Kir Kuiken
Email: [email protected]
English Department University at Albany, SUNY Albany, NY 12222 Department Phone: (518) 442-2648 EDUCATION
2006 Ph.D. English and Comparative Literature with Emphasis in Critical Theory, University of California, Irvine
2000 M.A. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine 1999 M.A. in Philosophy, University of California, Irvine
1996 Honors B.A. in Philosophy & English, Trent University, Canada
EMPLOYMENT
8/2008 - present Assistant Professor, University at Albany, SUNY, English Department 8/2007 - 5/2008 Lecturer, University of Illinois, Chicago, English Department
3/2007 - 6/2007 Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California, Riverside, English Department 9/2006 - 3/2007 Lecturer, University of California, Irvine, Humanities Core Course
DISSERTATION TITLE
“Crises of the Imagination: Romanticism at the Limits of Philosophy”
Committee: Andrzej Warminski (Chair), Jacques Derrida, J. Hillis Miller, Hugh Roberts.
BOOK PROJECT
“Imagined Sovereignties: Poetics, Politics and Romanticism”
The project situates a materialist conception of the imagination in relation to Romantic political discourse. If the period’s revolutionary secularization of political institutions coordinated a new foundation of sociality with the category of the aesthetic, I argue that this re-assertion of poetic power in place of the divine sovereign presents an alternative understanding of the secularization of the political. Rather than conceiving it as a turn away from the divine towards the human, I contend that Romantic secularization hinges on the imagination as both an invisible material foundation and the means by which the social world becomes visible to itself.
FIELDS OF RESEARCH
- English and German Romanticism - 19th Century Literature
PUBLICATIONS Articles
- “The Metaleptic Imagination in Shelley’s Defence of Poetry, Keats-Shelley Journal, (60) 2011: 95-111. - “Shelley’s ‘Mask of Anarchy’ and the Problem of Modern Sovereignty,” Literature Compass, 8.2 (2010):
95-106.
- “Between Heidegger and Derrida: On the Impossible Futures of Techne.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 33.3-4 (2006): 293-310.
- “Deleuze/ Derrida: Towards an Almost Imperceptible Difference.” Research In Phenomenology, 35 (2005): 290-308.
- “On the Delineation of Choice and Decision in Benjamin’s Goethe’s Elective Affinities.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 31.3 (2004): 286-308.
Editing
- Co-editor with Jennifer Greiman, special issue of Postmodern Culture on “The Citizen-Subject Revisited,” 22.2 (2011-2012), forthcoming.
Reviews
- Review of “Philosophy, Revision, Critique: Rereading Practices in Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Emerson,” by David Wittenberg, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 29.2-3 (2002): 470-474.
- Review of “Life After Theory,” ed. Payne, Michael and Schad, John. Philosophy in Review/ Comptes Rendus Philosophiques, (April 2004): 143-146.
- Review of “The Work of Mourning,” by Jacques Derrida, Philosophy in Review/Comptes Rendus Philosophiques, (June 2002): 176-178.
- Review of “The Purest of Bastards: Works of Mourning, Art, and Affirmation in the Thought of Jacques Derrida,” by David Farrell Krell, Philosophy in Review/Comptes rendus philosophiques, (April 2001): 130-132.
- Review of “Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy,” by Samuel T. Wheeler III, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 27.2 (2000): 543-547.
- Review of “Derrida, Kristeva, and the Dividing Line: An Articulation of Two Theories of Difference,” by Juliana de Nooy, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 27.1 (2000): 316-322.
FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
2011 UAS Program Funds, University at Albany, SUNY 2011 UUP Individual Development Award
2003 Summer Dissertation Fellowship, Graduate Studies, UCI 2003 Humanities Out There Graduate Research Award, UCI 1999-2000 Koehn Fellowship, Critical Theory Institute, UCI
PRESENTATIONS
- “Towards a New Political Romanticism: Coleridge, Fichte Schlegel and the Unconditional,” Emory University, Atlanta, GA, Feb 16, 2012. Invited lecture.
- “Derrida and Nietzsche: on the “Bidding Up” of Sovereingty,” IMEC Derrida Translation Seminar, France, Jul 4-9, 2011. Invited lecture.
- "Educts of the Imagination: Coleridge's Symbolic Politics and the Problem of Sovereignty.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, Vancouver, Canada, August 18-22, 2010.
