Jean-Michel Rabaté

Professor of English and Comparative Literature

(he/him/his)

Fisher-Bennett Hall 339

Office Hours

2022

Tu 2:30 - 3:30

http://www.jeanmichelrabate.com

Jean-Michel Rabaté is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the founders and curators of Slought Foundation in Philadelphia (slought.org), he is one of the managing editors of the Journal of Modern Literature. Since 2008, he has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Rabaté has authored or edited more than 40 books on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, philosophy, and writers like Beckett, Pound and Joyce.

His books include Lacan Literario (2007), 1913: The cradle of modernism (2007, Chinese translation 2013), The Ethic of the Lie (2008), Etant donnés: 1) l’art, 2) le crime (2010). The Ghosts of Modernity has been republished in 2010. In 2013, he has edited A Handbook of Modernism Studies and a new French translation of Joyce's Exiles, Crimes of the Future (2014), The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis, (2014), The Pathos of Distance (2016), Think, Pig! Beckett at the limit of the human (2016), Les Guerres de Derrida (2016).

More recent titles inmclude Rust (2018), Kafka L.O.L. (2018), After Derrida (2018), Rire au Soleil (2019), New Beckett (2019), Understanding Derrida / Understanding Modernism (2019), Knots: Post-Lacanian Readings of literature and film (2020), Beckett and Sade (2020), Rires Prodigues (2021). Forthcoming are the co-edited collection (with Angeliki Spiropoulou), Historical Modernisms: Time, History, and Modernist Aesthetics and the book James Joyce, Hérétique et Prodigue.

Interests

20th-Century British Literature Critical Theory Modernism and Modernity Psychoanalytic Studies

Publications

Awards

2011 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching

2004 Alan Filreis Teaching Award, Sponsored by the English Undergraduate Advisory Board

2003 CGS and LPS Awards for Distinguished Teaching - Standing Faculty

News & Events

2019/11/06

PSYS Meet & Greet

2019/09/27

The Time To Act Is Now

2018/03/26

Fleishman (Penn), "The Modernist Wound: a conversation about injury as an aesthetic principle in literary and filmic modernism"

2017/11/06

Poetry, Disability, and Resilience: A conversation with poet Andrea Applebee

2017/04/18

Cinema and Media Studies: Gerald Prince in conversation with Jean-Michel Rabaté

2017/02/21

English UAB Student-Faculty Tea with Jean-Michel Rabaté and Pearl Brilmyer

2016/09/02

Jean-Michel Rabaté publishes new book, "Think, Pig! Beckett at the Limit of the Human"

2016/04/05

Penn's Psychoanalytic Studies Minor featured in The American Psychoanalyst magazine

2015/10/06

The Pathos of Distance

2014/11/04

Venice by Electric Moonlight

2013/03/15

Things That Quicken the Heart

2013/01/30

Undergraduate Advisory Board presents: Panel Discussion Albert Camus's The Stranger

2012/10/10

Student-Faculty Tea with Jean-Michel Rabaté and Rita Copeland

2008/02/08

The Time of the Unconscious

Doctoral Dissertations Chaired

2016

Gabriel Sessions "To Feel Thought as Immediately as a Rose: Philosophy, Modernism, and Utopian Collaborations"

2015

Daniel Snelson "Variable Format: Media Poetics and the Little Database "

2014

Vaclav Paris "Everyday Epic: Evolution, Sexuality, and Modernist Narrative."

2009

Andrew Gaedtke "The Machinery of Madness: Psychosis, Technology, and Modernist Narrative"

2008

John P. Heon "The Dionysia of Science: Humor, Rational Madness, and Comic Experimental Methods in the Works of Bruce Nauman and Thomas Pynchon"

Benjamin Kahan "Modern American Celibacies, 1886-1969"

2007

Alexine Fleck "The Low and the Lost: Ethics, Expertise and Drug-Use Memoirs"

Josh Schuster "Modernist Biotopias: Organicism and Vitalism in Early Twentieth-Century American Poetry"

2005

Damien Keane "Dictating Terms: Irish Writing, Criticism, and the Problem of Information, 1933-1953"

2004

Shanyn Fiske "Haes and Hellenism: Underworlds of the Victorian Mythopoetic Imagination"

2003

Paul Kintzele "On the Verge of the World: Internationalism in the Text of Modernism"

2002

Jeremy Braddock "The Modernist Collector and Black Modernity, 1914-1934"

Courses Taught

spring 2025

ENGL 1430.401 From the Uncanny to Horror: Film and Psychoanalysis

ENGL 2071.401 When was Modernism?

fall 2024

ENGL 1740.401 Woolf and Eliot in Dialogue

spring 2024

ENGL 1070.401 Modernisms and Modernities: Kafka, Joyce, Beckett

ENGL 1430.401 From the Uncanny to Horror: Film and Psychoanalysis

fall 2023

ENGL 0052.401 Introduction to Psychoanalysis

ENGL 5900.401 Wet the Ropes: Splicing Philosophy and Literature

spring 2023

ENGL 1071.401 Fashion and Modernity

ENGL 2073.401 Modernist Animals: How to rethink the human-animal divide

fall 2022

ENGL 0021.401 Study of a Theme: From the Uncanny to Horror: Film and Psychoanalysis

ENGL 2071.401 When was Modernism?

