Fredric Jameson, Knut Schmidt Nielsen Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature

Fredric Jameson is currently Professor of Comparative Literature, Professor of Romance Studies (French), and Director of the Institute for Critical Theory. He received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1959 and taught at Harvard, Yale, and the University of California before coming to Duke in 1985.

He is the author many books, including Marxism and Form (1971), The Political Unconscious (1981), and Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1990, recipient of the MLA Lowell Award).  His more recent works include The Antinomies of Realism (2013, recipient of the Truman Capote Award), The Ancients and the Postmoderns (2015), Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality (2016), The Benjamin Files (2020), and Allegory and Ideology (2019). 

Among Professor Jameson's ongoing research concerns is the need to analyze literature as an encoding of political and social imperatives, and the interpretation of modernist and postmodernist assumptions through a rethinking of Marxist methodology.

Jameson's most frequently taught courses cover Marxism and psychoanalysis, existentialism, the Frankfurt School, modern french theory, modernist literature and film, and the 19th century novel.

He received the 2008 Holberg Prize and the 2011 MLA Lifetime Achievement Award for his scholarship.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	101 Friedl Bldg, 1316 Campus Drive Box 90670, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone:	(919) 684-4155
Email Address:
Web Pages:	https://sites.duke.edu/criticaltheory/ https://literature.duke.edu/people/fredric-jameson

Teaching (Spring 2023):

• LIT 690-7.01, SPECIAL TOPICS LIT/HST Synopsis

  Friedl Bdg 204, TuTh 10:15 AM-11:30 AM

Office Hours:

Thursdays 11:45am-1:45pm via Skype.

Education:

Ph.D.	Yale University	1959
M.A.	Yale University	1956
B.A.	Haverford College	1954

Specialties:

French
Modern and Contemporary
European Studies
Globalization, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity
Modernity and Modernism
Space Studies, Urban Studies
Critical Theory, Philosophy
Film, Media and Visual Studies
Comparative Studies: Translation, Travel Narratives, Trans-Culturality
Marxism

Research Interests:

Among Professor Jameson's ongoing concerns is the need to analyze literature as an encoding of political and social imperatives, and the interpretation of modernist and postmodernist assumptions through a rethinking of Marxist methodology. His most frequently taught courses cover modernist literature and cinema, Marx and Freud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, and Zizek, as well as the modern French novel and cinema, and the Frankfurt School. Professor Jameson is also the author many books, including Marxism and Form (1971), The Political Unconscious (1981), and Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1990, recipient of the MLA Lowell Award). His more recent works include Valences of the Dialectic (2009), The Antinomies of Realism (2013, recipient of the Truman Capote Award), and The Ancients and the Postmoderns (2015).

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

1. Jameson, F, Criticism and Categories, Pmla, vol. 137 no. 3 (May, 2022), pp. 563-567 [doi]
2. Jameson, FR, On levels and categories, Historical Materialism, vol. 29 no. 1 (January, 2021), pp. 221-233 [doi]  [abs]
3. Said, E; Jameson, F; Ahmad, A, Orientalism, Postmodernity, and the Problem with Capitalist Culture, in Capitalism and Its Uncertain Future (January, 2021), pp. 169-178, ISBN 9781000429541 [doi]  [abs]
4. Jameson, F, Aesthetics today, Clcweb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 22 no. 3 (January, 2020), pp. 1-4 [doi]
5. Jameson, F, On Literary and Cultural Import-Substitution in the Third World: The Case of the Testimonio, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie no. 165 (2020), pp. 58-74