English Department

Robin Lydenberg

english department

Robin Lydenberg

Professor

B.A., Barnard College
Ph.D., Cornell University

Carney Hall 430
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467

Phone: 617-552-3731
Fax: 617-552-4220
Email: robin.lydenberg@bc.edu                                         

Academic Profile

Academic specializations: literary theory, psychoanalysis and the arts, development of the novel, and the historical avant-garde.

Courses

Major Publications

  • GONE: Site-specific Works by Dorothy Cross by Robin Lydenberg (McMullen Museum and University of Chicago Press: Boston 2005).
  • Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology: An Interdisciplinary Reader, edited by Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Christina Gilmartin, Robin Lydenberg (Oxford University Press: New York, 1999).
  • William S. Burroughs at the Front:  Critical Reception, 1959-89, edited by Robin Lydenberg and Jennie Skerl. (Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale, 1991).
  • Word Cultures:  Radical Theory and Practice in William S. Burroughs' Fiction, by Robin Lydenberg  (University of Illinois Press: Urbana, 1987).

Articles and Chapters in Books

  • “Duchamp’s Legacy: Aesthetics, Gender and National Identity,” Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender, ed. Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner  (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009): 151-66.
  • “Site as Stage: Dorothy Cross at the Opera,” Scenography International 9 (2007).
    (electronic juried journal: 
  • “Dorothy Cross and the Art of Dispossession,”  CIRCA 112 (Summer 2005): 24-33.
  • “Contemporary Irish Art on the Move: At Home and Abroad with Dorothy Cross,”
    Eire-Ireland 39. 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter 2004/2005):110-35.
  • “From Icon to Index: Some Contemporary visions of the Irish Stone Cottage,” Eire/Land, ed. Vera Kreilkamp (McMullen Museum of Art: Boston, 2003):127-33.
  • "Ways of Seeing: Recent Work by Dorothy Cross," Contemporary (January 2002): 26-31.  
  • "William Burroughs: The Tapes," William S. Burroughs: Time, Place, Word, ed. Eric C. Shoaf (Proividence: John Hay Library, Brown University, October 2000): 26-34.
  • “Dorothy Cross, Beyond Feminism” Eire-Ireland (Fall/Spring 1999):212-26.
  • "Freud's Uncanny  Narratives," PMLA (October 1997),  pp.1072-86.
  • "'Sound identity fading out':  William Burroughs' Tape Experiments," in Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio and the Avant-garde (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), ed. Doug Kahn.
  • "Battambang:  The Unnamable," in Marguerite Duras: The Unspeakable, Essays for Marguerite Duras (Potomac: Scripta Humanica, 1992), ed. Methchild Cranston, pp.
    89-99.  
  • "Points of Intersection," in William S. Burroughs at the Front, co-authored and co-edited with Jennie Skerl (1991).
  • "Risky Pleasures:  Feminism and the Avant-Garde," (review/article on Susan Suleiman's  Subversive Intent), Critical Texts  7.1 (1990) ,  46-53.
  • Review of Nicholas Zurbrugg, Beckett and Proust, in Review of Contemporary Fiction  (Spring, 1989), pp. 253-55.
  • "Engendering Collage: Collaboration and Desire in Dada and Surrealism," in Collage: A Reconsideration  (UMI Press, 1989), ed. Kathryn Hoffman, pp. 271-286.
  • "El Hombre Invisible," The Nation (March 19, 1988), pp. 387-89.  (Review/Article on Burroughs' The Western Lands)  Reprinted in William S. Burroughs at the Front (1991).
  • "Notes from the Orifice: Language and the Body in William Burroughs,"Contemporary Literature,  26:1 (1985), pp. 55-73.
  • "Beyond Good and Evil:  'How-To' Read Naked Lunch,"  Review of Contemporary Fiction,  4:1  (1984), pp. 75-85.
  • "Ghostly Rhetoric:  Ambivalence in Matthew G. Lewis'  The Monk,"  Ariel:  A Journal of International English Literature, 10, No. 2 (1979), 65-78.  (Reprinted in NCCR, forthcoming.)
  • "Borges as a Writer of Parables," International Fiction Review,  6, No. 1  (1979), 31-39.  (Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 13, pp. 111-13.)
  • "Against the Law of Gravity:  Female Adolescence in Isak Dinesen's  Seven Gothic Tales,"  Modern Fiction Studies, 24, No. 4 (1978-79), 521-32.  (Reprinted in Collection of Short Story Criticism,  1992.)
  • "Metaphor and Metamorphosis in Les Chants de Maldoror,"  Esprit Créateur, 18, No. 4 (1978), 3-14.
  • "Gothic Architecture and Fiction:  A Survey of Critical Responses," Centennial Review,  XXII, 1 (1978), 95-109.
  • "Cut-Up:  Negative Poetics in Roland Barthes and William Burroughs," Comparative Literature Studies, XV,  4  (1978),  414-30.
  • "Surviving Lautréamont: The Reader in Les Chants de Maldoror," Esprit Créateur,  XVII,  No. 3  (1977),  211-27. [ Reprinted in French Poetry from the Rennaissance to 1915, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1992)]
  • "Advertising Rhetoric:  Myths of Nature and History,"  Michigan Quarterly Review,  XVII, No. 1 (1978), 65-75.
  • "L'artifice comme technique narrative dans Les Chants de Maldoror," Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht,  X,  No. 2  (1977),  115-29.
  • "Towards an Invisible Commentary," Diacritics, 6 No. 1 (1976), 27-33.

