The Department of English
invites you to a
Workshop on Publishing:
Writing Between Disciplines
with
Libby Anker, PhD
In this workshop, Professor Libby Anker invites participants to consider how best to
negotiate multiple audiences for their scholarly work. Attendees are requested to arrive with
an idea for or writing begun on an article or book project that may speak to more than one
disciplinary audience. This workshop is geared toward both faculty and graduate students.
Professor Anker's research and teaching interests are at the intersection of political theory,
critical theory, cultural analysis, and media studies. She publishes widely in political theory,
American studies, film and media studies, and beyond. Her recent book Orgies of Feeling:
Melodrama and the Poitics of Freedom (Duke, 2014) examines the role of melodrama in US
politics. Melodrama is a powerful political discourse that intensifies suffering and galvanizes
national sentiment to legitimate state violence. Orgies of Feeling reframes political theories of
sovereignty, freedom, and power by analyzing the work of melodrama and affect in the
War on Terror, neoliberal politics, Hollywood film, and post-Marxist critical theory.
Building on Friedrich Nietzsche's notion of "orgies of feeling," in which overwhelming
emotions displace commonplace experiences of powerlessness onto a dramatic story of
injured freedom, melodrama animates desires for unconstrained freedom in devitalized
citizens. Orgies of Feeling was a finalist for the 2015 Romero Prize for the Best First Book in
American Studies, awarded annually by the American Studies Association, and has been
widely reviewed in both scholarly and popular media.
Professor Anker is Associate Professor of American Studies and Political Science at George
Washington University.
4:30 pm, Wednesday May 11
Room 204A, Fisk Hall