Pratt Institute

Education

B.A., State University of New York Binghamto; B.A., Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture; Comparative Literature
University of California Berkely; 1yr academic exchange, Comparative Literature
Ph.D., New York University; Comparative Literature

Biography

Christopher Vitale joined the Department of English and Humanities and the Program in Critical and Visual Studies in 2006. His areas of specialization include continental philosophy, comparative modernist literary and cultural studies, psychoanalysis, queer studies, theories of race and ethnicity, radical political thought, and film and film theory. Currently, he is writing a book about complexity studies and theories of networks. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from NYU in 2007, and he has taught at NYU, UC Berkeley, and Hunter College.

Chris received a dual B.A. in Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture (PIC) and Comparative Literature from Binghamton University (SUNY) in 1996, after which he began graduate study in German at New York University in 1998. After a year exchange studying Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, he returned to NYU, where he received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 2007. His dissertation, “The Untimely Richard Bruce Nugent,” was the first comprehensive study of the potential impact of the literary and visual works of the so-called ‘Gay Rebel’ of the Harlem Renaissance. Chris’ areas of specialization include continental philosophy, comparative modernist literary and cultural studies, psychoanalysis, queer studies, theories of race and ethnicity, radical political thought, and film and film theory. In addition to work on his Ph.D., Chris has studied German in Munich and Murnau, Russian in Berkeley, and Czech cultural history in Prague. He also spent two years studying psychoanalytic psychotherapy at The Washington Square Institute, where he spent a year doing a practicum as a staff therapist. Some recent courses taught include ‘A Brief History of Sexuality – From Sexology to the Digital Age,Â’ ‘Theories of Networks,Â’ ‘Modernist Visual Cultures,Â’ ‘The Erotics of the Gaze – Psychoanalysis and the Politics of Looking,Â’ ‘Queer Modernisms: Literature and Society 1880-1940,’ ‘Literary Theory,Â’ ‘Queer Cultures,Â’ ‘Beyond the Virtual Window, or The Secret Lives of Images,’ and ‘Horror in Literature, Film, and Theory.Â’ His current research focuses on the relation between complexity studies and theories of networks, and he is in the middle of writing a book on this subject. Chris and his dog live in Brooklyn, on the south side of Prospect Park.