
Featured Links
- Curriculum Vitae
- Association for the Psychoanalysis
of Culture & Society
- Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society
- Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change:
A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism
- The Writing Cure: Psychoanalysis,
Composition, and the Aims of Education - Lacanian Theory of Discourse
- Radical Pedagogy: Identity,Generativity,
and Social Transformation
Mark Bracher, Ph.D. English (Vanderbilt)
Professor; Director, Center for Literature and Psychoanalysis;
Founding Editor, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society
mbracher at kent.edu
Mark Bracher, Ph.D. English (Vanderbilt)
Professor; Director, Center for Literature and Psychoanalysis;
Founding Editor, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society
mbracher at kent.edu
My teaching and research center on the question of how literary study in particular and education in general can help students become more fulfilled individuals and more productive and socially responsible members of society. More specifically, by drawing on psychoanalytic theory, social psychology, and cognitive science, I am working to formulate educational and other cultural strategies for reducing social injustice, including not only racism, colonialism, sexism, and homophobia but also the obscene and growing disparities in wealth and well being within both American society and the world at large. My research investigates, and my teaching attempts to implement the development of capacities and habits of perception, analysis, reflection, and feeling that are necessary for recognizing social injustice, understanding its root causes, formulating effective interventions to counter it, and being motivated to take action against it.
Areas of Interest
Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism, Literary Theory, Literature and Ethics, Pedagogy
Selected Recent Publications
Books- Being Form’d: Thinking through Blake’s Milton. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1985.
- Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument of Method. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987. Coedited with Donald Ault and Dan Miller.
- Lacan and the Subject of Language. Coedited with Ellie Ragland-Sullivan. New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1991.
- Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
- Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure, Society. New York: New York University Press, 1994. Coedited with Marshall Alcorn, Ronald Corthell, and Françoise Massardier-Kenney.
- The Writing Cure: Psychoanalysis, Composition, and the Aims of Education. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.
- Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation. New York: Palgrave, 2006.
- “Rouzing the Faculties: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and the Marriage of Heaven and Hell in the Reader.” In Critical Paths. 168-203.
- “On the Psychological and Social Functions of Language: Lacan’s Theory of the Four Discourses.” In Lacanian Theory of Discourse. 107-128.
- “Introduction.” In Lacanian Theory of Discourse. 1-16.
- “Anxiety in the Resistance to Psychoanalysis.” In Confronting the Challenges to Psychoanalysis. Ed. Stephen R. Friedlander. Knoxville, TN: IFPE, 1995. 157-163.
- “The Conflict between Blacks and Jews: A Lacanian Analysis.” In Blacks and Jews on the Couch: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Black-Jewish Conflict. Ed. Alan Helmreich and Paul Marcus. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. 165-87.
- “Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Postmodernism.” In Psychoanalysis at Its Limits: Navigating the Postmodern Turn. Ed. Anthony Elliott and Charles Spezzano. London: Free Association Books, 2000. 145-172.
- “How Psychoanalysis Cures According to Lacan.” In The Subject of Lacan: A Lacanian Reader for Psychologists. Ed. Kareen Ror Malone and Stephen Friedlander. Albany, NY: SUNY P, 2000. 189-207.
- “Identity and Desire in the Classroom.” In Pedagogical Desire: Authority, Seduction, Transference, and the Question of Authorial Ethics. Ed. jan jagodzinski. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 2002. 93-121.
- “Healing Trauma, Reducing Violence: A Radical Agenda for Literary Study.” JAC 24 (2004): 515-61.
- “Gia tis psychologises kai koinonises leitourgies tes glossas: H theoria ton Lacan gia tous tesseris logons.” Phylladio33 (2000): 4-22. [Greek translation of “On the Psychological and Social Functions of Language: Lacan’s Theory of the Four Discourses.”]
- “Na psychanalyoume panta! O istorismos ke i psychanalysi tou politismou ke tis kinonias.” Synchrona Themata 73 (2000): 54-69. [Greek translation of “Always Psychoanalyze: Historicism and the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society.”]
- “Editor’s Column: Adolescent Violence and Identity Vulnerability.” JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 5, 2 (Fall 2000): 1-22.
- “Editor’s Column: Social Symptoms.” JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 5,1 (Spring 2000): 1-27.
- “Editor’s Column: Psychoanalysis and Education.” JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 4, 2 (1999): 175-192.
- “Transference, Desire, and the Ethics of Literary Pedagogy.” College Literature 26, 3 (Fall 1999): 127-146.
- “Editor’s Column: APCS and the Psychodynamics of Academic Organizations.” JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 4, 1 (1999): 1-12.
- “Editor’s Column: Valuing Differences in Order to Make a Difference:Psychoanalytic Theory and the Practice of Violence Prevention.” JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 3, 1 (1998): 1-23.
- Editor’s Column: Psychoanalysis and Racism.” JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 2, 2 (1997): 1-11.
- “Editor’s Column: Always Psychoanalyze! Historicism and the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society.” JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 2, 1 (1997): 1-16.
- “Editor’s Column: Lacan’s ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’” JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 1, 2 (1996): 1-12.
