Phillip E. Wegner

Associate Professor
Associate Graduate Coordinator




Department of English

University of Florida

P.O. Box 117310

Gainesville, FL 32611-7310

Turlington Hall 4115
352-392-6650 ext 261

pwegner@english.ufl.edu





                                                           English department biography


Dr. Susan Hegeman
Owen & Nadia (9-30-03)
Owen & Nadia (March 2008)



Education:
Ph.D. from the Literature Program, Duke University, 1993
B.A. in Honors English, summa cum laude, California State University, Northridge, 1986

Selected Publications:

Life Between Two Deaths, 1989-2001: U.S. Culture in the Long 1990s
(Duke University Press: 2009)

Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity
(University of California Press: 2002)

Reviews and discussions can be found at:
Politics and Culture 2002, #3
Science Fiction Studies 30, no.  (2003)
Utopian Studies 13, no. 2 (2002)
American Literature 76, no. 1 (2004)
Comparative Literature 57, no. 2 (2005)
Cultural Logic  (2006)
Political Theory 36, no. 2 (2008)


Periodizing Jameson; or, the Adventures of Theory in Post-Contemporary Times
(in progress)

Ontologies of the Possible: Science Fiction, Utopia, and Globalization
(in progress)

Recent and Forthcoming Essays:


“Greimas avec Lacan; or, From the Symbolic to the Real in Dialectical Criticism.” Criticism 51, no. 2 (forthcoming).

“Jameson’s Modernisms; or, the Desire Called Utopia.” Diacritics 37, no. 4 (2007).

“The Beat Cops of History; or, the Paranoid Style in American Intellectual Politics.” Arizona Quarterly (forthcoming).

“Ken MacLeod's Permanent Revolution: Utopian Possible Worlds, History, and the Augenblick in the ‘Fall Revolution’”. In
Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction. Eds., Mark Bould and China Miéville (Pluto Press/Wesleyan University Press. 2009).

“Learning to Live in History: Alternate Historicities and the 1990s in The Years of Rice and Salt.” In
Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays. Ed. William Burling (MacFarland, 2009).

"Emerging from the Flood in Which We Are Sinking; or, Reading with Darko Suvin (Again)."  Preface to Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction, and Political Epistemology, by Darko Suvin. Peter Lang (forthcoming).

“Darko Suvin.” In Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction. Eds. Mark Bould et al. Routledge (forthcoming).

“ ‘The Dead are Our Redeemers’: Culture, Belief, and United 93.” American Multiculturalism After 9/11: Transatlantic Perspectives. Eds. Derek Rubin and Jaap Verheul (Amsterdam University Press, 2009).

“‘An Unfinished Project that was Also a Missed Opportunity’: Utopia and Alternate History in Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro.” ImageText, special issue: “Animé and Utopia" (forthcoming).

“Marxist Theory;”
“Ideology;” “Fantasy/Science Fiction” In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel and Novel Theory. Ed. Peter Logan. (forthcoming).

“Recognizing the Patterns.” New Literary History 38, no. 1 (2007).


"“The Pretty Woman Goes Global: Or, Learning to Love ‘Americanization’ in Notting Hill.” In “Circulations: ‘America’ and Globalization.” ed., Patricia Ventura. Genre 38, no. 3 (2006).

“Here or Nowhere: Utopia, Modernity, and Totality,” In Utopia-Method-Vision, eds. Tom Moylan and Raffaella Baccolini (Peter Lang: 2007).

"Periodizing Jameson." In  On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization, eds. Caren Irr and Ian Buchanan (SUNY Press: 2006).

"Postmodernism."  In The Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy,ed. John Protevi  (Edinburgh University Press: 2005).

"Utopian Fiction," & "Science Fiction." In Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics, ed. M. Keith Booker (Greenwood Press: 2005).

"Utopia."  In A Companion to Science Fiction, ed. David Seed. (London: Blackwells, 2005).


