Angela Hunter, Associate Professor
Office: Stabler Hall, Room 307
Phone: 501-683-7066
Email: anhunter@ualr.edu
Introduction
I am the Coordinator for the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program at UALR, which involves teaching, advising, and program development. I really enjoy working with the MA students and seeing their interdisciplinary projects develop. I love to hear from our alums and find out all of the interesting things they are doing and thinking once they leave the program. I also teach in the interdisciplinary Liberal Arts BA degree program, which draws a wide variety of students, and in the Philosophy major. I come from a background of Comparative Literature (BA and PhD), so I have practical knowledge of the benefits and challenges of doing interdisciplinary work. Something you will discover if you come to my office is that I’m a Freud buff, and I own all 23 volumes of the Standard Edition of the Works of Sigmund Freud plus some fun Freud paraphernalia.
Teaching Interests
AOS: 18th-19th-century French literature; 20th-century French thought; Interdisciplinary Studies
AOC: Feminist theory; psychoanalytic theory; literary theory; queer theory; French language teaching
Almost as soon as I gave up on my childhood desire to be either a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader or a fiction writer, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I believe in the transformative effect that knowledge can have on individuals and groups, and I love to see students get excited by new ideas. The energy of a good classroom discussion is powerful and exhilarating, and I’m happy that I get to experience it each semester. I teach interdisciplinary courses at UALR in the Liberal Arts (BA) and Liberal Studies (MA) degrees. I also teach some philosophy courses such as Philosophy and Literature and Feminist Philosophy. Before coming to UALR, I taught courses in Comparative Literature, French literature and language, and Visual Culture. I incorporate philosophy and research from other disciplines (i.e., linguistics, anthropology, gender studies, political theory) into my courses, and I hope to continue to broaden my own (and my students’) disciplinary horizons.
Courses which were regularly taught:
• Reasoning Across the Disciplines
• Introduction to Liberal Studies
• Liberal Studies Colloquium
• Liberal Arts Colloquium
Research Interests
My recent research focuses on studies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Louise Dupin (contemporary of Rousseau and writer of an unpublished feminist work). In general, my research focuses on issues involving sexual/gender difference, the body, reading, love and subjectivity. I mainly focus on the late 18th and 19th-centuries in the French tradition combined with philosophy and critical theory from the 20th-century. My dissertation explored the relations between love, reading and difference in texts by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Stendhal, Charles Baudelaire, and Jacques Derrida. I am also interested in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory, primarily Jacques Lacan and his critics.
Selected Professional Activities
2011 “Reading, Marks, Love: Rousseau, Stendhal, Baudelaire”, Oxford Literary Review, vol 33.1, 2011.
2010 “Invito Spectatore: Scenes of Love in the Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles,” Romance Notes, 50 (2), Winter 2010
2010 Book Review of John Schad, Someone Called Derrida (Sussex, 2007). Derrida Today. Vol. 3(1), May 2010
2009 “The Unfinished Work on Louise Marie-Madeleine Dupin’s Unfinished Ouvrage sur les femmes”, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 43(1), Fall 2009
2008 “Signs of Reading and the Subject of Love in Stendhal’s De l’Amour.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 36.3-4
2007 “Rousseau’s Queer Bottom: Sexual Difference in the Confessions.” Volume XXXIV of French Literature Series. Rodopi Press
2005 “Where to Place Feminine Sexuality?: (Re)reading Encore.” Review Essay on Reading Seminar XX: Lacan’s Major Work on Love, Knowledge and Feminine Sexuality (SUNY, 2004). In Journal of Lacanian Studies.
2005 “Bottoms Up: The Obscenity of Difference in Rousseau’s Confessions.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, Montreal, Canada
2004 “Becoming Written: Nietzsche on Nietzsche in Ecce Homo.” Midsouth Philosophy Conference. University of Memphis,
2004 “Looking Beyond the Libido for the Lost Ego Instincts.” Review of Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, Where do we fall when we fall in love? (Other Press, 2003). For Metapsychology Online. http://mentalhelp.net/books/books.php?type=de&id=2061
2001 “The Object Little Pox: Reading Baudelaire Reading Stendhal (Reading Rousseau).” Modern Language Association. New Orleans , LA
2001 “Signs and Symptoms of the Subject in Stendhal’s De l’Amour.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism. Seattle , WA
2000 “Différance and the Metaphysics of First Love in ‘Hairband’ Rock Ballads.” Popular Culture Association Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA, April 2000
1999 “Ethics, Ontology and Difference: A Feminist Reading of Derrida and Levinas.” Philosophy and the Feminine Conference. Vanderbilt University
1998 “Enlightened Abuses and Pedagogical Imperatives: The Body of Philosophy in Sade’s La Philosophie dans le boudoir.” Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference. Williams College
1998 “Postmodern Spacings.” Collaborative online project published in Post Modern Culture Journal, vol. 8, #3, May 1998 (also archived at: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mplanet/submit/)
Educational Background
Ph.D. Comparative Literature (minor in Psychoanalytic Studies), 2004
Emory University
M.A. Comparative Literature, 2000
Emory University
M.A. French Literature, 1997
New York University
B.A. Comparative Literature (minor in Women Studies), 1994
Colorado College (magna cum laude)