Jonathan Flatley
Jonathan Flatley
Research interest(s)/area of expertise
Modern and contemporary literature and culture; modern and contemporary art; African American literature; Russian/Soviet art/film/literature; queer theory; aesthetic theory; affect theory; Marxism and Marxist theory; Andy Warhol. I teach undergraduate classes on modern literature, art and culture, and in African American studies, cultural studies and environmental humanities. At the graduate level, I teach a range of classes in aesthetic theory, queer theory, modern and contemporary literature and media.
Research
I write about the relationship between politics and aesthetics. I am especially interested in the ways that art and literature can represent and produce political feelings. I am currently finishing *Black Leninism: How Revolutionary Counter-Moods Are Made,* a book about Black group formation, the moments when Black people come together as a group for whom collective action seems urgent, obvious, and vital, and when victory over the forces of white supremacy seems possible. During the 2022-2023 academic year, I will be the Clark / Oakley fellow at the Clark Art Institute and WIlliams College. While there, I will be working on a new book project about liking and being like trees.
Education
- Ph.D. Duke University, Graduate Program In Literature, 1996
- B.A. Amherst College, 1989
Awards and grants
- 2019: Wayne State University Distinguished Faculty Fellowship
- 2019: Wayne State University Board of Governors Faculty Recognition Award
- 2018: Humanities Center (WSU) Summer Research Fellowship2017: Marilyn Williamson Endowed Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, Wayne State University Humanities Center
- 2017: Tamiment Library (NYU) Cold War Center Travel Grant
- 2014: Wayne State Research Enhancement Proposal Grant (REP) for “Black Leninism”
- 2011: Wayne State Humanities Center Summer Research Fellowship
- 2010: Wayne State University Board of Governors Faculty Recognition Award
- 2010: Career Development Chair Award, Wayne State University
- 2005: University Research Grant, Wayne State University
- 2004: Wayne State Humanities Center Summer Research Fellowship
- 2001: Fulbright Fellowship, Moscow, Russia
- 1990-95: Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities
Selected publications
Books
- Like Andy Warhol (University of Chicago Press, 2017)
- Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (Harvard University Press, 2008)
Recent essays
- “Unknown Parabolas” Chelovek (Moscow: Institute of Philosophy), Special Issue in honor of Valery Podoroga.
https://chelovek.iph.ras.ru/index - “Picturing the World of the Communist Black International,” The Wayland Rudd Project, Yevgeny Fiks (New York: Ugly Duckling Press, December 2020). Fall 2021.
- “My Hustler” and “My Hustler II,” Catalogue Raisonne of the Films of Andy Warhol (New York: Whitney Museum), 2021.
- “’Beaten, But Unbeatable’: Langston Hughes’s Black Leninism,” Comintern Aesthetics, ed. Amelia Glaser and Steven Lee, University of Toronto Press, Spring 2019
- “What is a Revolutionary Setting?” Cluster on Setting on the Modernism / Modernity Print Plus platform, ed. Hannah Freed-Thall and Dora Zhang, Winter 2017
- “Lenin’s Affect Theory,” Siniy Divan, Moscow, Winter 2017
- “Reading for Mood,” Representations 140 (Fall 2017), a special issue on “Fallacies”
- “Refreshments of Revolutionary Mood,” Literary/Liberal Entanglements: Toward a Literary History for the Twenty-First Century, ed. Corinne Harol and Mark Simpson, University of Toronto Press, Fall 2017
Recent shorter pieces
- “Liking Andy Warhol: An Interview With Jonathan Flatley,” by Felix Bernstein, Los Angeles Review of Books, July 20, 2018
- “’A Thousand Years’ of Zoe Leonard,” Public Books, June 15, 2018
- “(Radio On!)” Avidly, A Los Angeles Review of Books Channel, January 24 2017
Edited volumes
- “1968 Decentered.” Co-editor, with Robert Bird. South Atlantic Quarterly Spring 2020
- “Andy Warhol.” Co-editor, with Anthony E. Grudin. Special issue. Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, 56.3. (Summer 2014)
- “Disco.” Co-editor, with Charles Kronengold. Special issue. Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, 50.1 (Winter, 2008)
- Pop Out: Queer Warhol. Co- Editor with Jennifer Doyle and José Muñoz. Duke University Press, 1996
Courses taught by Jonathan Flatley
Spring-Summer Term 2024 (future)
Winter Term 2024 (current)
- ENG2390 - Introduction to African-American Literature: Writing about Texts
- AFS2390 - Introduction to African-American Literature: Writing about Texts
- ENG5035 - Topics in Gender and Sexuality Studies
- GSW5035 - Topics in Gender and Sexuality Studies