Robert Barsky's Vanderbilt Site

Journal Work

FREN294 Zola: Naturalist to Activism

ENGL244, Reading Fiction as Theory

Maymester in Montreal 2009

ENG118w Literature of Escape and Travel

Robert Barsky's Vanderbilt Website
 
periodistadigital, Agencia EFE, lunes, 10 de octubre 2005
Bob's sons, Tristan and Ben: scubadiving, basketball, ...; Bob's wife Marsha's new contemporary dance company called Company Rose, and her son Kai.
Some recent projects
Curriculum vitae
Books and Journals

The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower, Cambridge; London: The MIT Press, 2007; paperback 2009.

Table of Contents and sample chapters

Quests Beyond the Ivory Tower:  Public Intellectuals, Academia and the Media, Edited by Saleem H. Ali and Robert Barsky, a special issue of AmeriQuests, 2006. 

Introduction by Ali and Barsky

Quebec and Canada in the Americas, edited by Robert Barsky, as special issue of AmeriQuests, 2006.

Introduction by Barsky

Marc Angenot and the Scandal of History, a special issue of the Yale Journal of Criticism that features articles by Marc Angenot, Robert Barsky, Fredric Jameson, Marie-Christine Leps, Michel Pierssens, Darko Suvin. 2004. 

Introduction to Marc Angenot and the Scandal of History

Workers Councils, by Anton Pannekoek. A new and revised edition, edited and with comments by Robert Barsky, interviews with Noam Chomsky, Ken Coates and Peter Hitchcock, and a republication of a seminal piece by Paul Mattick. London/SF: AK Press, 2002.

Introduction to Workers Councils including a discussion between Chomsky and Barsky

Arguing and Justifying: Assessing the Convention Refugee Choice of Moment, Motive and Host Country. Aldershot; Burlington; Sydney; Singapore: Ashgate, 2001.

Paris-SubStance-America. A special issue of SubStance devoted to French theory. 2001.

Introduction à la théorie littéraire. Quebec: Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1997. 

Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge; London: MIT Press, 1997, 1998.

Constructing a Productive Other: Discourse Theory and the Convention Refugee Hearing, Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1994.

Bakhtin and Otherness. A special issue of Discours social/Social Discourse edited by Robert Barsky and Michael Holquist, 1991.

Introduction to Bakhtin and Otherness

Translation:

Philosophy and the Passions: Toward a History of Human Nature, Penn State Press, 2000, Robert Barsky's translation and introduction of Michel Meyer's Le Philosophe et les passions (Paris: Livres de poche).

Introduction to Philosophy and the Passions


Forthcoming book:

Zellig Harris’s America: Linguistics, Radical Politics and Zionism in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge; London: The MIT Press, 2010.

 
Research Areas and Selected Publications
1. Literary and Language Theory; Literature and Law

2. Refugee, Border and Migration Studies

3. The Milieus of Noam Chomsky and Zellig Harris
4. Selected Translations
  • with Tristan Barsky, La Vie de Mohamet, vue par Aisha, une de ses femmes, forthcoming 2009.
  • “What Can Literature do? From Literary Sociocriticism to a Critique of Social Discourse” by Marc Angenot, Yale Journal of Criticism 17.2 (Fall 2004): 217-232.
  •  “A State of Social Discourse” by Michel Pierssens, Yale Journal of Criticism, 17.2 (Fall 2004): 255-262.
  •  Denise Helly, “Social cohesion and Ethnic Minorities,” for the Canadian Journal of Anthropology and Sociology (2003).
  • Denise Helly, “Ethnic and National Minorities” for the Canadian Journal of Anthropology and Sociology (2002).
  • Philosophy and the Passions, a translation (with a preface, introduction and bibliography) of Le Philosophe et les Passions (Livre de Poche) for Penn State Press Literature and Philosophy Series, dir. Anthony Cascardi, 2000..
  •  “Rhetoric and the Theory of Argument” by Michel Meyer. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 196.2 (1996): 325-358.
  •  “The Problematological Interpretation of the Cogito: Is There a Distinctive Argumentative Structure in The Meditations?” by Michel Meyer. Revue internationale de Philosophie 195 (1996): 23-49.
  •  “The Representamen, The Sign and the Abduction”, by Jean Fisette, Pierce Papers. Toronto Semiotic Circle, 1996.
  •  “The Mirror, The Beaker and the Touchstone: or, What Can Literature Do For Science?” by Jean Marc Lévy Leblond, SubStance 71/72: 1 26.
  •  “The Political Regulation of Cultural Plurality: Foundations and Principles,” by Denise Helly, for Canadian Ethnic Studies / Études Ethniques au Canada 25.2 (1993): 15 35.
  •  [with Sydney Mintz] “Introduction” Chinese Emigration: The Cuba Commission Report. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, pp. 1 30.
  •  [with Dominique Michaud] “Bakhtin and Postmodernism: An Unexpected Encounter. Notes on Jean-Paul Goude’s ‘Marseillaise’,” by Régine Robin. Discours social / Social Discourse 3.1-2 (1991): 229 232.
  •  “Following the Thread,” by Marc Angenot. Science Fiction Studies, 16.2 (July 1989): 218 222.

