantasy (Chicago, 1991), The Queen of America Goes to Washington City (Duke, 1997), and The Female Complaint (Duke, 2008) — morphed into a quartet, with Cruel Optimism (Duke, 2011) addressing precarious publics and the aesthetics of affective adjustment in the contemporary U.S. and Europe. A co-editor of Critical Inquiry, they were also the editor of "Intimacy" (special issue of Critical Inquiry, 1998); Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest (NYU Press, 2001, with Lisa Duggan); Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion (Routledge, 2004); "On the Case" (special issue of Critical Inquiry, 2007); and Reading Sedgwick (Duke, 2019). They blogged at Supervalent Thought and were also a founding member of the artist/activist group Feel Tank Chicago. [1]

Publications

• The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia, and Everyday Life, University of Chicago Press, 1991, 278 pp. Publisher.

• The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, Duke University Press, 1997. Publisher.

• Critical Inquiry 24(2): "Intimacy" (editor), Winter 1998; new ed. as Intimacy, University of Chicago Press, 2000, 432 pp. [2] [3] [4]

• Venus Inferred (with Laura Letinsky), University of Chicago Press, 2000. Publisher.

• Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest (editor, with Lisa Duggan), New York: NYU Press, 2001.

• Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion (editor), Routledge, 2004, EPUB.

• Critical Inquiry 33(4): "On the Case" (editor), Summer 2007. [5]

• The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture, Duke University Press, 2008. Publisher.

• Cruel Optimism, Duke University Press, 2011. Publisher. Special issue: Social Text.
  • El optimismo cruel, trans. Hugo Salas, intro. Cecilia Macón, Buenos Aires: Caja Negra, 2020, 470 pp. Publisher. (Spanish)
  • Can ku de le guan zhu yi [残酷的乐观主义], Beijing: Zhong guo gong ren chu ban she (中国工人出版社), 2023, 427 pp. (Chinese)
  • Grausamer Optimismus, trans. jen theodor, ed. Çiğdem Inan, Berlin: b_books, 2024, 440 pp. (German)

• El corazón de la nación: ensayos sobre política y sentimentalismo, trans. Victoria Schussheim, México, D.F.: Fondo De Cultura Económica, 2011, 158 pp. Selected essays. (Spanish)

• Desire/Love, Punctum Books, 2012, 142 pp.
  • Deseo/Amor, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios de Género, 2022. (Spanish)
  • Begehren/Liebe, Berlin: Merve, 2023, 140 pp. (German)
  • Sexo, o lo insoportable. Deseo/Amor, Barcelona: Virus, 2024. Publisher. (Spanish)

• Sex, or the Unbearable (with Lee Edelman), Duke University Press, 2013. Publisher.
  • Sexo, o lo insoportable. Deseo/Amor, Barcelona: Virus, 2024. Publisher. (Spanish)

• The Hundreds (with Kathleen Stewart), Duke University Press, 2019. Publisher.

• Reading Sedgwick (editor), Duke University Press, 2019. Publisher.

• On the Inconvenience of Other People, Duke University Press, 2022, 256 pp. Publisher. Review: Jake Sanders (Eur J Am Stud).

Interviews, conversations

• Andrew Hoberek, "Citizen Berlant: An Interview with Lauren Berlant", Minnesota Review 52-54, Duke University Press, Fall 2001, pp 127-140; repr. in Critics at Work, ed. Jeffrey J. Williams, New York: NYU Press, 2004. [6] [7]

• Sina Najafi, David Serlin, "The Broken Circuit: An Interview with Lauren Berlant. The political economy of shame", Cabinet 31: "Shame", Fall 2008.

• Jay Prosser, "Life Writing and Intimate Publics: A Conversation with Lauren Berlant", Biography 34:1, Winter 2011, pp 180-187. DOI.

• Earl McCabe, "Depressive Realism: An Interview with Lauren Berlant", Hypocrite Reader 5: "Realism", Jun 2011.

• Jordan Greenwald, "Affect in the End Times: A Conversation with Lauren Berlant", Qui Parle 20:2, Spring/Summer 2012, pp 71-89. DOI.

• "Conversation: Lauren Berlant with Dana Luciano", Social Text, Jan 2013.

• "On Citizenship And Optimism: Lauren Berlant, interviewed by David Seitz", Society+Space, Mar 2013.

• Anna Lesley Poletti, Julie Rak, "The blog as experimental setting: an interview with Lauren Berlant", in Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online, eds. Anna Lesley Poletti and Julie Rak, University of Wisconsin Press, 2014, pp 259-272. [8]

• Maria Dimitrova, "Lauren Berlant", TANK 61, London, Autumn 2014.

• "Claudia Rankine by Lauren Berlant", BOMB, Oct 2014.

• Bea Malsky, "Pleasure Won. A Conversation with Lauren Berlant", The Point 13: "Politics", Feb 2017.

• Libe García Zarranz, Evelyne Ledoux-Beaugrand, "Affective Assemblages: Entanglements and Ruptures. An Interview with Lauren Berlant", Atlantis 38:2, Dec 2017, pp 12-17.

• Nicholas Manning, "'Intensity is a signal, not a truth': An interview with Lauren Berlant", Revue française d’études américaines 154, 2018.

• Charlie Markbreiter, "Can’t Take a Joke. An interview with Lauren Berlant", The New Inquiry, 22 Mar 2019.

• Hans Demeyer, "Lauren Berlant on Intimacy as World-Making", Extra Extra 16, 2021, PDF.

• Megan Boler, Elizabeth Davis, "On taking the affective turn: interview with Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovich, and Deborah Gould", Cultural Studies 36:3, 2022, pp 360-377. DOI.

Links

• Blog, 2007-2019 (archived)

• Feel Tank Chicago (archived), Conference on Political Feeling (2007), [9]

• Tributes: Debbie Nelson, Kristen Schilt (Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality U Chicago), Gregg Bordowitz, Lauren Michele Jackson, Andrea Long Chu, Anahid Nersessian, Tavia Nyong'o, H. A. Sedgwick, Caleb Smith, Jean-Thomas Tremblay (n+1), Judith Butler, Maggie Doherty, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Gabriel Winant (Nation), U Chicago News, Duke U Press, Alex Traub (New York Times), Artforum.

• Wikipedia