Faculty Overview

Giorgio Agamben, Phd., Baruch Spinoza Chair at European Graduate School EGS, is a professor of aesthetics at the University of Verona, Italy and teaches philosophy at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata in Italy. As Post-Doc he participated in seminars with Martin Heidegger in Freiburg and directed the Italian Walter Benjamin Edition. Agamben's unique blending of literary theory, continental philosophy, political thought, religious studies, literature and art makes him one of the most challenging thinkers of our time. He was a visiting professor in Paris and taught at American universities such as UC Berkeley, Los Angeles, Irvine, Santa Cruz, and Northwestern.

Alain Badiou, Ph.D., born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Alain Badiou was a student at the École Normale Supérieure in the 1950s. He taught at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) from 1969 until 1999, when he returned to ENS as the Chair of the philosophy department. He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Collège International de Philosophie, on topics ranging from the great 'antiphilosophers' (Saint-Paul, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lacan) to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century. Much of Badiou's life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968 revolt in Paris.

Jean Baudrillard, Ph.D., French sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist of postmodernity, was born July 27, 1929 in the northern town of Reims. The son of civil servants and the grandson of peasant farmers, Jean Baudrillard was the first in his family to attend university. Jean Baudrillard was a university sociology teacher and a leading intellectual figure of his time. His early life was influenced by the Algerian war in the 1950s and 1960s. Jean Baudrillard taught at the European Graduate School EGS from its earliest period until his death on March 6, 2007.

Yve-Alain Bois, Ph.D., born in Constantine, Algeria on April 16, 1952, holds the Roland Barthes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Yve-Alain Bois was the Joseph Pulitzer Professor of Modern Art and Chair, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University and is currently a Professor of Art History at the Institute for Advanced Study / School of Historical Studies in Princeton.

Judith Butler, Ph.D., Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School EGS, attended Bennington College and then Yale University, where she received her B.A., and her Ph.D. in philosophy in 1984. Her first training in philosophy took place at the synagogue in her hometown of Cleveland. She taught at Wesleyan and Johns Hopkins universities before becoming Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

Hélène Cixous was born on June 5, 1937, in Oran, Algeria. Her father was a French-colonialist, and died while Cixous was young. Her mother was Austro-German, and German was Cixous' first language. Members of her family were Jewish, including her father, and the atrocities of World War II had an early influence on her. Hélène Cixous studied English literature, especially Shakespeare, and read mythology and the German romantics including Heinrich von Kleist. From early in her life she has studied literature in many languages, reading authors like Franz Kafka, Marina Tsvetayeva, and Clarice Lispector.

One year prior to the publication of The Book of Dead Philosophers Simon Critchley released his most comprehensive work in terms of his philosophical views, Infinitely Demanding (Verso, 2007), which discusses the contemporary state of disappointment in liberal politics. Critchley argues for anarchism as a tool for motivation in a post-Marx climate. Simon Critchley’s work covers much ground, including disappointment, deconstruction, humor, contemporary art, poetry, fashion, political theory, and authenticity. His early relationship to music and the punk scene allows for his work to be quite open and interdisciplinary.

Jacques Derrida, Ph.D., (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was a French-Jewish philosopher, born in Algeria. He developed the critical technique known as deconstruction, and his work has been associated both with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy. His prolific output of more than 40 published books, together with essays and public speaking, has had a significant impact upon the humanities.

Bracha L. Ettinger, Ph.D., is the Marcel Duchamp Chair & Professor of Psychoanalysis and Art at the European Graduate School EGS, artist, senior clinical psychologist, practising psychoanalyst, and groundbreaking theoretician working at the intersection of feminine sexuality, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics. Her approach significantly extends the work of contemporary philosophers and psychoanalysts such as Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Jacques Lacan, and challenges the works of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.

Christopher Fynsk, Ph.D., was born in 1952 and is the Maurice Blanchot Chair at the European Graduate School EGS, Head of the School of Language and Literature at the University of Aberdeen, and Director of the Centre for Modern Thought. Christopher Fynsk is a prolific writer and teacher. He has written numerous articles for academic journals, and he has translated works by Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Maurice Blanchot.

Peter Greenaway, Ph.D., born in Newport, Wales on April 5, 1942 and based in Amsterdam and London, is one of the great film directors of our time, an innovative curator, and a challenging philosopher of cinema. Considered to be an avant-gardist with a wide access to mainstream cinema, Peter Greenaway's unique visual language reveals a strong influence by his training as a painter, structural linguistics and philosophy. Being openly critical of the 'Hollywood' approach to filmmaking, he believes the cinema should offer much more outside its slavery of narrative.

