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Graduate Students

Matías Bascuñán

M.A. (Magíster) Contemporary Thought: Philosophy and Political Thought. Universidad Diego Portales (Santiago, Chile)
B.A. (Licenciatura) Political Science. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Santiago, Chile).

Major Interests:
Deconstruction, Political Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literary Theory, Spanish Golden Age Literature, contemporary Latin American Literature.

Thesis Project & Title: 
“The Sovereign in Fiction: Unraveling Self-Reference in Bolaño, Cervantes, and Derrida”

My dissertation argues that the structural failure of self-reference in the concept of sovereignty reveals an inner relation between the latter and fiction. Through readings of Cervantes, Bolaño, and Derrida, I show how the motifs of “force,” “delay,” and “secrecy” disclose fiction as a key category to parse both the self-referential logic that informs the concept of sovereignty and the upshot of the textual strategies of the philosophers who aim at silencing sovereignty’s failure at all costs. I therefore suggest that “literature” should not be dismissed as a purely aestheticizing device, external to philosophy and its concepts: besides standing as a plausible name for the unspeakable strategy of the philosophers of sovereignty, literature is also the register that unravels sovereignty’s fictional core. Thus, in “The Sovereign in Fiction” I argue (1) that fiction is unstable, for while at the service of political philosophy, it is also a disease at the heart of sovereignty—or a sovereign infection, as it were; (2) that literature is the register that expounds this situation most clearly; and (3) that in so doing literature fully discloses its ethico-political inscription, as well as that of self-reference, beyond the limits of a traditional conception of language and textuality. “The Sovereign in Fiction” thus strives to show that literature provides us with a chance to experience the collapse of one of our world’s most unsettling facts: the vertiginous intensification of sovereignty’s unwavering self-reference.

Working Languages: Spanish, English, French, German.

Publications:

I. Articles and book chapters (selection):
-“Scatter—Freedom!” diacritics, volume 45,  number 2, 2017, pp. 4-31
- “Ewiger Vergängnis: alegoría y mesianismo en Walter Benjamin” in Messina, Aïcha; Taub, Emmanuel (Eds.). Filosofía y mesianismo. Santiago: Metales Pesados, 2016.

II. In preparation:
-  Edited volume on the status of reading in Derrida’s engagement with political philosophy. Under contract. (Co-edited with Diego Rossello)
- “‘Da-sein, first letter to Being;’ or, Heidegger's Decree of Ipseity” (forthcoming in Política común)

III. Translations (into Spanish, selection):
- Balibar, Étienne. “Extranjeros como enemigos. Reflexiones adicionales sobre las aporías de la ciudadanía transnacional” in Ajens, Andrés; Fielbaum, Alejandro; Zuchel, Lorena (Eds.), Contrabandos. Escrituras y políticas en la frontera entre Bolivia y Chile, Viña del Mar: Communes, 2016.
- Bennington, Geoffrey. “El consejo de Hobbes”. Revista Pléyade, Vol.19 (2017), pp. 67-89
- Lemm, Vanessa. Nietzsche y el pensamiento político contemporáneo. Santiago: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2013. (with Diego Rossello).
- Butler, Judith. “Máquinas teatrales” (in preparation).

Jonathan Basile

jbasile@emory.edu

Education: BA, English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University

Major Interests: Derrida, Deconstruction, 20th-century Literary Theory, Comedy, Irony, Ethics of Aesthetics

Working Languages: French, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek

Publications: Tar for Mortar: "The Library of Babel" and the Dream of Totality (book), "Misreading Generalised Writing: From Foucault to Speculative Realism and New Materialism", Oxford Literary Review, 40(1), pp. 20–37

jonathanbasile.info

Natalie Catasus

n.catasus@emory.edu

Education:

M.A. Visual & Critical Studies, California College of the Arts, 2015
M.F.A. Writing (Poetry), California College of the Arts, 2015
B.A. (Hons.) Literature / Spanish Language & Culture, New College of Florida, 2011

Major Interests: Cuban and Caribbean literature and visual culture; postcolonial theory; poetry and poetics; oral history; migration studies; trauma and memory studies; pedagogy

Working Languages: English, Spanish, French

Select Publications: Flight, Volumes Volumes Press (2017); Poems in Tupelo Quarterly (2017), VOLT (2016), Denver Quarterly (2015), and Jai-Alai Magazine (2013)

Ryan Fics

ryan.fics@emory.edu

Education: B.A. (Hons.) Religion, University of Manitoba (2012), M.A. Religion, University of Manitoba (2014)

Major Interests: Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction, Political Philosophy, Mid 19th and early 20th century American literature, and Critical Animal Studies

Working Languages: French, German

Rachel Gardner

rachel.gardner@emory.edu

Education: B.A. (Hons.) English Literature, Reed College

Major Interests: 20th-century American poetry; literature and philosophy; literary theory; phenomenology; deconstruction

Title: American Verse and the Quasi-transcendental Poetics of Jacques Derrida

Working Languages: English, Spanish, French

Amir Hussain

amir.hussain@emory.edu

Education: 

M.F.A. Creative Writing, Related Area in Cultural Studies, University of Minnesota

B.A. Environmental Studies and English Writing, Minor in Geology, University of Pittsburgh

