The English Department is pleased to announce that Sianne Ngai will host this year's Kane Lecture on Friday, April 15th. Dr. Ngai will present a lecture titled "Theory of the Gimmick" based on her forthcoming book of the same name. Theory of the Gimmick explores the uneasy mix of attraction and repulsion produced by the gimmick across a range of forms specific to western capitalism.
Dr. Ngai specializes in American literature, literary and cultural theory, and feminist studies. Her books are Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Harvard University Press, 2012), winner of the MLA James Russell Lowell Prize and the PCA/ACA Ray and Pat Browne award for Best Reference or Best Primary Source Work; and Ugly Feelings (Harvard University Press, 2005). Ngai was a recipient of a 2007-08 Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and in 2014-15 was a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin, Germany. She served as six-week faculty at the Cornell School for Criticism and Theory in the summer of 2014. In June 2015 she was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark.
