Name Adam Kotsko | ||
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Born July 19, 1980 (age 43)
Flint, Michigan ( 1980-07-19 ) Occupation Professor of humanities at Shimer College Alma mater Olivet Nazarene University Chicago Theological Seminary Subject Political theology; popular culture Education Chicago Theological Seminary, Olivet Nazarene University Books Why We Love Sociopat, Agamben's Coming Philosop, Creepiness, Zizek and Theology, The Politics of Redempti | ||
Hote 2014 15 adam kotsko
Adam Kotsko (born July 19, 1980) is an American writer, theologian, religious scholar, and translator, working chiefly in the field of political theology. He served as an Assistant Professor of Humanities at Shimer College in Chicago, which was absorbed into North Central College in 2017. He is especially known for his interpretative work on Slavoj Žižek and Giorgio Agamben, as well as his writing on American popular culture.
Contents
- Hote 2014 15 adam kotsko
- Adam kotsko january 25 2016 uic school of architecture
- Early life and education
- Intellectual and teaching career
- Books
- Translations
- References
Kotsko's better-known works include Why We Love Sociopaths (2012), Awkwardness (2010), and Žižek and Theology (2008). He has published three translations of works by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Kotsko is also known for his blogging, now in its second decade. He posts chiefly on a group blog titled An und für sich, but continues to maintain his original blog, titled The Weblog. Prior to the rise of blogging, he had maintained a blog-like website titled The Homepage.
Adam kotsko january 25 2016 uic school of architecture
Early life and education
Adam Kotsko was born in Flint, Michigan, and grew up in nearby Davison. He has credited his school experiences in Davison with giving him a love of literature.
Kotsko earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois, in 2002. From there, he went on to the Chicago Theological Seminary, where he completed an Master of Arts degree in religious studies in 2005, with a thesis in the form of a translation and commentary on Jacques Derrida's essay "Literature in Secret: An Impossible Filiation".
Kotsko completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in theology, ethics, and culture at CTS in 2009. His doctoral dissertation was titled Atonement and Ontology, and argued that an understanding of atonement theory requires a social-relational ontology. A modified version of his dissertation was published by Continuum International Publishing Group in 2010 under the title of The Politics of Redemption: The Social Logic of Salvation.
Intellectual and teaching career
Soon after completing his doctorate in 2009, Kotsko began teaching at Kalamazoo College, a liberal arts college in Michigan. Initially a one-year appointment, it was subsequently extended to two.
In 2011, Kotsko was hired by Shimer College, a very small Great Books college in Chicago. He was one of three new Shimer professors hired that year, the school's largest intake of new faculty in more than a decade. In his first year, he participated in a major reworking of the school's upper-level core Humanities courses. He also served on numerous committees in Shimer's unusual self-governance body, the Shimer College Assembly; in April 2013 he was additionally elected parliamentarian of the assembly. In 2016, after years of declining enrollment and financial difficulties, Shimer was acquired by North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, with plans to integrate it as the “Shimer Great Books School” within the College’s academic structure.
Kotsko is known for his writings on the interpretation of the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, whom he has credited for causing him to "break out of one particular intellectual ghetto and into another" by changing his self-identification from "non-Republican" to leftist. His first published book was on Žižek, titled Žižek and Theology (the first volume of T&T Clark's "Philosophy and Theology" series). In a somewhat unusual circumstance for academic writers, it was published in 2008, before he had completed his dissertation. In 2012, Kotsko published a more popular article on "How to Read Žižek" in the Los Angeles Review of Books, which was republished in Italian by Internazionale.
Kotsko has also published three book-length translations of works by Italian theologian Giorgio Agamben. He has also published and delivered a number of papers on Agamben. He has argued that Agamben's Highest Poverty, his translation of which was published in 2013, is "ultimately about confronting neoliberalism."
Kotsko has published three short books on popular culture, Awkwardness: An Essay (2010), Why We Love Sociopaths: A Guide to Late Capitalist Television (2012), and Creepiness (2015). Each book draws out a specific theme found in contemporary U.S. TV shows; Awkwardness addressing the curious rise of "awkward humor" in the 21st century, Why We Love Sociopaths addressing the trend toward a certain type of deeply antisocial protagonist, and Creepiness uses a Freudian lens to distinguish a discomfiting strain of popular culture from the topic of the first book. The trilogy was greeted with general acclaim, with the Oxonian Review declaring that "Awkwardness is just what a work of philosophy should be", and Scott Berkun describing Why We Love Sociopaths as "a second cousin to Postman’s classic Amusing Ourselves to Death." Why We Love Sociopaths, however, also drew criticism for its admittedly non-technical use of the term sociopathy.
The success of Awkwardness has led to Kotsko being cited as an authority on awkwardness in the press, including by US News and World Report.
In 2016, Kotsko published a book about the figure of the Devil in Christianity, The Prince of This World. He had previously presented a paper before the American Academy of Religion on the influence of Agamben's writing on his thinking about the devil.