German language training, Universität Leipzig

Major Interests: Nineteenth century Romantic and Victorian poetry and culture; twentieth century world poetry; historical poetry; cultural theory

Working Languages: German, Russian

Select Poetry Publications:
  • “Seagulls,” Grist, 2017
  • “Meditation on Amber,” “Nighttime in South Florida,” “The Wharf Boy,” Mizna, 2015
  • “After Hours,” Fugue, 2013
  • “Like Small Men Carry Children,” “Awful That I Saw Her,” and “Ice Carver,” Mizna, 2013
  • “Toasts,” Water~Stone Review, 2012
  • “Hour Poem,” Faultline: Journal of Arts and Letters, 2011
  • “Dark Poem,” “When Have You Known Happiness,” Midway Journal, 2011
  • “Night Poem,” Beloit Poetry Journal, 2010

Tiara Jackson

tiara.raven.marie.jackson@email.edu

Education: B.A. Psychology and Multicultural Trauma, Mills College '15

Major Interests: Psychoanalysis and Francophone African Diaspora Studies. Black Literary and Cultural Production as modes of resistance and explorations of the sacred.

Working Languages: French, Spanish

Andrew Kingston

andrew.kingston@emory.edu

Education:

MA, Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario

BA (Hons.), Philosophy, Florida Gulf Coast University

Major Interests: Modernist and fin de siècle literature and opera, deconstruction, aesthetics and politics, decadence, queerness, sound studies

Working Languages: English, French, German

Joe Larios

joe.m.larios@emory.edu

Education:
M.A. Philosophy, Louisiana State University
A.B. Modern Culture & Media, Brown University

Major Interests:
Environmental ethics and politics, eco-phenomenology, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism

Working Languages:
French, German

Publications:
"Bringing Levinas Down to Earth: A Jonasian Reading of the Face," Environmental Philosophy 15.2 (2018)

Judith Levy

j.t.levy@emory.edu

Education: B.A. in English & Minor in Philosophy at Cal State University, Fullerton (2011). M.A. in English at Cal State University, Fullerton (2013).

Major Interests: Literature of the Mediterranean and Caribbean, focusing on approaches to time, memory, and narrative building in postcolonial and migrant experiences.

Working Languages: English, French, Spanish

Francisco (Cisco) Lopez

francisco.lopez@emory.edu

Education: B.A. in Philosophy and English, Florida International University (2018). Certificate in Exile Studies, Florida International University (2018).

Major Interests: deconstruction, cultural studies, phenomenology, embodiment, postcolonial theory, affect theory

Working Languages: English, Spanish, French

Kevin Lucas

k.p.lucas@emory.edu

Education: B.A. English and Russian, Colby College

Major Interests:
Theatre History (19th-20th Century), Theories of Political Art, Sociology of Art and Religion, Early-Soviet Thought and Culture, Literary and Performance Theory

Working Languages:
English, Russian, French

Dissertation Title:
The Hazards of Socialism: Recovering the Twentieth Century's Left Tragic Theatre

Brendan Moore

btmoore@emory.edu

Education: B.A. (Hons.), French and English, Coe College

Major Interests: Psychoanalysis, feminist theory, queer theory, Francophone literature, 19th and 20th century French literature, literatures of the Americas, HIV/AIDS and literatures of disease and contamination.

Working Languages: French, Spanish

Eric Flohr Reynolds

Eric.Flohr.Reynolds@emory.edu

Education:

M.A. Philosophy, New School for Social Research, 2014
B.A. Philosophy, George Mason University, 2012

Major Interests: 19th and 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Hermeneutics, Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Technology and Media Theory, the Ethics of Aesthetics and the Aesthetics of Ethics

Working Languages: English, German

Melinda Robb

melinda.robb@emory.edu

Education: BA (Hons.) English and Contemporary Studies, University of King’s College (2010); Certificate from Psychoanalytic Core Program, Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute (2018)

Major Interests: 20th and 21st century theory and literature; queer theory; queer/women’s memoir; autotheory; psychoanalysis (clinical and theoretical); literatures of the Americas; world literatures; modernism; feminist theory

Thesis Project & Title: “Because I Said So: Idiomatic Insistence and Queer, Feminist Refusal in Woolf, Philip, Nelson, and Lispector”

Working Languages: French, Spanish, German

Violeta Ruiz Espigares

vruizes@emory.edu

Education: B.A. Philosophy/German, Grinnell College, 2015.

Major Interests: Psychoanalysis and deconstruction; Early Modern Spanish literature, religion, and surveillance, especially the figure of the marrano and secrets; and the element of blood and its effects in law, philosophy, and literature. 

Working Languages: Spanish, French, German, Latin

Abigail (Abby) Scribner

ascribn@emory.edu

Education: BA, English and Modern Languages, Kenyon College, 2013

Major Interests: Victorian literature, Foucault, Benjamin, feminist theory, spatial studies and human geography, domesticity, Marxism, anti-capitalist thought

Working Languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian

Federica Signorini

federica.signorini@emory.edu

Education: B.A.(Hons) English Literature and American Studies, University of Manchester (UK), 2014 M.A. Post-1900 Literature, Theory and Culture, University of Manchester (UK), 2015.

Major Interests: Modernism and 20th century avant-garde poetry & poetics; visual art and photography; psychoanalysis; deconstruction; political philosophy and the modern subject.

Working Languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian