William S. Burroughs as a Problem, Not a Subject
This seminar proposes to approach William S. Burroughs not simply as a subject of study, but as a problem. We invite provocative papers grounded in comparative methodologies and attentive to less-travelled texts, episodes, affiliations, and cultural encounters. Rather than asking what Burroughs “was,” we want to ask what his work does—and to pause over the categories through which we have learned to understand his oeuvre, asking what they illuminate and, perhaps more importantly, what they conceal.
