Lauren Berlant

Lauren Berlant is George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago. Her national sentimentality trilogy—The Anatomy of National Fantasy, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City, and The Female Complaint—has now morphed into a quartet, with Cruel Optimism, featured in her Rorotoko interview. She has also edited Intimacy (Chicago, 2000), Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest (NYU, 2001), Compassion: the Culture and Politics of an Emotion (Routledge, 2004), and On the Case (Critical Inquiry, 2007). Lauren Berlant is a co-editor of Critical Inquiry, a founding member of the art/activist group Feel Tank Chicago, and she blogs at supervalentthought.com.