Participants in this seminar are invited to explore the role of psychoanalysis in contemporary debates about literature and politics. How have Freudian or Lacanian topologies of the subject changed our ideas about social space? In what ways have psychoanalytically-inspired notions of history or time influenced the methodologies of historicist criticism? Why has the concept of the unconscious become crucial for accounts of the liberating potential of aesthetic media? Other areas of focus might include: conflicts between spatial and temporal paradigms of agency; anti-psychological theories of discourse; intersections between virtual, symbolic, and libidinal economies.

Abstracts and a brief CV by September 10 to Jan Mieszkowski (Jan.Mieszkowski@directory.reed.edu).