5. Selected reviews

  • Review of Michael Welch, Scapegoats of September the 11th: Hate Crimes and State Crimes in the War on Terror, for Le travail/Labor, 2008.
  • Review of Jonah Raskin, American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' and the Making of the Beat Generation, University of California Press, 2004, for AmeriQuests 1.2, 2006.
  • Review of Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls, in Journal of Refugee Studies 2001, 14, 205-7.
  • Review of Wai Chee Dimock, Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy. University of California Press, 1997 [1996], for Literary Research 31, 1999.
  • Review of Richard A. Posner, Law and Literature, Revised and Enlarged Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1998, for Literary Research 30, 1999.
  • Review of Theodore Ziolkowski, The Mirror of Justice: Literary Reflections of Legal Crises. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, for Literary Research 29, 1998.
  • Review of Robin West, Caring for Justice. New York University Press, 1997, “The Limits of Caring in Justice” for Literary Research 16.32 (1999): 233-239.
  • Review of Michael Gardiner, The Dialogics of Critique: M.M. Bakhtin and the Theory of Ideology, for Slavic Review 53.1 (Spring 1994): 306-308.
  • Review of Peter Hitchcock, The Dialogics of the Oppressed. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1992. for Discours social/Social Discourse 6.3-4, (1994).
  • Review of Stephen L. White, The Unity of the Self. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, for Discours social/Social Discourse 5.3 4 (1993): 192-194.
  • Review of M. Pierrette Malcuzynski. Entre-Dialogues avec Bakhtin, for Slavic Review 53.4 (Winter 1994): 1198-1199.
  • Review of Critical Studies II, 1 2, 1990: Mikhail Bakhtin and the Epistemology of Discourse, Ed. Clive Thomson, for Semiotic Inquiry 12.3.
  • Review of Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. Harvard UP, 1981, for Modern Language Quarterly 52.4, December 1991, pp. 466-468.
  • Review of Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson and Edward Said, Nationalism, Colonialism, Literature. Minnesota: U Minnesota P, 1990, for Discours Social / Social Discourse 4.1 2, pp. 179-180.
  • Review of Cohan, Stevan and Linda M. Shires. Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction. NY: Routledge, 1988, for Literary Research 18, pp. 16-17.
  • Review of Chamberlain, Daniel Frank, Narrative Perspective in Fiction: A Phenomenological Mediation of Reader, Text, and World. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1990, for Literary Research 18, p.14.
  • Review of Literature, Language and Politics, Ed. Betty Jean Craige. Athens & London: U of Georgia P, 1988, for Literary Research 14 15, pp. 14-15.  
  • Review of George Levine, Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1988, for Literary Research 13 pp. 25-26.
  • Review of Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard. Paul Dumouchel, Ed. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988, for Literary Research 11, pp. 12-13.
  • Review of Buitenhuis, Peter. The Great War of Words: British, American and Canadian Propaganda and Fiction, 1914-1933. Vancouver: U of BC P, 1987, for Literary Research 11, pp. 15-16.
  • Review of Dick, Susan et al. Essays for Richard Ellman: Omnium Gatherum. Montréal: McGill UP, 1989, for Discours social/Social Discourse Vol. 2, 4 pp. 207-208.
  • Review of Morton Beiser, Strangers at the Gate: The Boat People's First Ten Years in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999 for Asian Pacific Migration Journal 9.3 2000, 387-388.
  • Review of Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls. By Teresa Hayter. London; Sterling, Virginia: Pluto Press, 2000, for the Oxford Journal of Refugee Studies, 2001.
  • Review of Joe Thomas, Ethnocide: A Cultural Narrative of Refugee Detention in Hong Kong. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999 for Oxford Journal of Refugee Studies, 2000.
Courses at Vanderbilt

