Since 1981, the Critical Theory Institute has sponsored an annual lecture series, named in honor of René Wellek (Yale University), whose library of works in critical theory is housed in Langson Library at the University of California, Irvine.

Each year, we have invited an internationally distinguished critical theorist to visit the campus to deliver a series of three lectures in which he or she develops his or her critical position and relates it to the contemporary theoretical scene. Each set of lectures is generally published in our Wellek Library Lecture Series.

To the right is a chronological list of past and upcoming Wellek Library Lectures.

Dr. Eddie Yeghiayan’s Wellek Library Lecturer Bibliographies page provides more information concerning the individual lectures as presented, as well as links to the comprehensive bibliographies he has prepared for each speaker.

Search The Wellek Library Lectures Series Archive (1981-2002)

The Wellek Library Lectures were generously supported by Dr. Michael Koehn from 2001 to 2005.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation, University of California, Irvine)
May 2010

Rosalyn Deutsche (Art History, Barnard College)
"Hiroshima after Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War"
May 2009
Bibliography

Joan W. Scott (Harold F. Linder Professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
"Politics and Academic Freedom"
May 2008
Bibliography

Elizabeth Grosz (Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers, The State Univerisity of New Jersey, New Brunswick)
"Chaos, Territory, Art"
May 2007
Bibliography

Talal Asad (Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center)
"Thinking about Suicide Bombing"
May, 2006
Bibliography

David Harvey (Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center)
"Geographical Knowledges/Political Powers"
May, 2005
Bibliography

Achille Mbembe (Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand)
"The Political Life of Sovereignty"
October, 2004
Bibliography

Angela Davis (History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz)
"Lectures on Abolition"
May 2003
Bibliography

Paul Gilroy (Sociology & African American Studies, Yale U)
“Elements of Post-colonial melancholia”
May 2002
Bibliography

Homi Bhabha (English & Afro-American Studies, Harvard U)
“The Quasi-Colonial: Scrambled Eggs and a Dish of Rice”
November 2001
Bibliography

Gayatri Spivak (English and Comparative Literature, Columbia)
“The New Comparative Literature.” 2000
Bibliography

Jean Baudrillard
“The VItal Illusion.” 1999
Bibliography

Judith Butler (Rhetoric, UC, Berkeley)
“Antigone's Claim: Kinship, Aberration and Psychoanalysis.” 1998
Bibliography

Harry Harootunian (East Asian Studies, History, New York University)
“History's Disquiet: Modernity and Everyday Life.” 1997
Bibliography

Étienne Balibar (Philosophie, Politique et Morale, U. Paris-X, Nanterre)
“On Politics and History: Presence, Cruelty and the Universals.” 1996
Bibliography

Rosalind Krauss (Art History, Columbia)
“Formless: A Feat.” 1995
Bibliography

Wolfgang Iser (English & Comparative Literature, UC Irvine)
“Variables of Interpretation: Iterations of Translatability.” 1994
Bibliography

Evelyn Fox Keller (Rutgers)
“Metaphors of Twentieth- Century Biology.” 1993.
Bibliography

Geoffrey Hartman (English and Comparative Literature, Yale)
“Three on ‘Culture.’” 1992.
Bibliography

Fredric Jameson (Literature, Critical Theory, Duke)
“The Constraints of the Postmodern.” 1991
Bibliography

Hélène Cixous (Writer and Professor, U. Paris, VIII)
“Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing.” 1990
Bibliography

Edward Said (English, Columbia)
“Musical Elaborations.” 1989
Bibliography

Murray Krieger (English and Comparative Literature, UC Irvine)
“A Reopening of Closure: Organicism Against Itself.” 1988
Bibliography

Louis Marin (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
“Pascalian Propositions for Today.” 1987
Bibliography

Jean-François Lyotard (French & Italian, UC Irvine)
“The Law, the Form, the Event.” 1986
Bibliography

J. Hillis Miller (English and Comparative Literature, Yale)
“The Ethics of Reading.” 1985
Bibliography

Jacques Derrida (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales)
“Mémoires: Three Lectures for Paul de Man.” 1984
Bibliography
Bibliography of Paul de Man's work

Frank Kermode (Fellow, King’s College, Cambridge; Visiting Profession Columbia U)
“Forms of Attention.” 1983

Perry Anderson (Historian, Historical Sociologist; Editor, New Left Review)
“In the Tracks of Historical Materialism.” 1982

Harold Bloom (English and Comparative Literature, Yale) [or Humanities]
“The Breaking of the Vessels: In Defense of Antithetical Criticism.” 1981