Old Problems in Cultural Studies

The Program in Literature presents
The Srinivas Aravamudan Annual Lecture in Critical Theory
January 2025

ANNA KORNBLUH

Lecture
Thursday, January 23
4:00pm
Friedl Building, Room 225

Good Enough Art: A Few Theses on Middling Mediations
The recent surge of "mid" as an aesthetic judgment paradoxically
discloses the missing middle in contemporary cultural arts. Amid
the eviction of the middle class, cultural study of the middlebrow
can no longer rely upon the traditional sociological method. Briefly
considering architecture, photography, fiction, and television, this
talk experiments with a formalist approach to "good enough art."

SEMINAR
Old Problems in Cultural Studies
Friday, January 24
11:00am
Friedl Building, Room 107

Anna Kornbluh is Professor of English and a member of the United Faculty Bargaining Committee at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is the author of four books, including Immediacy, Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso 2024), as well as essays on climate aesthetics, tv, academic labor, and psychoanalysis.

Readings for the seminar will be available soon.