Autotheories
We are thrilled to announce the upcoming release of Autotheories, co-edited by Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan. Coming out with MIT Press / Penguin Random House next week, this collection explores the evolving field of autotheory—a genre-bending synthesis of autobiography and critical theory. Notably, Autotheories has already been recognized on two "Most Anticipated of 2025" lists: The Millions Most Anticipated - The Great Winter 2025 Preview and Choice360 - Forthcoming Titles in Art & Architecture, 2025.
About Autotheories
Autotheories tells the story of a field in formation. Building on traditions that have long fused life writing, philosophical encounter, embodied theorizing, and cultural critique, autotheory constructs new practices of critical theory. Transgressing generic boundaries and bridging stylistic registers, it crafts language that is intimate, analytic, playful, and insurgent. Editors Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan underscore autotheory's multiple genealogies and genre-bending forms while situating it within the contemporary political field. In this collection, autotheory emerges as a strut (of style), a straddle (of disciplines), a proliferation (of selves), an axis (of identifications), an index (of attachments), and an archive (of loves).
An assemblage and an experience, Autotheories surveys the field's iterations and permutations. Without settling for classification or bowing to ossification, Autotheories invites you to its discursive play.
Contributors include: Alex Brostoff, Jessica Bush, Judith Butler, Vilashini Cooppan, Carla Freccero, rl Goldberg, Jan Grue, Emma Lieber, Megan Moodie, Lili Owen Rowlands, John Patterson, Paul B. Preciado, Erica Richardson, Migueltzinta C. Solís, Jamieson Webster, Damon Ross Young, Stacey Young, Arianne Zwartjes
About the Editors
Alex Brostoff is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. An interdisciplinary scholar and translator, they are the coeditor of a special issue of ASAP/Journal on autotheory.
Vilashini Cooppan is Professor of Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the author of Worlds Within: National Narratives and Global Connections in Postcolonial Writing.
Upcoming Launch Events
In celebration of the book’s release, a series of events will take place in the Bay Area:
-
Saturday, March 1 – Online Symposium: "Autotheory: Encounters, Embodiments, Critique" (Hosted by City Lights)
-
Monday, March 3 – Talk: "The Task of the Trans Translator: Paradoxes of Visibility, Autotheories of Opacity" (UC Berkeley, 4 PM)
-
Tuesday, March 4 – Reception/Launch Party (City Lights, San Francisco, 7–8:30 PM)
-
Wednesday, March 5 – Talk: "The Task of the Trans Translator" (Cultural Studies Colloquium, UCSC, 11 AM–12 PM)
-
March 6–10 – Conference: "Intimacies of Relation: The Autotheoretical Turn" (UCHRI-sponsored, UCSC, open to all)
For more details, visit MIT Press.
