Robert Barsky's Vanderbilt Site

Journal Work

Research Laboratory

Maymester in Montreal, May of 2008

English 288, Laughter and the Academic Novel

The Public Intellectual

FR380 French Literary Theory

Magic and Language

Robert Barsky's Vanderbilt Website
 
periodistadigital, Agencia EFE, lunes, 10 de octubre 2005
Bob's sons, Tristan and Ben: scubadiving, basketball, golf, tennis, etc; Bob's fiancée Marsha, dancing in France and the US, and her son Kai.
Some recent projects
Books and Journals

The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower, Cambridge; London: The MIT Press, 2007.

Table of Contents and sample chapters

Quests Beyond the Ivory Tower:  Public Intellectuals, Academia and the Media, Edited by Saleem H. Ali and Robert Barsky, a special issue of AmeriQuests, 2006. 

Introduction by Ali and Barsky

Quebec and Canada in the Americas, edited by Robert Barsky, as special issue of AmeriQuests, 2006.

Introduction by Barsky

Marc Angenot and the Scandal of History, a special issue of the Yale Journal of Criticism that features articles by Marc Angenot, Robert Barsky, Fredric Jameson, Marie-Christine Leps, Michel Pierssens, Darko Suvin. 2004. 

Introduction to Marc Angenot and the Scandal of History

Workers Councils, by Anton Pannekoek. A new and revised edition, edited and with comments by Robert Barsky, interviews with Noam Chomsky, Ken Coates and Peter Hitchcock, and a republication of a seminal piece by Paul Mattick. London/SF: AK Press, 2002.

Introduction to Workers Councils including a discussion between Chomsky and Barsky

Arguing and Justifying: Assessing the Convention Refugee Choice of Moment, Motive and Host Country. Aldershot; Burlington; Sydney; Singapore: Ashgate, 2001.

Paris-SubStance-America. A special issue of SubStance devoted to French theory. 2001.

Introduction à la théorie littéraire. Quebec: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1997. 

Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge; London: MIT Press, 1997, 1998.

Constructing a Productive Other: Discourse Theory and the Convention Refugee Hearing, Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1994.

Bakhtin and Otherness. A special issue of Discours social/Social Discourse edited by Robert Barsky and Michael Holquist, 1991.

Introduction to Bakhtin and Otherness


Translation:

Philosophy and the Passions: Toward a History of Human Nature, Penn State Press, 2000, Robert Barsky's translation and introduction of Michel Meyer's Le Philosophe et les passions (Paris: Livres de poche).

Introduction to Philosophy and the Passions


Forthcoming books:

Zellig’s America: Linguistics, Radical Politics and Zionism in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge; London: The MIT Press, 2008.

 
Research Areas and Selected Publications
1. Literary and Language Theory; Literature and Law

2. Refugee, Border and Migration Studies

3. The Milieus of Noam Chomsky and Zellig Harris
4. Selected Translations
  • “What Can Literature do? From Literary Sociocriticism to a Critique of Social Discourse” by Marc Angenot, Yale Journal of Criticism 17.2 (Fall 2004): 217-232.
  •  “A State of Social Discourse” by Michel Pierssens, Yale Journal of Criticism, 17.2 (Fall 2004): 255-262.
  •  (with Patricia Foxen) Denise Helly, “Social cohesion and Ethnic Minorities,” for the Canadian Journal of Anthropology and Sociology (2003).
  • (with Patricia Foxen) Denise Helly, “Ethnic and National Minorities” for the Canadian Journal of Anthropology and Sociology (2002).
  • Philosophy and the Passions, a translation (with a preface, introduction and bibliography) of Le Philosophe et les Passions (Livre de Poche) for Penn State Press Literature and Philosophy Series, dir. Anthony Cascardi, 2000..
  •  “Rhetoric and the Theory of Argument” by Michel Meyer. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 196.2 (1996): 325-358.
  •  “The Problematological Interpretation of the Cogito: Is There a Distinctive Argumentative Structure in The Meditations?” by Michel Meyer. Revue internationale de Philosophie 195 (1996): 23-49.
  •  “The Representamen, The Sign and the Abduction”, by Jean Fisette, Pierce Papers. Toronto Semiotic Circle, 1996.
  •  “The Mirror, The Beaker and the Touchstone: or, What Can Literature Do For Science?” by Jean Marc Lévy Leblond, SubStance 71/72: 1 26.
  •  “The Political Regulation of Cultural Plurality: Foundations and Principles,” by Denise Helly, for Canadian Ethnic Studies / Études Ethniques au Canada 25.2 (1993): 15 35.
  •  [with Sydney Mintz] “Introduction” Chinese Emigration: The Cuba Commission Report. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 1 30.
  •  [with Dominique Michaud] “Bakhtin and Postmodernism: An Unexpected Encounter. Notes on Jean-Paul Goude’s ‘Marseillaise’,” by Régine Robin. Discours social / Social Discourse 3.1-2 (1991): 229 232.
  •  “Following the Thread,” by Marc Angenot. Science Fiction Studies, 16.2 (July 1989): 218 222.