On-line writings:

"The Day It Changed."  The Gainesville Sun, November 9, 2008.

"WALL-E's World."  The Satellite, November 9, 2008.

"Demandez l'impossible."  The Satellite, September 16, 2008.

"On World Bank Literature: A Review of Bret Benjamin’s Invested Interests: Capital, Culture, and the World Bank." Politics and Culture 1 (2008).

“Más allá de las clausuras de la guerra fría: repeticiones y revisiones en el ciclo Terminator.”  LiberArte: La Revista Virtual del Colegio de Artes Liberales, Universidad San Francisco de Quito. 1, no. 1 (2005).


Complete list of Publications

Recent Conferences Organized:

2008 UF American Cultures Symposium: Futures of American Studies


2007 Society for Utopian Studies Program





Current and Recent Courses:





Fall 2009
ENG 6077
Toward An Ethics of the Real:
Reading Lacan with Badiou
Syllabus







 
Spring 2009
ENG 6077 syllabus

Spring 2008
LIT 6847 Syllabus


Spring 2007
ENG 6076






Spring 2006
ENG 6077 Syllabus

Fall 2006
LIT 4930 description
LIT 4483 description


Spring 2005
ENG 4936 description
ENG 6077 description



Fall 2005
AML 4242 Syllabus
LIT 4188 Syllabus

 

Fall 2004
ENL 4273 Syllabus
ENG 3010 Syllabus

 

Fall 2003
ENL 4273 Syllabus
LIT 3313 Syllabus





The Summer Institute
Like the freed convict in Kafka's Penal Colony,who has survived the destruction of the machine that was to have executed him, these beings have left the world of guilt and justice behind them: The light that rains down on them is that irreparable light of the dawn following the novissima diesof judgment. But the life that begins on earth after the last day is simply human life. 
. . . .
Tricksters or fakes, assistants or 'toons, they are the exemplars of the coming community. 
Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community
 

My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill; I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight, hearing a harper who sung to the harp; & his theme was: 'The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind." 
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven & Hell 
 

As long as man concentrates his interest contemplatively upon the past orfuture, both ossify into an alien existence.  And between the subject and the object lies the unbridgeable  "pernicious chasm" of the present.  Man must be able to comprehend the present as becoming.  He can do this by seeing in it the tendencies out of whose dialectical opposition he can make the future.  Only when he does this will the present be a process of becoming,that belongs to him.
Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness

One could say that what identifies philosophy is not the rules of a discourse, but the singularity of an act. It is this act that the enemies of Socrates called: "the corruption of young people ". And because of that, as you know, Socrates was sentenced to death. "To corrupt young people" is after all not a bad name for the philosophical act. If you properly understand "to corrupt". Here "to corrupt" means to teach the possibility of refusing any blind submission to established opinions. To corrupt is to give to young people some means of changing their minds about all social norms; to corrupt is to substitute discussion and rational criticism for imitation, and even, if the question is a question of principles, to substitute revolt for obedience. But this revolt is neither spontaneous nor agressive inasmuch as it is a consequence of principles and rational critics. In the poems of the great trench poet Arthur Rimbaud we find the strange expression: "Logical Revolts". That is probably a good definition of the philosophical act.
Alain Badiou

 








I believe we can survive in utopia...

Ejigayehu “Gigi” Shibabaw


                                                                                             
A Few Useful Links

Voice of the Shuttle

Marxist Internet Archive


Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Literary Resources on the Net

Lacan Dot Com


Politics and Culture

Afropop Worldwide

Inside Higher Ed

UF Marxist Reading Group

Marxist Literary Group

Society for Utopian Studies

Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies

Science Fiction Research Association

50 Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read
(by China Mieville)

Modernist Studies Association

The William Blake Archive

The James Joyce Centre

Modern Language Association

American Association of University Professors

United Faculty of Florida-UF News and Information

Helpful Links for Grant Proposal Writer

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Last revised: July 29, 2009