General Information

The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory is an interdisciplinary program developed within both the Graduate College and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For more than twenty-five years, the Unit has been at the forefront of debates within the US academy about poststructuralism and cultural studies, Marxism and postcolonial theory, and the politics of disciplinarity and knowledge production. Books derived from Unit conferences, such as Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture and Cultural Studies, have been landmarks of US critical discourse .

Drawing upon the expertise and resources of twenty-one humanities and social sciences departments, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory promotes a broad range of teaching, research, and related scholarly activities. Through a variety of programs—including regular criticism seminars, monthly colloquia, visits to campus by distinguished scholars from other universities, agenda-setting conferences, and designated courses—the Unit provides both students and faculty with an interdisciplinary vantage point for their own teaching and research. Open to scholars with diverse area, period, and methodological interests, the Unit seeks to enhance awareness of the theoretical premises underlying critical practices across the humanities and social sciences and to provide a forum where competing theoretical claims can be articulated and debated. Each semester, the Unit sponsors a series of activities, including a criticism seminar, that focuses in depth on a particular theme. Recent themes have included Modernities, Historicism, New Approaches to African-American Literature and Culture, Foundations of Critical Theory, and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism. The Unit is designed to serve both beginning graduate students who want a broad grounding in interpretive theory and advanced students with well-defined research interests. Unit-affiliated students receive support for conference travel and invitations to participate in all Unit activities, including a yearly series of lectures on Modern Critical Theory. To graduate students enrolled in M.A. or Ph.D. programs in participating departments, the Unit also offers a formal program leading to advanced certification in criticism and interpretive theory. Students who would like to pursue certification should consult the requirements listed on the Unit website and should set up an appointment to talk with the Unit director.


 

Participating Departments

Anthroplogy
Art and Design
Art History
Classics
Communications Research
Comparative and World Literatures
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Educational Policy Studies
English
English as an International Language
French
Germanic
History
Kinesiology
Library and Information Science
Linguistics
Philosophy
Political Science
Religious Studies
Slavic
Sociology
Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
Speech Communication

 

Books derived from Unit Conferences

 

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (1988),
edited by Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson

 

Cultural Studies (1991),
edited by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler

 

Higher Education Under Fire: Politics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Humanities (1994),
edited by Michael Berube and Cary Nelson

 

Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies (1996),
edited by Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar and Cary Nelson

 

Disciplinarity at the Fin de Siecle (2001),
edited by Amanda Anderson and Joseph Valente

 

Postcolonial Studies and Beyond (2005),
edited by Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton, and Jed Esty

 

Poetry, Politics, and the Profession: Cary Nelson and the Struggle for the University (Forthcoming).
edited by Michael Rothberg and Peter Garrett.