5. Selected reviews

  • Review of Jonah Raskin, American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' and the Making of the Beat Generation, University of California Press, 2004, for AmeriQuests 1.2, 2006.
  • Review of Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls, in Journal of Refugee Studies 2001, 14, 205-7.
  • Review of Wai Chee Dimock, Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy. University of California Press, 1997 [1996], for Literary Research 31, 1999.
  • Review of Richard A. Posner, Law and Literature, Revised and Enlarged Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998, for Literary Research 30, 1999.
  • Review of Theodore Ziolkowski, The Mirror of Justice: Literary Reflections of Legal Crises. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, for Literary Research 29, 1998.
  • Review of Robin West, Caring for Justice. New York University Press, 1997, “The Limits of Caring in Justice” for Literary Research 16.32 (1999): 233-239.
  • Review of Michael Gardiner, The Dialogics of Critique: M.M. Bakhtin and the Theory of Ideology, for Slavic Review 53.1 (Spring 1994): 306-308.
  • Review of Peter Hitchcock, The Dialogics of the Oppressed. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1992. for Discours social/Social Discourse 6.3-4, (1994).
  • Review of Stephen L. White, The Unity of the Self. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, for Discours social/Social Discourse 5.3 4 (1993): 192-194.
  • Review of M. Pierrette Malcuzynski. Entre-Dialogues avec Bakhtin, for Slavic Review 53.4 (Winter 1994): 1198-1199.
  • Review of Critical Studies II, 1 2, 1990: Mikhail Bakhtin and the Epistemology of Discourse, Ed. Clive Thomson, for Semiotic Inquiry 12.3.
  • Review of Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard UP, 1981, for Modern Language Quarterly 52.4, December 1991, pp. 466-468.
  • Review of Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson and Edward Said, Nationalism, Colonialism, Literature. Minnesota: U Minnesota P, 1990, for Discours Social / Social Discourse 4.1 2, pp. 179-180.
  • Review of Cohan, Stevan and Linda M. Shires. Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction. NY: Routledge, 1988, for Literary Research 18, pp. 16-17.
  • Review of Chamberlain, Daniel Frank, Narrative Perspective in Fiction: A Phenomenological Mediation of Reader, Text, and World. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990, for Literary Research 18, p.14.
  • Review of Literature, Language and Politics, Ed. Betty Jean Craige. Athens & London: U of Georgia P, 1988, for Literary Research 14 15, pp. 14-15.  
  • Review of George Levine, Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1988, for Literary Research 13 pp. 25-26.
  • Review of Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard. Paul Dumouchel, Ed. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988, for Literary Research 11, pp. 12-13.
  • Review of Buitenhuis, Peter. The Great War of Words: British, American and Canadian Propaganda and Fiction, 1914-1933. Vancouver: U of BC P, 1987, for Literary Research 11, pp. 15-16.
  • Review of Dick, Susan et al. Essays for Richard Ellman: Omnium Gatherum. Montréal: McGill UP, 1989, for Discours social/Social Discourse Vol. 2, 4 pp. 207-208.
  • Review of Morton Beiser, Strangers at the Gate: The Boat People's First Ten Years in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999 for Asian Pacific Migration Journal 9.3 2000, 387-388.
  • Review of Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls. By Teresa Hayter. London; Sterling, Virginia: Pluto Press, 2000, for the Oxford Journal of Refugee Studies, 2001.
  • Review of Joe Thomas, Ethnocide: A Cultural Narrative of Refugee Detention in Hong Kong. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999 for Oxford Journal of Refugee Studies, 2000.
Courses at Vanderbilt

