Professor John Mowitt
- Position: Professor Emeritus
- Areas of expertise: Western philosophy; the history of critical theory (French, German and Italian); comparative literature; critical media studies (emphasis on cinema and sound); Postcolonial studies
- Email: J.W.Mowitt@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 5269
- Website: ORCID
Profile
I received my doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982 and taught in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cites from 1985 until 2013. I have published numerous books and articles on the broad areas of theory, culture and politics, and serve as a senior coeditor of the academic journal, Cultural Critique. Member of the Research and Innovation Committee in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.
Responsibilities
- Leadership Chair in Critical Humanities
Research interests
My interests follow mainly from my areas of expertise. However, for the last 15 years I have been working mainly in the anti-disciplinary area of sound studies. My current project, provisionally titled Tunings, is a study of the encounter between literature and music, specifically as realized in the music essay (compositions titled, ‘essays’, not essays written about music).
Qualifications
- PhD in Comparative Literature
- BA in Philosophy
- AA in Liberal Studies
Professional memberships
- American Comparative Literature Association
Student education
As a partisan of the ‘critical humanities’, I have a keen interest in curricular innovation. To that end I have both developed new modules (‘Making Sense of Sound;) and helped re-design the cultural and media studies course (‘Keywords’ and ‘Introduction to Cultural Analysis’).
Research groups and institutes
- Centre for Critical Materialist Studies
- Futures of the University