Papers Delivered at Conferences

  • “Research Methods: Working with Visual Material,” invited lecture at Charles V, Anglophone Studies (graduate), Paris, March 2007.
  • “Dorothy Cross: GONE at Boston College,”  Dublin, July 2005, lecture at Boston College Institute of Irish Studies.
  • “Geneologies of Ireland in Dorothy Cross’s Art,” Irish Seminars, Dublin, invited speaker July 2005.
  • “Site as Stage: Dorothy Cross’s site-specific operas,” International Scenography Conference, Amsterdam May, 2005.
  • “Memory, Desire and Loss in the Work of Dorothy Cross,”  Northern Colorado University, invited speaker March 2005.
  • “Visualizing Migration,” paper delivered at International Visual Sociology Association in Southampton, England, July 7-10, 2003.
  • “Geneologies of Ireland in Dorothy Cross’s Art,” Irish Seminars, Dublin, invited speaker July 2005.
  •  “Site as Stage: Dorothy Cross’s site-specific operas,” International Scenography Conference, Amsterdam May, 2005.
  •  “Memory, Desire and Loss in the Work of Dorothy Cross,”  Northern Colorado University, invited speaker March 2005
  • “Visualizing Migration,” paper delivered at International Visual Sociology Association in Southampton, England, July 7-10, 2003.
  • “The Return of the Repressed and the Impossibility of Desire,” paper delivered at “Creativity and the Unconscious,” sponsored by London Institute of Psychoanalysis, July 10-11, 2003, London.
  • "The Banality of Death," paper to be delivered at Warwick University conference, The Invention of Death, June 2001.
  • "Siting/Citing Ireland's Fading History: Dorothy Cross's Site Specific Art Installations," ISAIL international conference at Bath, England, July 2000.
  • "In the Toilet: Art and Politics," Boston College Arts Festival, Spring 2000.
  • "The Fertile Void: History and Language in the Art of Dorothy Cross," Boston College, lecture series related to "Irish Art Now" exhibit at McMullen Museum, November 1999.
  • “The Fertile Void: History and Language in the Art of Dorothy Cross,” International Irish Studies Association, Barcelona, July 1999.
  • “Beyond Feminism?”  Irish Women Writers Conference,
    University College Dublin, May,1999.
  • "Politics and the Uncanny" at meeting of Psychoanalysis and Culture Association, Washington, D.C., November 7-10, 1996.
  • "Science and Narration: the Sexual Theories of Freud and Little Hans,” at Society for the Study of Narrative, Utah, May 1995.  [On Three Essays on the Theory of  Sexuality  and Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy.]
  • “Freud’s Uncanny Narratives,” Society for Study of Narrative, Vancouver, May 1994. [On Freud’s use of interpolated personal narratives in his essay “The Uncanny.”]
  • “Tracking Freud’s Uncanny,” at International Conference on the Fantadstic, SUNY Binhamtom, May 1993. [On theories of the uncanny in feminist theory, popular culture and political theory (Kristeva, Siebers, Bhabha).]
  • "The Emergence of the Uncanny," talk delivered at International Association of Philosophy and Literature in Berkeley, May, 1992.  [On appropriations of the uncanny by psychoanalysis, philosophy and literary theory.]
  •  "Appropriating Magritte," talk delivered at Annual Conference of International Association of Philosophy and Literature (May, 1991) in Montreal.
  •  "Teaching Literary Theory through Painting"  delivered December 14, 1989 at West Chester University as part of a University series on contemporary theory.
  •  "William Burroughs:  Precursor of Contemporary Theory," Northeast Modern Language Association, New Jersey, 1986. 
  •  "Lautréamont and the Labor of  Les Chants," Modern Language Association, Chicago 1985. 
  •  "William Burroughs' Naked Lunch," Conference on Postmodern Culture, Virginia, 1982. 
  •  "How-To Read Naked Lunch," Contemporary Literature of the Americas:  The Writer's World, Puerto Rico 1982.
  • "Isak Dinesen's Gothic Tales,"  Modern Language Association, Chicago, 1977.  
  • "'Celui qui parle:  narrative Voice in Les Chants de Maldoror,"  Nineteenth Century French Studies Colloquium, Indiana , 1977. 
  • "The Reader in Les Chants de Maldoror," Modern Language  Association, San Francisco, 1975.

 Professional Activities

  • Ran interdisciplinary study group on Freud (members from B.C. and B.P.S.I., since Fall 1994). Ended Spring 2000.
  • Member of award committee for Affiliate Scholar fellowship for B.P.S.I.
  • Affiliate Scholar, B.P.S.I., Fall l993.
  • Teach in Radcliffe Graduate Consortium in Womens Studies (1995-99)
  • Occasional manuscript reviewing for university presses and journals and external reviewer for tenure and/or promotions cases