Examples of Professional Work
Author Headnotes composed for Dr. Brian Ingraffia’s Theorizing Religion and Literature: An Anthology of Modern, Postmodern, and Postsecular Essays:
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was born in the French colony of Algiers to a Jewish family. As a child, Derrida experienced discrimination under French law which prevented him from attending the French public school system because of his family’s Jewish identity. This experience had a profound impact on Derrida as he later built his career in poststrucutralist theory. In his work, Derrida deconstructs oppositional binary dualisms in order to question the authority that gives hierarchical structure power via privileging that which is primary, thereby perpetuating systems of inequality and violence. Derrida’s interests extended beyond the scope of academia as in his protesting of the war on drugs and the death penalty, his advocating for animal rights, and various other issues of social justice.
Edward Said (1935-2003) was a postcolonial theorist who discusses the social construction of the West and the “Orient” in his work, the most famous being Orientalism (1978). He was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, but his family immigrated to Egypt due to the political unrest in Palestine in 1947. Once in Cairo, Said received his education in British and American colonial schools. Later he attended American universities, completing his postgraduate studies at Harvard University where he studied comparative literature. Said’s personal and educational background provided the framework upon which he later analyzed the effects of Western imperialism. Throughout his life, Said advocated for the civil rights of Palestinians. Said received the National Book Critics Circle Award nomination for Orientalism and was the “runner-up” for the Nation Book Awarcriticism.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was born in France and is associated with New Historicism, queer theory, and post-structuralism. While studying at the elite École Normale Supérièure d’Ulm under Althusser, Foucault specialized in the philosophy of psychology. Foucault’s interests included prison reform, the institutionalization of mentally ill individuals, and gay rights as well as the history of prisons and the history of sexuality. In his many works, such as his influential text Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Foucault examines the use of surveillance by the modern medical establishment, the military, prisons, and other institutions of power as a means of enforcing social control.