- “Derrida and Schmitt on the ‘Exception.’ IMEC Derrida Translation Seminar, France, Jul 5-10, 2010. Invited lecture.
- “The Eclipse of the Gaze: Death, Image and Community in Nancy and Blanchot.” Symposium on Death and Dying, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada, March 26-27, 2010. Invited lecture.
- “On the Threshold: London and the (Missing) Experience of Being-in-Common in Wordsworth’s Prelude.” International Conference on Romanticism, City University of New York, Nov 5-8, 2009.
- “Between Two Exceptions: American Sovereignty as Auto-Immune Reaction.” International Association of American Studies, Beijing, China, Sep 18-21, 2009
- “On Derrida’s Translation of ‘Gewalten’ in Beast and the Sovereign Vol 2.” IMEC Derrida Translation Seminar, France, Jul 6-11, 2009. Invited lecture.
- “Shelley’s ‘Mask of Anarchy’ and the Problem of Modern Sovereignty.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, Duke University, Durham, NC, May 21-24, 2009.
- “On Two Forms of Interdisciplinarity.” Invited talk. Interdisciplinary Research Workshop, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, Mar 25, 2009.
- “Between Two Plasticities: Form, Trace and Sovereignty in Kant’s Transcendental Schematism.” “Idioms of the Post Global” conference, SUNY- Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, Mar 19-21, 2009.
- “Blake, Desire and Sovereignty.” Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Philadelphia, PA, Nov 19-22, 2008.
- “Work of the Imagination: Difference and Repetition in Blake’s Illuminated Manuscripts.” International Conference on Romanticism, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, Oct 16-19, 2008.
- “Shelley’s Materialism: On the Imagination and the Language of Objects in the Defence of Poetry” International Conference on Romanticism, Loyola University, Baltimore, MD, Oct 18-21, 2007. - “Between Two Futures: The Question of Techne in Derrida’s Reading of Marx.” “Following Derrida:
- "Wordsworth's Second Missed Crossing: Techne and the Imaginatio Negativa of The Prelude." North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference, Purdue University, Lafayette, IN, Aug 31-Sep 3, 2006.
- “Shelley’s Defence of Poetry and the Counter-history of Romanticism.” Grant MacEwan University, Edmonton, Canada, Apr 4, 2006. Invited lecture.
- “Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Heidegger’s Reading of Hegel.” “Belabouring Derrida” conference, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, Mar 18-20, 2005. Plenary Address.
- “The Kantian Crisis and the Romantic Response.” Comparative Literature Colloquium, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, Mar 11, 2005. Invited lecture.
- “Kant, Critical Theory, and the Romantics.” Canadian Comparative Literature Association conference, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, May 30-Jun 1, 2004.
- “On the Impossible Futures of Techne.” “Legacies of Theory” conference, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, Oct 28-30, 2004.
- “Differance and Difference Without Resemblance: The Question of the Line.” Comparative Literature Colloquium, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, Feb 17, 2004. Invited lecture.
- “Derrida/ Deleuze: Towards an Almost Imperceptible Difference.” “Derrida and Deleuze: Territoriality, Psychoanalysis, Politics” conference, UCI, Irvine, CA, Apr 12-13, 2002.
- “Aesthetics/Poetics/Politics: Heidegger on Hölderlin.” “Strategies of Critique 14: What is Political?” conference, York University, Toronto, Canada, Mar 24-25, 2000.
- “Meditations on the Given in Husserl and Heidegger.” “The Gift” conference, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada, May 16-19, 1996.
