"Outrage": The 9th Annual Sedgwick Memorial Lecture by Robyn Wiegman

Outrage. Is it an affect? An agency? A meme? A vehicle for media manipulation? Should we relish it or regret it? Does it offer political instruction or is it mainly an instrument of democratic destruction? This talk works through these questions, less to quiet their urgency than to explore what it means to figure outrage as the condition of the political present. Robyn Wiegman is Professor of Literature and Women's Studies and formerly the Margaret Taylor Smith Director of Women's Studies at Duke University, from 2001-2007. She earned her Ph.D. in American Literature at the University of Washington in 1988 and has taught at Syracuse University, Indiana University, and the University of California, Irvine. Her publications include two monographs---Object Lessons (2012) and American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender (1995)---and five edited collections---Who Can Speak: Identity and Critical Authority (1995), Feminism Beside Itself (1995), AIDS and the National Body (1997), The Futures of American Studies (2002), and Women's Studies on Its Own (2002). Wiegman's research interests include feminist theory, queer theory, American Studies, critical race theory, and film and media studies. Pre-reception at 5pm, Lecture at 6pm.