Professor Christopher Breu
Professor
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Office
STV Stevenson Hall 405
Office Hours
Fall 2020 M, W 2-3pm or by appointment.
Office Phone
Email
- About
- Education
- Awards & Honors
- Selected Research
Biography
I am co-editor of Noir Affect (Fordham 2020), a recent special issue of Symploke on Materialisms and author of Insistence of the Material: Literature in the Age of Biopolitics (Minnesota 2014) and Hard-Boiled Masculinities (Minnesota 2005).
Current Courses
ENG 499.006 Independent Research For The Master's Thesis
ENG 286.001 Prose
ENG 599.006 Research And Dissertation
ENG 599.106 Research And Dissertation Final Term
ENG 300.001 Senior Seminar
ENG 300.002 Senior Seminar
ENG 300.003 Senior Seminar
Teaching Interests & Areas
Cultural and Critical Theory, American Literature 1900 to the Present, American Popular Culture, Literature and Culture in a Global Context, Gender and Sexuality
Research Interests & Areas
Materialism, Biopolitics, Marxism, Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Literature, Popular Culture, Cultural and Critical Theory, Gender and Sexuality
Ph D Literature
University of California at Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, California
BA English Literature
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois
Janice Neuleib Award for outstanding scholarship in a calendar year
Illinois State University
2018
Invited Visiting Professorship
University of Paderborn
2018
University Outstanding Research Award
2017
Outstanding Graduate Mentor
Department of English, Illinois State University
2016
College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Researcher Award
Illinois State University CAS
2016
College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Researcher Award
Illinois State University CAS
2015
Reading Group Leader, On-line Marx Reading Group
New Center for Research & Practice
2015
Research Sabbatical
Illinois State University
2014
Teaching Award: Outstanding College Teacher Award. College of Arts and Sciences. Illinois State University. 2012.
2012
Teaching Awards: Lambda Chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society
Sigma Tau Delta
2011
Fulbright Research Chair in Globalization and Cultural Studies
Fulbright Canada/McMaster University
2011
Invited Visiting Professiorship
University of Paderborn
2011
Teaching Awards: Lambda Chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society
Sigma Tau Delta
2009
Teaching Awards: Lambda Chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society
Sigma Tau Delta
2008
ResDean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement. College of Arts and Sciences. Illinois State University. 2006.
College of Arts and Sciences
2006
Teaching Award: Red Tassel Chapter of the Mortar Board
Red Tassel Chapter of Mortar Board
2006
Teaching Award: Teaching Strategy Award Graduating Class of English Education Majors
illinois state university
2006
Teaching Awards: Lambda Chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society
Sigma Tau Delta
2006
Research Award: Nominated by the English Department for the Illinois State University College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Initiative Research Award
illinois state university
2005
Teaching Awards: Lambda Chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society
Sigma Tau Delta
2005
Teaching Award: Illinois State University College of Arts and Sciences, Faculty Teaching Initiative Award
illinois state university
2004
Teaching Awards: Lambda Chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society
Sigma Tau Delta
2004
Teaching Awards: Lambda Chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta Honors Society
Sigma Tau Delta
2003
Teaching Award: Red Tassel Chapter of the Mortar Board
Red Tassel Chapter of Mortar Board
2002
Book Review
Review of Erin E. Edwards, The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the Posthumous (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2018); Cristin Ellis, Antebellum Posthumous: Race and Materiality in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Fordham UP, 2018); David Herman, Narratology beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2018)
Christopher Breu.
(2020), 92, 384-387, American Literature
“The New Reification, or Quotidian Materialism.” Review of Bill Brown, Other Things; Matthew Mullins, Postmodernism in Pieces: Materializing the Social in U.S. Fiction; Andrew Epstein, Attention Equals Life: The Pursuit of the Everyday in Contemporary Poetry and Culture; Elizabeth Chin, My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries
Christopher Breu.
(2018), 30, 188-199, American Literary History
Review of Erik Dussere, America is Elsewhere: The Noir Tradition in the Age of Consumer Culture
Christopher Breu.
(2016), 62, 158-161, Modern Fiction Studies
The Neoliberal University.” A review of Jeffrey Di Leo, Corporate Humanities in Higher Education: Moving beyond the Neoliberal Academy
Christopher Breu.
(2016), 26, Postmodern Culture
Review of Paul Jay, The Humanities “Crisis” and the Future of Literary Studies
Christopher Breu.
(2015), 42, 348-351, College Literature
Review of Henry A. Giroux, Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future
Christopher Breu.
(2014), 22, 394-396, Symplokē
Review of Nickie D. Phillips and Staci Strobl, Comic Book Crime: Truth, Justice, and the American Way
Christopher Breu.
(2013), 24, Postmodern Culture
Book, Authored
Insistence of the Material: Literature in the Age of Biopolitics
Christopher Breu.
