Lee Edelman

Lee Edelman (born 1953) is an American literary critic and academic. He serves as a professor of English at Tufts University. He is the author of three books.

Early life[]

Lee Edelman was born in 1953. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northwestern University, and he received an MPhil and a PhD from Yale University.

Career[]

Edelman began his academic career as a scholar of twentieth-century American poetry. He has since become a central figure in the development, dissemination, and rethinking of queer theory. His current work explores the intersections of sexuality, rhetorical theory, cultural politics, and film. He holds an appointment as the Fletcher Professor of English Literature and has served as the Chair of the English Department. He gained international recognition for his books about queer theory, post-structuralism, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural studies.

Edelman is the author of three books. His first book, Transmemberment of Song: Hart Crane's Anatomies of Rhetoric and Desire, is a critique of Hart Crane's poetry. It was reviewed by Margaret Dickie of the University of Georgia in American Literature.^[1] His second book, Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory, explores the significance of gay literature. His third book, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, is a post-Lacanian analysis of queer theory. It was reviewed by Carolyn Dever of Vanderbilt University in Victorian Studies and Antonis Balasopoulos of the University of Cyprus in the Journal of American Studies.^[2][3]

Edelman's work has been contentious in queer theory, with José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia polemicizing against his "queer negativity." A 2005 Modern Language Association Conference held a special symposium on the subject, with participants Robert L. Caserio, Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz and Tim Dean debating the utility of the critique of reproductive futurism.^[4] One scholar who has mined Edelman's No Future for a communist politics is Derek Ford, who appropriates Edelman's theory to formulate a queer communist educational form that is organized into a force capable of sustaining, inhabiting, and expanding the gap of identity, thereby redirecting the death drive toward a new way of being and relating as a way to get out of the circuits of communicative capitalism.^[5]

Personal life[]

Edelman is married to critic and fellow English professor Joseph Litvak.

Awards[]

2006 Lerman-Neubauer Award for Outstanding Teaching and Advising
2005 Named Fletcher Chair of English Literature
1998 Awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award by Tufts University
1994 Tufts Class of 1994 Recognition for Excellence
1993 Chosen by Alumni of Class of 1986 as one of Tufts' Most Influential Teachers
1989 Crompton-Noll Award of the MLA for "Redeeming the Phallus"
1989 Lillian and Joseph Leibner Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising

Bibliography[]

• Edelman, Lee (1987). Transmemberment of Song: Hart Crane's Anatomies of Rhetoric and Desire. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804714136. OCLC 16095217.
• Edelman, Lee (1994). Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415902588. OCLC 28634490.
• Edelman, Lee (2004). No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822333593. OCLC 54952928.
• Edelman, Lee (December 2016). "An Ethics of Desubjectivation?". differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. Duke University Press. 27 (3): 106–118. doi:10.1215/10407391-3696679.
• A review of: Huffer, Lynne (2013). Are the lips a grave? A queer feminist on the ethics of sex. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231164177.
• Edelman, Lee (May 2017). "Learning Nothing: Bad Education". differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. Duke University Press. 28 (1): 124–173. doi:10.1215/10407391-3821724.

References[]

External links[]

• Faculty webpage