spring 2022

ENGL 059.401 Modernisms and Modernities: Kafka, Joyce, Beckett

ENGL 065.401 Love in an Age of Cynicism

fall 2021

ENGL 102.401 Introduction to Psychoanalysis

ENGL 259.401 Truth and Lies in Literature and Film

spring 2021

ENGL 059.401 T.S. Eliot's War: The Waste Land Before and After

ENGL 259.401 Modernist Fashion, Literature and Theory

fall 2020

ENGL 102.401 Introduction to Psychoanalysis

ENGL 705.401 Laughtears

fall 2019

ENGL 065.001 Love in an Age of Cynicism

spring 2019

ENGL 094.402 Intro to Psychoanalysis of Literature and Film

ENGL 294.402 Theory as the Letter B: What do Badiou, Bakhtin, Barthes, Benjamin, Beauvoir, Borges and Butler have in common?

fall 2018

ENGL 059.401 All of Beckett

ENGL 601.401 History of Literature and Theory

spring 2018

ENGL 259.401 Modernism and the Theory of Fashion

ENGL 295.401 Parallel Histories: Psychoanalysis and Film

fall 2017

ENGL 094.401 Main Concepts of Literary and Cultural Theory for Beginners

ENGL 259.401 1922, The Year of Modernist Masterpieces

spring 2017

ENGL 016.303 JM Coetzee: From Africa to Australia

ENGL 259.401 Beckett and Kafka

fall 2016

ENGL 102.401 From the Uncanny to the Horror: Literature, Film, and Psychoanalysis

ENGL 259.301 T.S. Eliot's Waste Land

spring 2016

ENGL 102.404 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Love in an Age of Cynicism

ENGL 292.402 Psychoanalysis, Literature, and Film: Culture and Psychoanalysis

fall 2015

ENGL 259.301 Beckett, the Late Modernist

ENGL 294.301 Theory as the Letter B

spring 2015

ENGL 259.301 Modernisms: 1922/2022

ENGL 292.403 Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film

fall 2014

ENGL 094.401 Introduction to Literary and Cultual Theory

ENGL 361.401 The Colors of Literature

fall 2013

ENGL 094.401 Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory

ENGL 358.301 Reading Joyce

spring 2013

ENGL 259.301 Joyce and Kafka

ENGL 359.301 Modernism and the Theory of Fashion

fall 2012

ENGL 094.401 Introduction to Literary Theory

ENGL 790.402 Return to Lacan

spring 2012

ENGL 094.402 Theory as the Letter "B"

ENGL 258.301 Ulysses

fall 2011

ENGL 016.302 The Colors of Literature Part I: Black and Blue

ENGL 592.301 Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet

spring 2011

ENGL 094.401 Global Theory: An Introduction

ENGL 259.401 Joyce with Kafka

fall 2010

ENGL 394.401 The Human Animal

ENGL 600.301 Proseminar on Literary Theory

fall 2009

ENGL 094.401 Introduction to Literary Theory

ENGL 258.301 Reading James Joyce

spring 2009

ENGL 259.401 Modernism and the Theory of Fashion

ENGL 359.301 Lies in Literature and Politics

fall 2008

ENGL 258.301 Reading Joyce

ENGL 768.301 Joyce and Proust

spring 2008

ENGL 257.301 Reading Joyce

fall 2007

ENGL 094.401 Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory

ENGL 591.401 Excessive Form: Modernism and Formalism

fall 2005

ENGL 094.401 Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory

ENGL 294.401 New Materialisms and New Mythologies: Barthes, Benjamin, Bataille, Blanchot

spring 2005

ENGL 094.401 Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory

ENGL 790.401 Hegel and After

fall 2004

ENGL 059.401 Modernisms and Modernities

ENGL 571.401 History of Literary Theory

spring 2004

ENGL 204.401 Literary Theory:

ENGL 210.401 Modernism and Psychoanalysis

ENGL 571.640 Freud and After

fall 2003

ENGL 304.401 1913

ENGL 600.301 Proseminar

spring 2003

ENGL 204.401 Literary Theory

ENGL 790.401 Giving the Gift in Theory and Literary History

fall 2002

ENGL 210.401 Modernist Heroes

ENGL 304.401 Student: Jacqueline Rogozinski

ENGL 404.640 Engaging Contemporary Art

spring 2002

ENGL 204.401 Literary Theory

ENGL 592.640 The Novel After the Death of the Novel

fall 2001

ENGL 210.401 Modernism

ENGL 261.301 Topics Modern British Literature

ENGL 600.301 Proseminar

spring 2001

ENGL 104.401 The Twentieth Century

ENGL 773.401 The Modernist Hero in the age of the

fall 2000

ENGL 204.401 Literary Theory

ENGL 571.401 Literary Theory

spring 2000

ENGL 104.401 The Twentieth Century

ENGL 773.401 The Hard and Soft in Modernism

spring 1999

ENGL 204.401 Literary Theory

ENGL 265.301 Topics in Modern British Novel

fall 1998

ENGL 095.401 Intro to Cultural Studies

ENGL 571.640 Freud and After

spring 1998

ENGL 065.001 Twentieth-Century British Novel

fall 1997

ENGL 204.401 Literary Theory

ENGL 210.401 Modernism

spring 1997

ENGL 061.001 20th Century British Lit.

ENGL 095.401 Introduction to Cultural Studies

ENGL 571.601 Freud and After(from Freud to Lacan)

fall 1996

ENGL 204.401 Literary Theory

ENGL 571.401 Literary Theory

spring 1995

ENGL 065.001 20th Century British Novel

ENGL 261.301 Topics in Modern British Literature