Courses fall 2008

  • ENGL288, From the Romantics to the Beat Generation This course will explore the influence that Romantic poets, notably Lord Byron, and P.B. Shelley, had upon Beat Generation poets and writers. We will begin by discussing some of the seminal works in Romantic poetry, including Keats’s and Wordsworth’s descriptions of their poetic ambitions and projects, and we’ll then turn to some of the characteristics of the literature and politics of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and a range of women writers of the Beat Generation including Diane DiPrima and Anne Waldman. We will undertake our reading under the assumption that there was something profoundly liberating in such works as the “Lyrical Ballads” and, moreover, in the comical and irreverent masterpiece by Lord Byron, Don Juan, which served as impetuses for the kinds of work we found in post-war American Beats. This course will offer students the opportunity to study but also to create their own creative work, if they so desire, as a means of exploring first hand the creative process inspired through the genius and the generosity of these writers.

  • ENGL 244-01. Critical Theory: "Finding Theories of Laughter, Passion, Recollection and Forgetting in Great Fiction” 'Theory' doesn’t seem critical to most people, unless they can be turned on to the exciting work that is being done on the carnivalesque, the mind/brain relation, the origins of human language, and why it is that we can be so turned on, or upset, or inspired, or shocked, by the stories that are told in literature. In this course we shall read great works of fiction in English that move us to reflect upon the really basic questions about reading, writing, and telling stories, and along the way we’ll be inspired by powerful words to laugh, to cry, to dream and to wonder why fiction is the gateway to the magic of abstract exploration of our minds, and the possible worlds they can create.

  • FR394: Intellectuals in France and the USA, 1700-2000: This course will examine Franco-American relations on the basis of a comparison between intellectual life in France and America (Canada and the US). We will undertake a survey of the diverse roles that intellectuals have played, and continue to play in these countries, against a backdrop of the social, historical, political and academic context within which such work is undertaken. We will begin with a discussion precursor writings by (for example) Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, and then turn to engagement in the Twentieth Century relating to the Spanish Civil War, WWII, Vietnam, Algeria, right up to current concerns. Along the way, issues in Franco-American relations will be discussed, beginning with the work of the Founding Fathers in the US, right up to current Franco-American relations. Some knowledge of French would be useful, but not essential.
  • 294a. Zola: Naturalist to Activism: This course will introduce students to Emile Zola’s fiction, including examples of work from the long series of novels called Les Rougon Macquart, about a family under the Second Empire. Different facets of Zola’s writings will be discussed, including his method of researching his subject matter, the style of his writing, as well as the "environmental" influences of violence, prostitution, alcoholism and what he described as “the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world.” Students will also be introduced to the idea of the public intellectual, with reference to Zola’s “J’Accuse,” an open letter to the president denouncing the wrongful conviction of a Jewish officer of the French army for treason. Prerequisites: French 201W & 220.
  • JS 115F: From Freud to Chomsky: Revolutionary Sciences in Jewish America: This course will survey the work of Jewish writers, scientists and philosophers who were interested in "new scientific techniques" aimed at uncovering the structural, mathematical, psychic, poetic or biological basis of language. The impetus for this interest came from an age-old concern with "magical language," a belief that new technologies would require new standardized approaches to language analysis, and, later on, a Cold War interest in propaganda, anti-propaganda, decoding, and translating. The fact that so much of this work was being undertaken by left-leaning Jews adds a whole dimension to this crucial part of our recent history. Indeed, a remarkable number of Jewish linguists, poets, anthropologists, media-types and scientists were inspired by Albert Einstein and by Sigmund Freud to develop "new scientific techniques" aimed at uncovering the structural, mathematical, psychic, poetic or biological basis of language. Given the political urgency of this project, and the vast sums of money available to those involved in propaganda, anti-propaganda, decoding, translating, and describing language, it's not surprising that this period was witness to a convergence between radical politics, military exigencies and willful reverie. This course will survey the range of experiments undertaken by American and European Jews who were interested in these issues and along the way study some of the ideas that linked some of the leading lights of the 20th Century, including Leonard Bloomfield, Franz Boas, Louis Brandeis, Noam Chomsky, Albert Einstein, Allen Ginsberg, Zellig Harris and Roman Jakobson. Some of the questions we will address in the course include:
    · Is there a relationship between a Jewish upbringing and the work undertaken by these individuals?
    · What was the reception of this work within an academic setting that was concerned about Jewish politics and religion?
    · How did the US government deal with the fact that this all-important area was so dominated by Jews?
    · What relationship existed between the fact that many of these theorists were immigrant Jews and the left-leaning politics they tended to support?

