Thursday, January 3, 2019: 12:00 PM-1:15 PM: https://mla19.org/event/member/522866 Organizer, Len Gutkin Aestheticist Afterlives examines the rich “afterlives” of Victorian aestheticism and decadence (in their British and Continental variations) across a range of twentieth-century texts (novels, magazines, and manga) and films from around the world. Building on foundational criticism by Perry Meisel, Rita Felski, and Frank Kermode, … More MLA 2019 Aestheticist Afterlives

At Genre, my article on The Sacred Fount, The Golden Bowl, and the double entendre.

Affirmations: of the modern 5.1 (Autumn 2017)

“Allegory is Twin Peaks‘s most flagrant risk and its most resonant pleasure.” At Post45, my second essay on Twin Peaks: Post45

Over at Post-45, I write about the new Twin Peaks: “The characters of Twin Peaks are animated by just such peculiar sentiments; they say and feel other than they mean, because they don’t know what they mean. This is finally an irony of genre. Botticelli’s Madonnas, according to Pater, are “peevish-looking”; this, he says, is their charm. They’re not … More Twin Peaks: Irony Mistuned

My review essay on Rita Felski’s Limits of Critique and Lee Konstantinou’s Cool Characters is up at Amerikastudien: “All criticism, even Felski’s proposed “affective hermeneutics,” must be “suspicious” in the sense that the critic must suspect that the way a work achieves its effects is opaque until elucidated. Or, to import Konstantinou’s keyword, criticism cannot be “post-ironic” because … More On Critique and Irony