(2014), 264, University of Minnesota Press
The Flexible Mr. Ripley: Noir Historicism and Transnational Masculinity in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley
Christopher Breu, Elizabeth Hatmaker.
(2013), Between the National and the Transnational, 1945-1980: Masculinities in British and American Literature between World War II and Thatcher/Reagan, Ashgate
Book, Chapter
Affect
Christopher Breu.
(2020), The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction, Routledge
After Anti-Foundationalism: Ten Theses on the Limits of Anti-Theory
Christopher Breu.
(2020), 251-272, What’s Wrong with Anti Theory?, Bloomsbury Press
Infrastructure and Biopolitics
Christopher Breu.
(2020), Biotheory: Life and Death after Capitalism, Routledge
Introduction: Dark Passages
Christopher Breu, Elizabeth Hatmaker.
(2020), 1-27, Noir Affect, Fordham University Press
Public Violence as Private Pathology: Noir Affect in The End of the Primitive
Christopher Breu.
(2020), 59-77, Noir Affect, Fordham University Press
Debt and Sensuality
Christopher Breu.
(2018), 42-54, The Debt Age, Routledge
Materialisms
Christopher Breu.
(2018), 296-309, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Critical Theory, Bloomsbury
With Friends Like These: Wim Wenders’ The American Friend as Noir Allegory
Christopher Breu.
(2018), 193-210, Patricia Highsmith on Screen, Palgrave Macmillan
Dead Reckonings: Theoretical and Critical Approaches to Crime Fiction
Christopher Breu.
(2017), 339-352, A History of American Crime Fiction, Cambridge UP
The Technologies of Modernism: Historicism in Foucault and Dos Passos
Christopher Breu.
(2017), Understanding Modernism, Understanding Foucault, Bloomsbury
The Insistence of the Material: Theorizing Materiality and Biopolitics in the Age of Globalization
Christopher Breu.
(2016), 113-147, Onomatopee Press
Work and Death in the Global City: Natsuo Kirino’s Out as Neoliberal Noir
Christopher Breu.
(2016), 39-57, Globalization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction: A World of Crime, Palgrave
Book, Edited
Noir Affect
Christopher Breu, Elizabeth Hatmaker.
(2020), Fordham University Press
Journal Article
Utopian Trade: A Minimal Defense of Intellectual Exchange
Christopher Breu.
Symplokē, 27 (1-2), 387-391, (2019)
Embodied Ecologies and Metafictional Musings: Writing Intersex in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex
Christopher Breu.
The Goose: A Journal of the Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada, (2018)
The Humanities as Contradiction: Against the New Enclosures
Christopher Breu.
Humanities, 7 (3), (2018)
Identity vs. Embodiment: A Materialist Rethinking of Intersex and Queerness
Christopher Breu.
Symploke, 24 (1), 65-80, (2017)
Of Markets and Materiality: Financialization and the Limits of the Subject
Christopher Breu.
Cultural Critique, 96, 154-177, (2017)
Why Materialism Matters
Christopher Breu.
Symploke, 24 (1-2), 9-26, (2017)
After the Event: Toward a Post-Capitalist Conception of Structure and Habit.
Christopher Breu.
The Comparatist, (40), 56-70, (2016)
“Against Austerity: Toward a New Sensuality.”
Christopher Breu.
Symplokē, 22 (1-2), 23-39, (2015)
"Subject and Substance: The Limits of Biopolitics and the Status of Critique
Christopher Breu.
ELN (English Language Notes), 51 (2), 45-60, (2013)
Subject and Substance: The Limits of Biopolitics and the Status of Critique.”
Christopher Breu.
(2013)
Disinterring the Real: Dodie Bellamy’s The Letters of Mina Harker and the Late-Capitalist Literature of Materiality
Christopher Breu.
263-291, (2012)
The Insistence of the Material: Theorizing Materiality and Biopolitics in the Era of Globalization.
Christopher Breu.
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition Working Papers Series, 12 (3), 1-20, (2012)
Time, Biopolitics, and the World System.
Christopher Breu.
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition Working Papers Series, 12 (3), 11-15, (2012)
The Novel Enfleshed: Naked Lunch and the Literature of Materiality
Christopher Breu.
Twentieth-Century Literature., 57 (2), 199-223, (2011)
Middlesex Meditations: Understanding and Teaching Intersex.
Christopher Breu.
English Journal, 98.4, 102-108., (2009)
Privilege’s Mausoleum: The Ruination of White Southern Manhood in The Sound and the Fury
Christopher Breu.
Southern Masculinity in the Twentieth Century, 107-128., (2009)
Radical Noir: Negativity, Misogyny, and the Critique of Privatization in Dorothy Hughes’ In a Lonely Place
Christopher Breu.
MFS (Modern Fiction Studies), 55.2, 199-215., (2009)
Signification and Substance: Toward a Leftist Ontology of the Present
Christopher Breu.
University of Minnesota Press, 187-207., (2009)
Come Fly with Me: Frank Sinatra, the Old Left, and the Pax Americana
Christopher Breu.
Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, 28, 577-595., (2004)
Going Blood-Simple in Poisonville: Hard-Boiled Masculinity in Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest.
Christopher Breu.
Men and Masculinities, 7.1, 52-76., (2004)
Freudian Knot or Gordian Knot?: The Contradictions of Racialized Masculinity in Chester Himes’ If He Hollers Let Him Go
Christopher Breu.
Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters, 26.3, 766-795., (2003)
Lo-Fi Strum v. Techno Hum: The Antinomies of Contemporary Music
Christopher Breu.
Culture and Politics 4, (2000)
Textbook, New
Hard-Boiled Masculinities
Christopher Breu.
(2005), University of Minnesota Press
Practicing Disruptive Economics: The Remapping of the Economic Space of the Americas in Maryse Condé's Moi, Tituba, Sorcière...Noire de Salem
Christopher Breu.
(2000), 272-290., Re-Placing America: Conversations and Contestations, Hawaii UP
Presentations
Concluding Roundtable
Christopher Breu.
Objects of Refuge/Refuge of Objects Conference, Mainz, December, 2016
An Immodest Proposal: Confronting the Alt-Ac Trend in American Studies Grad Programs
Christopher Breu.
American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, November, 2016
The Power of Things: Biopolitics and Material Culture
Christopher Breu.
Invited Presentation and Workshop at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, Mainz, July, 2016
The Overmedicalized Body vs. The Neglected Body: Theorizing Human Embodiment in the Age of Globalization.
Christopher Breu.
Global Health Office: Sixth Lecture Series, Faculty of Health Sciences. McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, November 11, 2011
Time and Biopolitics
Christopher Breu.
Workshop on Time, Globalization, and the Human Condition, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, November 7, 2011
The Insistence of the Material: Theorizing Materiality and Biopolitics in the Age of Globalization.
Christopher Breu.
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, Canada, October 31, 2011
Almanac of the Living: Materiality and Thanatopolitics in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.
Christopher Breu.
American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Baltimore MD, October 23, 2011
The Possible Futures of Crime Fiction Studies
Christopher Breu.
Inaugural Crime Fiction Panel. American Literature Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, May 29, 2011
The Novel Enfleshed: Naked Lunch and the Literature of Materiality
Christopher Breu.
Beat Studies Association Special Session, Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900., Louisville, KY,, February 25, 2011
Globalization and Education in the Twenty-First Century.
Christopher Breu.
Illinois Central College In-Service Conference, “Globalization Changing Minds Changing the World., Peoria, Illinois,, February 16, 2011
The Persistence of the Material: Theorizing Materiality in the Era of Immaterial Production
Christopher Breu.
American Studies Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX, November 19, 2010
The Flexible Mr. Ripley: Postwar Transnational Masculinity in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Christopher Breu, Elizabeth Hatmaker.
Between the National and the Transnational, 1945-1980: Masculinities in British and American Literature between World War II and Thatcher/Reagan, Dresden Technical University, Dresden, Germany, June 10, 2010
The Late Modern Unconscious: The Uncanny Object World of J.G. Ballard’s Crash
Christopher Breu.
Modernist Studies Association Annual Meeting, Montréal, Canada, November 7, 2009
Postmodernism’s Prehistory: The Disjunction between Subject and Object in Thomas Pynchon’s V.
Christopher Breu.
Modernist Studies Association Annual Meeting, Nashville TN, November 14, 2008
The New Flesh: Tangier, Globalization, and the Interzone Body in William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.
Christopher Breu.
International Studies Seminar Series, Normal, IL, September 6, 2006
Signification and Substance: Towards a Leftist Ontology of the Present
Christopher Breu.
Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, State College, PA, March 11, 2005
Murderous Pulp: Misogyny and The Critique of Privatization in Dorothy Hughes’ In a Lonely Place.
Christopher Breu.
Modern Language Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, December 29, 2004
Theorizing the Pulp Avant-Garde: Renegotiating the Frankfurt School/Cultural Studies Antinomy
Christopher Breu.
Modernist Studies Association Annual Meeting, Madison, WI,, October 31, 2002
Pulp Fictions: Interwar Detective Magazine Readership, Commodity Culture, and the Politics of Collective Fantasy.
Christopher Breu.
Modernist Studies Association Annual Meeting, Houston, TX,, October 12, 2001
Come Fly with Me: Frank Sinatra and the Short American Century.
Christopher Breu.
The Center for Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, May 23, 2001
Violent Intersectionality in the Fiction of Chester Himes: The Value of the Negative for the Futures of American Studies.
Christopher Breu.
Back to the Futures: The Futures of American Studies IV, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH, June 26, 2000
Not Your Average Joe: Racial Fantasy, Modernization, and Hard-Boiled Masculinity in Light in August.
Christopher Breu.
New Modernisms: The First Annual Modernist Studies Association Meeting, State College, PA, October 6, 1999