Professor Christopher Breu
Professor
English
-1.jpg?auto=format&w=150&h=225&crop=faces&fit=crop&fm=jpeg&q=90)
Office
STV Stevenson Hall 405
Office Hours
Fall 2020 M, W 2-3pm or by appointment.
Office Phone
Email
- About
- Education
- Awards & Honors
- Research
Biography
I am co-editor of Noir Affect (Fordham 2020), a recent special issue of Symploke on Materialisms and author of Insistence of the Material: Literature in the Age of Biopolitics (Minnesota 2014) and Hard-Boiled Masculinities (Minnesota 2005).
Current Courses
100.002Introduction To English Studies
100.003Introduction To English Studies
125.007Literary Narrative
591.001Practicum (Internship) In College Teaching
599.006Research And Dissertation
300.001Senior Seminar
300.002Senior Seminar
401.001Introduction To Graduate Study
284.001Poetry
599.006Research And Dissertation
Teaching Interests & Areas
Cultural and Critical Theory, American Literature 1900 to the Present, American Popular Culture, Literature and Culture in a Global Context, Gender and Sexuality
Research Interests & Areas
Materialism, Biopolitics, Marxism, Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Literature, Popular Culture, Cultural and Critical Theory, Gender and Sexuality
Ph D Literature
University of California at Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California
BA English Literature
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois
Janice Neuleib Award for outstanding scholarship in a calendar year
Illinois State University
2018
Invited Visiting Professorship
University of Paderborn
2018
University Outstanding Research Award
2017
Outstanding Graduate Mentor
Department of English, Illinois State University
2016
College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Researcher Award
Illinois State University CAS
2016
College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Researcher Award
Illinois State University CAS
2015
Reading Group Leader, On-line Marx Reading Group
New Center for Research & Practice
2015
Research Sabbatical
Illinois State University
2014
Teaching Award: Outstanding College Teacher Award. College of Arts and Sciences. Illinois State University. 2012.
2012
Teaching Awards: Lambda Chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society
Sigma Tau Delta
2011
Book Review
Breu, C. Review of Erin E. Edwards, The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the Posthumous (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2018); Cristin Ellis, Antebellum Posthumous: Race and Materiality in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Fordham UP, 2018); David Herman, Narratology beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2018). American Literature 92.2 (2020): 384-387.
Breu, C. “The New Reification, or Quotidian Materialism.” Review of Bill Brown, Other Things; Matthew Mullins, Postmodernism in Pieces: Materializing the Social in U.S. Fiction; Andrew Epstein, Attention Equals Life: The Pursuit of the Everyday in Contemporary Poetry and Culture; Elizabeth Chin, My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries. American Literary History 30.1 (2018): 188-199.
Breu, C. Review of Erik Dussere, America is Elsewhere: The Noir Tradition in the Age of Consumer Culture. Modern Fiction Studies 62.1 (2016): 158-161.
Breu, C. The Neoliberal University.” A review of Jeffrey Di Leo, Corporate Humanities in Higher Education: Moving beyond the Neoliberal Academy. Postmodern Culture 26.3 (2016)
Breu, C. Review of Paul Jay, The Humanities “Crisis” and the Future of Literary Studies. College Literature 42.2 (2015): 348-351.
Book, Authored
Breu, C. Insistence of the Material: Literature in the Age of Biopolitics. University of Minnesota Press (2014): 264.
Breu, C., & Hatmaker, E. The Flexible Mr. Ripley: Noir Historicism and Transnational Masculinity in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Kevin Floyd and Stefan Horlacher (EDs), Between the National and the Transnational, 1945-1980: Masculinities in British and American Literature between World War II and Thatcher/Reagan. Ashgate (2013)
Book, Chapter
Breu, C. Affect. Jespér Gulddal, Stewart King, and Andrew Pepper (EDs), The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction. Routledge (2020)
Breu, C. After Anti-Foundationalism: Ten Theses on the Limits of Anti-Theory. What’s Wrong with Anti Theory?. Bloomsbury Press (2020): 251-272.
Breu, C. Infrastructure and Biopolitics. Jeffrey di Leo and Peter Hitchcock (EDs), Biotheory: Life and Death after Capitalism. Routledge (2020)
Breu, C., & Hatmaker, E. Introduction: Dark Passages. Noir Affect. Fordham University Press (2020): 1-27.
Breu, C. Public Violence as Private Pathology: Noir Affect in The End of the Primitive. Noir Affect. Fordham University Press (2020): 59-77.
Book, Edited
Breu, C., & Hatmaker, E. Noir Affect. Fordham University Press (2020)
Journal Article
Breu, C. Utopian Trade: A Minimal Defense of Intellectual Exchange. Symplokē 27.1-2 (2019): 387-391.
Breu, C. Embodied Ecologies and Metafictional Musings: Writing Intersex in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex. The Goose: A Journal of the Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada (2018)
Breu, C. The Humanities as Contradiction: Against the New Enclosures. Humanities 7.3 (2018)
Breu, C. Identity vs. Embodiment: A Materialist Rethinking of Intersex and Queerness. Symploke 24.1 (2017): 65-80.
Breu, C. Of Markets and Materiality: Financialization and the Limits of the Subject. Cultural Critique 96 (2017): 154-177.
Textbook, New
Breu, C. Hard-Boiled Masculinities. University of Minnesota Press (2005)
Breu, C. Practicing Disruptive Economics: The Remapping of the Economic Space of the Americas in Maryse Condé's Moi, Tituba, Sorcière...Noire de Salem. Ruth Hsu, Cynthia Franklin, Suzanne Kosanke. (EDs), Re-Placing America: Conversations and Contestations. Hawaii UP (2000): 272-290..
Presentations
An Immodest Proposal: Confronting the Alt-Ac Trend in American Studies Grad Programs. American Studies Association Annual Meeting. (2016)
Concluding Roundtable. Objects of Refuge/Refuge of Objects Conference. Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies. (2016)
The Power of Things: Biopolitics and Material Culture. Invited Presentation and Workshop at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies. (2016)
Almanac of the Living: Materiality and Thanatopolitics in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.. American Studies Association Annual Meeting. American Studies Association Annual Meeting. (2011)
Globalization and Education in the Twenty-First Century.. Illinois Central College In-Service Conference, “Globalization Changing Minds Changing the World.. Illinois Central College In-Service Conference, “Globalization Changing Minds Changing the World.. (2011)
The Insistence of the Material: Theorizing Materiality and Biopolitics in the Age of Globalization.. Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition. McMaster University. Ontario, Canad. (2011)
The Novel Enfleshed: Naked Lunch and the Literature of Materiality. Beat Studies Association Special Session, Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900.. Beat Studies Association Special Session, Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900.. (2011)
The Overmedicalized Body vs. The Neglected Body: Theorizing Human Embodiment in the Age of Globalization.. Global Health Office: Sixth Lecture Series, Faculty of Health Sciences. McMaster University, Ontario. University, Ontario, Canada. (2011)
The Possible Futures of Crime Fiction Studies. Inaugural Crime Fiction Panel. American Literature Association Annual Meeting. Inaugural Crime Fiction Panel. American Literature Association Annual Meeting. (2011)
Time and Biopolitics. Workshop on Time, Globalization, and the Human Condition. nstitute on Globalization and the Human Condition. (2011)