front cover of The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience
The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience
Mikel Dufrenne
Northwestern University Press, 1973
The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (Fr. Phénoménologie de l'expérience esthétique) was first published in 1953. In the first of four parts, Dufrenne distinguishes the "aesthetic object" from the "work of art." In the second, he elucidates types of works of art, especially music and painting. He devotes his third section to aesthetic perception. In the fourth, he describes a Kantian critique of aesthetic experience.

A perennial classic in the SPEP series, the work is rounded out by a detailed "Translator's Foreword" especially helpful to readers in aesthetics interested in the context and circumstances around which the original was published as well as the phenomenological background of the book.
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The Notion of the A Priori
Mikel Dufrenne
Northwestern University Press, 2009

Originally published in 1966, this pivotal work of Mikel Dufrenne revises Kant’s notion of a priori, a concept previously given insufficient attention by philosophers, to realize a rich understanding that finally does justice to one of Kant’s most troubling cruxes. Following the Husserlian analytics of phenomenology, Dufrenne postulates a dualistic conception of the a priori as a structure that expresses itself outside the human subject, but also as a virtual knowledge that points to a philosophy of immediate apprehension or feeling. A friend of Paul Ricoeur, with whom he was detained as a prisoner of war during World War II, Dufrenne’s work until now has been sorely overlooked by American philosophers.

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Charles Gates Dawes
A Life
Annette B. Dunlap
Northwestern University Press, 2016

Charles Gates Dawes: A Life is the first comprehensive biography of an American in whose fascinating story contemporary readers can follow the struggles and triumphs of early twentieth-century America and Europe.

Dawes is most known today as vice president of the United States under Calvin Coolidge, but he also distinguished himself and his hometown of Evanston, Illinois, on the world stage with the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize. This engrossing biography traces how, when the punitive armistice that ended the First World War resulted in a disabled, restive Germany, Dawes’s diplomatic legerdemain averted war through a renegotiation of Germany’s debt repayments.

Dawes’s diplomatic and political achievements, however, were only the illustrious capstones to a multifaceted career that included military service, law, finance, and business on the local, state, national, and global stages. In every arena of his life, he combined the social graces of the Gilded Age with the spirit of service of the Progressive Era.

Despite his life of disciplined service, Dawes was an ebullient and irrepressible figure. Dawes’s salty language was often colorful fodder for tabloid and magazine writers of his era. In this captivating biography, Annette B. Dunlap recounts the story of an original American who enlightened and enlivened his world.

This book was published in cooperation with the Evanston History Center and with generous support from the Tawani Foundation.
 

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Distributions of the Sensible
Rancière, between Aesthetics and Politics
Scott Durham
Northwestern University Press, 2019
Jacques Rancière’s work is increasingly central to several debates across the humanities. Distributions of the Sensible confronts a question at the heart of his thought: How should we conceive the relationship between the “politics of aesthetics” and the “aesthetics of politics”? Specifically, the book explores the implications of Rancière’s rethinking of the relationship of aesthetic to political democracy from a wide range of critical perspectives.

Distributions of the Sensible contains original essays by leading scholars on topics such as Rancière’s relation to political theory, critical theory, philosophical aesthetics, and film. The book concludes with a new essay by Rancière himself that reconsiders the practice of theory between aesthetics and politics.
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Chicago by Day and Night
The Pleasure Seeker's Guide to the Paris of America
Paul Durica
Northwestern University Press, 2013
Chicago by Day and Night: The Pleasure Seeker’s Guide to the Paris of America is an actual guidebook to Chicago for visitors to the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. This unauthorized handbook to the rowdy city outside the elegant fairgrounds explores pleasures high and low. The theaters and music, architectural glories, parks and boulevards, churches and synagogues, and other elevated pursuits the authors included in 1893 gave the book a veneer of high culture. But the book owed its popularity to its insider tips about Chicago's lurid and louche entertainments—drink, gambling, and sex. With a wink and tongue firmly in cheek, the original authors condemned Gilded Age vice while offering curious travelers precise directions to the dubious, decadent, and debauched quarters of the Windy City. 

To introduce this compulsively readable, gift-quality journey through the Chicago of 1893, Chicago writers and humorists Paul Durica and Bill Savage have added an expert introduction to Gilded Age Chicago and the World's Columbian Exposition. Showcasing the first Ferris wheel, dazzling new electrification technologies, and exhibits from around the world, the Exposition was Chicago’s chance to prove it had risen from the ashes of the Great Fire and would claim a place among the world’s great cities.

Both a perfect keepsake or gift for Chicago travelers as well as an invaluable text for readers interested in the history of Chicago, the Midwest, or Gilded Age urban life, Chicago by Day and Night is a beloved classic of Chicago writing. 
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Reading the Illegible
Craig Dworkin
Northwestern University Press, 2003
A poet takes another's text, excises this, prints over that, cancels, erases, rearranges, defaces--and generally renders the original unreadable, at least in its original terms. What twentieth-century writers and artists have meant by such appropriations and violations, and how the "illegible" results are to be read, is the subject Craig Dworkin takes up in this ambitious work.

In his scrutiny of selected works, and with reference to a rich variety of textual materials--from popular and scientific texts to visual art, political and cultural theories, and experimental films--Dworkin proposes a new way of apprehending the radical formalism of so-called unreadable texts. Dworkin unveils what he describes as "the politics of the poem"--what is signified by its form, enacted by its structures, and implicit in the philosophy of language; how it positions its reader; and other questions relating to the poem as material object. In doing so, he exposes the mechanics and function of truly radical formalism as a practice that move beyond aesthetic considerations into the realms of politics and ideology. