Critical Inquiry

"Tobacco in 1604 embodies the interpretive response that Othello continues to elicit." From our Autumn 2003 issue, read Dennis Kezar's "Shakespeare’s Addictions": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"The voice of an orator, or documentarian, enlists and reveals desires, lacks, and longings." From our Autumn 2008 issue, read Bill Nichols's "Documentary Reenactment and the Fantasmatic Subject": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

Happy Birthday, Thomas Pynchon!

"For Lee, parascience is not just a cultural curiosity but a Foucauldian counter-discourse that 'produces new types of knowledge.'" New in review, Wolfgang Boehm on Derek Lee's Parascientific Revolutions: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/wolfgang_boehm…

Summer cover. Issue is coming soon . . . .

"The stories are about how the oppressed, from the standpoint of ethics, should respond to the injustices that weigh so heavily upon them." From our Spring 2012 issue, read Tommie Shelby's "The Ethics of Uncle Tom's Children": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"A Movement’s Promise is thus both an institutional history of a theater movement under occupation and a reconstruction of its style, methods, aesthetics, and innovations." New in review, Marissa Fenley on Samer Al-Saber's A Movement’s Promise: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/marissa_fenley…

“Life is made for earnest action!” –Frances E.W. Harper, “Something To Do” Join us in preserving an essential voice from the past this Thursday, 4/30, from 6-8 pm at The Ruby in San Francisco! RSVP for FREE! luma.com/hq2y5umj

Take hold of your own issue. Subscribe to CI for just over $50 a year. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/s…

"Colossal’s projects bring to the fore a curious phenomenon of the social world and the contemporary social imaginary of science." Read Veronika Reichert's "De-Extinction, Scientific Enchantment, and Technosalvation" on the CI blog. critinq.wordpress.com/2026/04/27/de-…

"From a biometric perspective, an ideology is nothing but a tool to keep the mechanism of control in place." From our Summer 2015 issue, read Nitzan Lebovic's "Biometrics, or The Power of the Radical Center": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"If the book’s normative ambition . . . seems utopian, its critical force lies in exposing the bankruptcy of incremental reform." New in review, Dipra Sarkhel and Dibyendu Sahana on Anthony Burke and Stefanie Fishel's The Ecology Politic: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/dipra_sarkhel_…

"Scherman created the Book‐of‐the‐Month Club (BOMC) with the intention of selling hundreds of thousands of books to a stable group of magazine‐like subscribers." From Autumn 2004, read Janice Radway's "On the Significance of Middlebrow Authority": …rnals-uchicago-edu.proxy.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"Elizabeth’s sudden decision to abolish the death penalty was an enigma both to her subjects and to foreign observers, particularly as it caused considerable logistical difficulties." From our new issue, read Boris Maslov's "An Incorporate Fellowship?": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"It provides a clear and culturally rich account of why comedy has been and continues to be central to our experience of the contradictions of computation since the mid-twentieth century." Kate Marshall on Benjamin Mangrum's The Comedy of Computation: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/kate_marshall_…

"I have argued that Auerbach’s critique of Christian figuralism is Jewishly inflected. What about his remaining philology? What makes it Jewish too?" From our new issue, read James I. Porter's "When Is Philology Made Jewish?, Part 2": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"Beware those whose nostalgia is for gender itself, for a time where they imagine we trans people—and often we queers and we feminists, too—did not exist." From our new issue, read Emily McAvan's "Theses on the Future History of Trans People": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

"Oysters . . . possess what Parker dubs a uniquely paranatural ontology: they live a 'double life,' existing as both discrete objects as well as agents of transformation." In review, Lida Zeitlin-Wu on Thomas R. Parker's Paranatures in Culinary Culture: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/lida_zeitlin_w…

"Though the archival turn is indeed still turning, the way that acts of translation have become enmeshed in poetics of the archive suggests a radical departure." From our new issue, read Maxwell Gontarek's "Writing a Book I Was Not Writing": journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…