Office: Phelps Hall 6326
Email: weber@gss.ucsb.edu
Other Departmental Affiliations: Comparative Literature, Religious Studies
Teaching and Academic Specialization
My research and teaching focuses on the ways in which literature and critical theory can contribute to an exploration of trauma, of human rights and their violations, and to a reflection on concepts whose definitions have become, in the contemporary context, more and more uncertain, including the concepts of “the human,” “democracy,” “justice,” “rights.” My teaching experience includes visiting professorships at Johns Hopkins University and Rutgers University. I am an instructor in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center's "Foundations in the Humanities" prison correspondence program, and one of the co-conveners of the IHC Research Focus Group "Catastrophes: Thinking Shoah and Nakba Together." With a research project on plant humanities, I recently received a fellowship from the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, IFK), Art University Linz and Vienna, Austria (https://www.ifk.ac.at/fellows-detail-en/elisabeth-weber.html).
Recent Publications
- Kill Boxes. Facing the Legacy of US-Sponsored Torture, Indefinite Detention, and Drone Warfare, Punctum Books 2017
- "Conjuring green. Jacques Derrida’s plants," Derrida Today, 16.1, 2023
- "Shared breath, common sense. Encounters between Western and Amerindian thought," Modern Language Notes, Special issue “Sensus Non-Communis”, 2024