Courses summer 2009

Maymester in Montreal ENGL272: Throughout this century, Montréal has also been variously described as a “paradise,” a “den of iniquity,” or a “city of ill-repute” which was run by local mafias and criminals. This is the city where jazz exploded due to the unlikely combination of railway porters and prohibition in the United States, leading Montréal to become the very seat of jazz for a period in the 1930s and 40s (and every summer it plays host to the world’s largest jazz festival). Alongside the jazz came an appetite for late nights, good food, and a general hedonism that inevitably came up against the heavy conservatism of the Quebec Church. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Montreal was the site of a “quiet revolution” in the 1960s, inspired by the artwork of Borduas and signatories of the “Global Refusal,” a manifesto of modern art, as well as a more vocal upheaval by the “Liberation Front of Quebec in the 1960s and 70s. From this perspective it is also not surprising that Montreal has become a key international center for work in Social Justice.

ENGL118W Escape into literature! This summer course will examine literatures of exotic travel and escapism. In examining these texts, we’ll discuss the complex relationship that has emerged between those ‘literary classics’ considered essential reading for any liberal arts student and the ways in which readers can be led through their exotic adventures into activities that are specifically outlawed in their own culture, or which have been written by authors who would be considered ‘outlaws’ in the society that now reveres their work. A range of issues flow from these considerations, including the ways in which travels draw attention to texts and authors, providing them with the audiences and the notoriety to allow them, under certain circumstances, to become ‘classics’. Or the fact that the many contradictions of this tradition points to a deeper ambivalence in our society, indeed in all societies, in the consideration of the relationship between passion and reason. Employing a varied approach that allows students to consider these issues from historical, literary, legal, sociological and philosophical perspectives, and drawing from those texts most often cited in regards to ‘exoticism’ will provide students with ample ways to explore this challenging and creative realm of literary and cultural research.

Courses fall 2009

ENGL 244-01. Critical Theory: "Finding Theories of Laughter, Passion, Recollection and Forgetting in Great Fiction” 'Theory' doesn’t seem critical to most people, unless they can be turned on to the exciting work that is being done on the carnivalesque, the mind/brain relation, the origins of human language, and why it is that we can be so turned on, or upset, or inspired, or shocked, by the stories that are told in literature. In this course we shall read great works of fiction in English that move us to reflect upon the really basic questions about reading, writing, and telling stories, and along the way we’ll be inspired by powerful words to laugh, to cry, to dream and to wonder why fiction is the gateway to the magic of abstract exploration of our minds, and the possible worlds they can create.

FREN 362. Zola: Naturalism to History: This course will introduce students to Emile Zola’s fiction, including examples of work from the long series of novels called Les Rougon Macquart, about a family under the Second Empire. Different facets of Zola’s writings will be discussed, including his method of researching his subject matter, the style of his writing, as well as the "environmental" influences of violence, prostitution, alcoholism and what he described as “the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world.” Students will also be introduced to the idea of studying history through literary texts, with discussions of realism and naturalism.

    Courses previously taught at Vanderbilt University

    New book! Hardcover 2007, and out in paperback in the fall of 2009!
    The Chomsky Effect, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2008.

    For more information, please contact Robert F. Barsky.
    copyright Robert F. Barsky, 2006