Courses spring 2008

  • ENG288 02 “Questioning Academic Life: Laughter and Responsibility in Fictional and Real Worlds” This course will focus on fictional representations of life in the Academy, as portrayed in 20th Century British and American novels, and upon questions concerning the role of the intellectual in contemporary society. On the literary side, students will be treated to the foibles and conquests of professors in literature departments as represented in novels by authors associated with a range of movements, including contemporary feminism, the Angries, the Beat Generation, and the postmodern period, while on the theory end there will be discussions of laughter, politics and literary theory appropriate to the matters raised in the novels.
  • MLAS 270 29: The Public Intellectual  To be a “public intellectual” is to undertake work beyond the “Ivory Tower,” variously construed, a conscious or conscientious effort that has been going on ever since the advent of a line, variously drawn, between an Academy for intellectuals and the rest of society. In Europe and North America, those involved with criticisms of the established order of society have come from a broad array of backgrounds and, inspired by Greek, Roman, Renaissance or Enlightenment thinkers, have imagined themselves spreading ideas and approaches which foster some sense of the common good or else which address the problem of social ills. As a consequence, many of those who have worked beyond the Ivory Tower have variously identified themselves as Marxists, fascists, feminists, socialists, Utilitarians, Fabians, existentialists, social democrats, libertarians, radicals, anarchists, syndicalists and, in more recent times, civil rights activists, neo-conservatives, neo-liberals, Trotskyites, Maoists and muckrakers, supporting causes ranging the entire “left”-”right” spectrum. One consequence of this is that intellectuals can be perceived to have, as Howard Zinn suggests, a public responsibility “to earn our keep in this world. No matter what side of the political spectrum they speak from, Western intellectuals can make themselves useful from this perspective by making productive use of their hard-won political liberty, their access to information and their freedom of expression. For the privileged few who are in this situation, Western democracy, in Chomsky’s words, “provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.”Whether or not academics or intellectuals choose to do work “beyond the ivory tower,” and the motivation for their foray beyond their specialization, is a large part of the public intellectual story and will be the focus for this course.
  • FR380  French Literary Theory(in French) Familiarisation avec le travail théorique lié aux études littéraires, le fonctionnement et le rôle d'un département d'études littéraires, la démarche bibliographique et avec les instruments de recherche imprimés et informatiques. Exigences adaptées aux étudiants en critique et en recherche littéraires. Quelques exposés magistraux, exploration personnelle des guides de recherche en littérature d'expression française, encadrement individualisé par rendez-vous. Ce séminaire portera également sur les aspects théoriques et méthodologiques, et il se veut un lieu privilégié d'échanges et de réflexion, où l'on discutera des problématiques soulevées par les textes choisis comme objets d'étude, et des enjeux théoriques susceptibles d'intéresser les étudiant(e)s dans leur démarche de recherche. Les participants seront invités à réfléchir sur les modalités de leur pratique littéraire et à préciser - en dialogue avec les diverses approches critiques modernes - les notions et concepts auxquels ils recourent.
Courses previously taught at Vanderbilt University

New book!
The Chomsky Effect, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2008.

For more information, please contact Robert F. Barsky.
copyright Robert F. Barsky, 2006