Good Enough Art: A Few Theses on Middling Mediations

The Program in Literature presents The Srinivas Aravamudan Annual Lecture in Critical Theory January 2025 ANNA KORNBLUH Lecture Thursday, January 23 4:00pm Friedl Building, Room 225 Good Enough Art: A Few Theses on Middling Mediations The recent surge of "mid" as an aesthetic judgment paradoxically discloses the missing middle in contemporary cultural arts. Amid the eviction of the middle class, cultural study of the middlebrow can no longer rely upon the traditional sociological method. Briefly considering architecture, photography, fiction, and television, this talk experiments with a formalist approach to "good enough art." SEMINAR Old Problems in Cultural Studies Friday, January 24 11:00am Friedl Building, Room 107 Anna Kornbluh is Professor of English and a member of the United Faculty Bargaining Committee at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is the author of four books, including Immediacy, Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso 2024), as well as essays on climate aesthetics, tv, academic labor, and psychoanalysis. Readings for the seminar will be available soon.