Literature and comparison: posthumanism and gender

THE NEXT session in the Literature and Comparison Seminar Series will feature a talk by Dr Stefan Herbrechter on "Posthumanism and Gender." The seminar will be held on Thursday at 6 p.m. in Gateway Building Hall E.

Dr Herbrechter is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Analysis at Trinity and All Saints College of the University of Leeds, where he teaches courses in Cultural Studies, Critical and Cultural Theory, and Literature. He is the author of Lawrence Durrell: Postmodernism and the Ethics of Alterity (1999) and co-editor of a number of books.

He has also published articles and essays on a variety of issues, including cosmopolitanism, masculinity, deconstruction and cultural studies, postmodernism and film, and posthumanism. He is a member of the editorial board of Rodopi's Critical Studies journal and book series, and with Dr Ivan Callus he directs a monograph series for Rodopi on Critical Posthumanism.

Dr Herbrechter's paper is part of an ongoing critical investigation into the variety of symptoms, representations and projections of the posthuman and its associated theorisations.

In particular, it evaluates the fundamental but ambivalent role gender has been playing within the genealogy of the posthuman.

The paper traces and critiques the ways in which posthumanist discourses address the highly controversial idea of technology being able to 'overcome' gender differences and possibly gender as a social marker as such.