Rita Felski

Rita Felski (born 1956) is an academic and critic, who holds the John Stewart Bryan Professorship of English at the University of Virginia and is a former editor of New Literary History. She is also Niels Bohr Professor at the University of Southern Denmark (2016–2021).

Rita Felski
Born	1956
Academic background
Alma mater	Monash University, Australia
Academic work
Institutions	University of Virginia

Felski is a prominent scholar in the fields of aesthetics and literary theory, feminist theory, modernity and postmodernity, and cultural studies. She is closely associated with the field of postcritique, a school of thought that tries to find new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique, critical theory, and ideological criticism. Felski is the author of Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (Harvard UP, 1989), The Gender of Modernity (Harvard UP, 1995), Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture (New York UP, 2000), Literature After Feminism (Chicago UP, 2003), and Uses of Literature (Blackwell, 2008). The Limits of Critique (Chicago UP, 2015), an assessment of the role of the hermeneutics of suspicion as a mood and method in literary studies, has been widely reviewed. Felski is the editor of Rethinking Tragedy (Johns Hopkins, 2008) and co-editor of Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses (Johns Hopkins, 2013), Critique and Postcritique (Duke UP 2017), and Latour and the Humanities (Johns Hopkins, 2020). She has also published articles in numerous essay collections and in such scholarly journals as PMLA, Signs, New Literary History, Modernism/Modernity, Cultural Critique, Theory, Culture and Society, and New Formations. Her most recent book, Hooked: Art and Attachment, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2020.

Education

Felski received an honors degree in French and German literature from Cambridge University and her PhD from the Department of German at Monash University in Australia.

Books and articles

• Hooked: Art and Attachment. University of Chicago Press, 2020
• Latour and the Humanities. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020
• Character: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies (Co-authored alongside Toril Moi and Amanda Anderson). University of Chicago Press, 2019.
• Critique and Postcritique. Duke University Press, 2017
• The Limits of Critique. University of Chicago Press, 2015.
• Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
• "After Suspicion," Profession, 2009.
• "Everyday Aesthetics," Minnesota Review 71, 2009.
• Uses of Literature. Blackwell, 2008.
• Rethinking Tragedy, editor. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
• Literature After Feminism. University of Chicago Press, 2003.
• "Modernist Studies and Cultural Studies," Modernism/Modernity, 10:3, 2003.
• Felski, Rita (August 2000). "Being reasonable, telling stories". Feminist Theory. 1 (2): 225–229. doi:10.1177/14647000022229173. S2CID 144580001.
• Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture. New York University Press, 2000.
• "Nothing to Declare: Identity, Shame and the Lower Middle Class," PMLA 115:1, 2000.
• "The Invention of Everyday Life," New Formations 39, 1999/2000.
• "The Doxa of Difference," Signs 23:1, 1997.
• The Gender of Modernity. Harvard University Press, 1995.
• Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change. Harvard University Press, 1989.

External links

• Literature by and about Rita Felski in the German National Library catalogue
• Rita Felski at Library of Congress
• Rita Felski's Faculty Page at the University of Virginia
• New Literary History Homepage
• A Manifesto of Positive Aesthetics: Review of Uses of Literature
• Understanding Reading: Review of Uses of Literature
• Are We Postcritical: Review of The Limits of Critique
• Meta-critic No. 2: How to live in a post-critical World, a review of Rita Felski, "The Limits of Critique"
• Expert Textpert: Review of The Limits of Critique
• ALH Online Review, Series VI 1: Review of The Limits of Critique