René Wellek Library Lecturers: 1981 – Present

HISTORY OF THE WELLEK LECTURES


Since 1981, the School of the Humanities at UC Irvine holds a series of public lectures conducted by a distinguished scholar defending a critical theoretical stance on a wide array of themes, topics, and subject areas. Typically held every Spring, the three-day event is named in honor of Professor René Wellek, whose corpus of work in critical theory is housed at UC Irvine’s Langson Library. The Wellek Library Lectures are an annual opportunity for contemporary critics to exchange ideas, present innovative research, and publish their papers with Columbia University Press. Past lead lecturers have included Judith Butler, Jean Baudrillard, Étienne Balibar, Edward Said, Jean-François Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida.

In 1985, Dr. Eddie Yeghiayan began the tradition of compiling bibliographies detailing not only the work of each lecturer but much of the related secondary literature as well. Today, UCI research librarians continue to compile extensive bibliographies of each lecturer's work. 

 

SEARCH PAST LECTURES


 

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The Political Life of Sovereignty
[WLL 2004]
Unpublished
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The Return of the Repressed: Figurations of the National
[WLL 2017]
Publication Forthcoming
  • Lectures
    A Cartography of Origins
    20th-Century Nationalisms, Left and Right
    Repressions, Repetitions
Lectures on Abolition
[WLL 2003]
Seven Stories Press

Published as Are Prisons Obsolete?


 

Metamorphoses of Intelligence
[WLL 2015]
Publication Forthcoming
  • Lectures
    Intelligence vs. Intellect: Anatomy of a War Front
    Out of the Blue Brain
    Like a Pollock Painting

 


Published as Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurement to Artifical Brains


 

Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom
[WLL 2005]
Columbia University Press
Playing Cat’s Cradle with Companion Species
[WLL 2011]
Prickly Paradigm Press
Musical Elaborations
[WLL 1989]
Columbia University Press
  • Lectures
    Performance as an Extreme Occasion
    On the Transgressive Element in Music
    Melody, Affirmation and Solitude
Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth
[WLL 2007]
Columbia University Press
On Politics and History: Presence, Cruelty and the Universals
[WLL 1996]
Columbia University Press
  • Lectures
    Presence (On Contemporaneity and Non-Contemporaneity)
    Cruelty (About "Convertible" and "Non-Convertible" Violence in History)
    The Universals (Or Why Emancipatory Ideals are Contradictory)

Published as Violence and Civility