Donna Haraway, Ph.D., (b. 1944 in Denver) is a Professor of Feminism and Technoscience at the European Graduate School EGS and an internationally recognized feminist theorist and philosopher of science and technology. Donna Haraway's seminal work, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, has become the authoritative text in theorizing the politics of the post-human, the cyborg, the techno-mythological ideal and its promised utopia(s).

Michael Hardt, Ph.D., born in Washington DC in 1960, is a political philosopher and literary theorist currently based at Duke University, North Carolina. After graduating with a degree in engineering, Michael Hardt pursued a career working for solar energy companies in Latin America, believing that providing alternative energy for third world countries was the best way for political activism. Nevertheless, after working for various NGOs in Central America, Michael Hardt decided to move back to the United States and pursue the study of possibilities for fundamental social and political changes in his own country. He received an MA in 1986 and a Ph.D. in 1990 in comparative literature at the University of Washington.

Brian Holmes, Ph.D., is an art critic, activist and translator, living in Paris, interested primarily in the intersections of artistic and political practice. He holds a doctorate in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley. Brian Homes was the English editor of publications for Documenta X, Kassel, Germany since 1997. Brian was a member of the graphic arts group 'Ne pas plier' from 1999 to 2001, and has recently worked with the French conceptual art group 'Bureau d'Études' .

Friedrich Adolf Kittler, Ph.D., is a literary scientist and media theorist. He was born in 1943 in Rochlitz, Saxony Germany. His research and work is focused on media, history, communications, technology, and the military. Friedrich Kittler has been called the Derrida of the digital age. His innovative media theories have transformed the nature of technological scholarship and led the way in the field. Kittler is an innovative and hard to define theorist, who has pushed theoretical works of literary scholars into technological fields with unprecedented modes of critical thought. Through his unique brand of media determinism his work is influencing new generations of students across the world.

Manuel De Landa (b. in Mexico City, 1952), based in New York since 1975, is a philosopher, media artist, programmer and software designer. After studying art in the 1970s, he became known as an independent filmmaker making underground 8mm and 16mm films inspired by critical theory and philosophy. In the 1980s, Manuel De Landa focused on programing, writing computer software, and computer art. After being introduced to the work of Gilles Deleuze, he saw new creative potential in philosophical texts, becoming one of the representatives of the 'new materialism'.

Geert Lovink, Ph.D., (b. 1959 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch/Australian media theorist, Research Professor of Interactive Media at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) and an Associate Professor of New Media at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Geert Lovink earned his master's degree in political science at the University of Amsterdam, and he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne on the Dynamics of Critical Internet Culture. After a postdoctoral position at the University of Queensland he became the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam.

Jean-François Lyotard, Ph.D., (b. 1924 in Versailles) became one of the world's foremost philosophers, noted for his analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition. A key figure in contemporary French philosophy, his interdisciplinary discourse covers a wide variety of topics including knowledge and communication; the human body; modernist and postmodern art, literature, and music; film; time and memory; space, the city, and landscape; the sublime; and the relation between aesthetics and politics.

Lev Manovich, Ph.D., was born in Moscow in 1960 and based in New York since 1981, is an artist and one of the leading theorists of digital culture and media art. Lev Manovich frequently lectures on new media internationally and has published more than ninety influential articles on new media aesthetics. His book The Language of New Media (2001) is considered by many to be placing new media 'within the most suggestive and broad ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan' (Telepolis).

Brian Massumi, Ph.D., is a political theorist, writer and philosopher, and is currently a professor in the Department of Communication Sciences at the University of Montréal in Quebec Canada, where he directs both the Ph.D program and the Workshop in Radical Empiricism (Atelier en empirisme radical). He is well-known for his translations of several major texts in French poststructuralist theory, including Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, and Jacques Attali's Noise.

Jean-Luc Nancy, Ph.D., Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Chair at the European Graduate School EGS, was born on the 26th of July, 1940 in Caudéran, near Bordeaux in France. His first philosophical interests were formed during his youth in the Catholic environment of Bergerac. Shortly after he graduated in 1962 with a degree in philosophy, Jean-Luc Nancy began to publish. From the beginning his work is marked by diverse influences, from Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot to René Descartes, G.W.F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger.

Antonio Negri, Ph.D., is an Italian Marxist sociologist, scholar, revolutionary philosopher and teacher. Antonio Negri was born August 1, 1933 in Padua, Italy. He is most well known for his groundbreaking work Empire, which was wrote with Michael Hardt. Antonio Negri is influenced in great part by Karl Marx and Benedict Baruch Spinoza.. Antonio Negri was a founder of the group, Potere Operaio (Worker Power), in 1969 and was an active member in the group Autonomia Operaia.

