ENG 5049 - FALL 2026 - KILGORE

This course examines the university in the United States, both its historical foundations and contemporary form, with special attention to the institutional politics and culture of the humanities, English departments, and the academic profession. We will mostly be reading recent work in critical and abolitionist university studies—on the racial/settler colonial foundations of the university, academic capitalism, institutional power, the imperial dynamics of the university, the politics of criticism, and the institutional struggles of Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, and other marginalized interdisciplines. We will also engage with material on the concrete workings of the “neoliberal” university today, covering issues such as the financialization of higher education, student debt, academic labor, and the proletarianization of the university workforce. Another portion of the course will be devoted to social movements and protests in the university, not excluding visions of radical education beyond the university as we know it.