COURSES TAUGHT Graduate Classes
AENG 894 Directed Reading (Amy Mallory-Kani) AENG 581 Studies in a Literary Period- Romanticism AENG 541 Romantic Ideology / Aesthetic Ideology ENG 265 Romantic Irony (UC – Riverside) Undergraduate Classes
19th- Century Literature/ Romanticism
AENG 411Y Romanticism and History AENG 343 Keats and Shelley
AENG 334 Romanticism, Imagination and Revolution AENG 291 British Literary Traditions
ENG 316 British Romanticism (U. of Illinois, Chicago)
AENG 210 Introduction to Literary Studies AENG 305Z Frankenstein and the Inhuman AENG 305Z Literature and Terror
AENG 205Z Gothic Short Fiction
ENG 28B Comic and Tragic Vision (UC – Irvine) ENG 28A The Poetic Imagination (UC – Irvine) Critical Theory / Literary Theory
AENG 410Y Literature and Community
AENG 410 Literature and the Problem of Sovereignty
ENG 240 Introduction to Literary Theory (U of Illinois, Chicago) CRIT 100A Introduction to Literary Theory (UC – Ivine)
Interdisciplinary
Hum 100 Humanities Core Class (UC-Irvine) Introductory
ENG 113 English Literature in a Global Perspective (U of Alberta) ENG 111 Language, Literature and Culture (U of Alberta)
ENG 108 Language and Literature (U of Alberta) ENG 101 Critical Reading and Writing (U of Alberta) Composition
Writing 1000 Academic Writing (UC – Irvine)
Writing 39B Cluster Course: Representations of War (UC – Irvine) Writing 39A Fundamentals of Writing (UC – Irvine)
Writing 39B Expository Writing (UC – Irvine) Writing 39C Argument and Research (UC – Irvine) Philosophy
PHIL 4 Introduction to Ethics (UC – Irvine)
PHIL12 History of Modern Philosophy (UC – Irvine) PHIL 10 History of Ancient Philosophy (UC – Irvine) PHIL 113 Race and Gender (UC – Irvine)
PHIL 5 Contemporary Moral Problems (UC – Irvine) PHIL 210 Ancient Philosophy (Trent U)
PHIL 214 Existentialism and Phenomenology (Trent U)
1/2012- Present Faculty/ Staff Awards Committee
9/2010- 5/2011 Graduate Admissions Committee, English Department 9/2008 – 9/2010 MA Review Committee, English Department
11/ 2009 – 9/2010 Ad Hoc Committee on Service, English Department 9/2008 - 1/2010 CAS Council Representative, College of Arts and Sciences
Academic Planning Committee member
9/1998-6/1999 Department Representative, Department of English and Comparative Literature (UC – Irvine) Lectures and Awards Committee
9/1997 - 6/1998 Department Representative, Philosophy Department (UC – Irvine) Other Departmental
9/2008 - 1/2009 Professionalization Committee (Participated in information sessions and mock interviews for graduate students entering the job market)
10/2008 - Present 19th-Century Reading Group (Organized and hosted reading group for graduate students and faculty in the department)
Other College / University
3/1/2012 Scholar’s Day Fair and Luncheon for incoming freshmen 9/14/2011 ITLAL meeting for Graduate Students entering job market 11/16/2009 NUFE meeting with delegates from Nanking University 9/4/2008 ITLAL meeting for Graduate Students entering job market Conference Organizer
10/25-26/ 2011 Member of organizing committee for “Citizen-Subject Revisited” conference, SUNY-Albany 10/22/2010 Organizer of Seminar on “Crisis in the Humanities,” SUNY-Albany
2/26-28/2009 Member of organizing committee for “Rhetorics of Plague” conference, SUNY-Albany 10/28-30/2004 Member of organizing committee for “Legacies of Theory” conference, University of Alberta,
Canada Other Contributions
2011-Present Reviewer, PMLA journal, New York.
2002-2003 Graduate Research Assistant, Humanities Out There Program, UC – Irvine (Designed and taught language arts class for local highschools on behalf of university outreach program intended to recruit college applicants from underrepresented groups.)
4/2002 Seminar Leader, UC – Irvine (Led undergraduate seminar on Jacques Derrida’s annual spring quarter lectures.)
9/1997 Philosophy Outreach Program (Led series of seminars in Irvine, California high-school on the question “What is Philosophy?”)
- Heewon Kwang, Ph.D. - Dana Lawton-Balejko, Ph.D. - Amy Mallory- Kani, Ph.D. - Lucyna Prostko, Ph.D. - Sabine Seiler, Ph.D.
- Mark Ambrose, M.A. (Master’s thesis advisor) - Colleen Burton, M.A.
- David Caliguiri, M.A. - Tayor Churchill, M.A. - Anthony Delgado, M.A. - Loralynn Krobetsky, M.A. - Brian Deinhart, B.A.
- Noelle Webster, B.A. (Honors thesis advisor) - Candice Mann, B.A.
- Amanda McGowan, B.A. PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
- North American Society for the Study of Romanticism - Modern Languages Association