Hans Ulrich Obrist was born in Zürich in 1968. He is an international editor and curator. Since 1993 he is in charge of the programme Migrateurs at the Musee d´Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. He is the curator for Museum in progress, Vienna (since 1993), and the migratory Museum Robert Walser (1993). He is also the founder of the Nano Museum (1996), co-founder of Voti - Union of the Imaginary (1998), co-founder of Salon 3 (1998), Elephant and Castle, London, and a lecturer at the University of Lueneburg in Germany. During 1999 some of his projects are Cities on the Move V, at the Hayward Gallery, Laboratorium, Antwerpen Open and Sogni/Dreams, Fondazione Rebaudengo. Hans Ulrich Obrist lives and works in Paris, Vienna and London.

Jacques Rancière (b. 1940 in Algiers) is Professor Emeritus at the Université de Paris (St. Denis). He first came to prominence under the tutelage of Louis Althusser when he co-authored with his mentor Reading Capital (1968). After the calamitous events of May 1968 however, he broke with Althusser over his teacher's reluctance to allow for spontaneous resistance within the revolution. Jacques Rancière is known for his sometimes remote position in contemporary French thought; operating from the humble motto that the cobbler and the university dean are equally intelligent, Jacques Rancière has freely compared the works of such known luminaries as Plato, Aristotle, Deleuze and others with relatively unknown thinkers like Joseph Jacototy and Gabriel Gauny.

Martha Rosler, M.F.A., is an influential video, installation and performance artist. She was  born on July 29, 1943 in Brooklyn, New York. Martha Rosler did her BA at Brooklyn College, graduating in 1965. She then obtained her MFA in 1974 from the University of California at San Diego. She has taught at the Städelschule, a contemporary fine arts academy in Frankfurt, and at Rutgers University in New Brunswick in New Jersey at Mason Gross School of the Arts. Martha Rosler is also an eminent writer on art and culture and is solicited to lecture both nationally in the US and internationally since at least the mid-1970s.

Michael J. Shapiro, Ph.D., is a political philosopher and critical theorist. Professor Shapiro was born on February 16, 1940. He wrote his Ph.D. at Northwestern University, graduating in 1966. Between 1968 and 1970 he taught at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also taught on exchanges at several Universities nationally and internationally. For example, he lectured at the University of Massachusetts both in 1979 and in 1986, NYU in 2002 at TSOA (Tisch School of the Arts), in Norway at the University of Norway from 1972 to 1973, and also in Italy at LdM, the Italian International Institute in Florence. Michael J. Shapiro describes his academic interests as follows:

Paul D. Miller, also most famously known as ‘DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid’, which is his stage name and self constructed persona, is an experimental and electronic hip-hop musician, conceptual artist, and writer. He was born in 1970 in Washington DC but has been based in New York City for many years. He is the son of one of Howard University's former Deans of Law who died when he was only three, and a mother who was in charge of a fabric shop of international repute. Paul Miller then spent the main part of his childhood in Washington DC’s nurturing bohemia. Paul Miller is a Professor at the European Graduate School (EGS) where he teaches Music Mediated Art.

Gregory Ulmer, Ph.D., Joseph Beuys Chair at EGS, is Professor of English and Media Studies at the University of Florida. Gregory Ulmer received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Brown University (1972).

Paul Virilio (b. 1932 in Paris) is a world-renowned philosopher, urbanist, and cultural theorist. His work focuses on urban spaces and the development of technology in relation to power and speed. He is known for his coining of the term 'dromology' to explain his theory of speed and technology. Paul Virilio is of mixed ancestry, being the son of an Italian father (who identified as a Communist) and a Breton mother. As a small child in France during the Second World War, Paul Virilio was profoundly impacted by the blitzkrieg and total war; however, these early experiences shaped his understanding of the movement and speed which structures modern society. In order to escape the heavy fighting in the city, he fled with his family to the port of Nantes in 1939.

Slavoj Zizek, Ph.D., is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a visiting professor at a number of American Universities (Columbia, Princeton, New School for Social Research, New York University, University of Michigan). He obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy in Ljubljana studying Psychoanalysis. He also studied at the University of Paris. Slavoj Zizek is a cultural critic and philosopher who is internationally known for his innovative interpretations of Jacques Lacan. Slavoj Zizek is admired as a true 'manic excessive' and has been called the 'Elvis Presley' of philosophy. He is Author of The Indivisible Remainder; The Sublime Object of Ideology; The Metastases of Enjoyment; Looking Awry: Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture; The Plague of Fantasies and The Ticklish Subject.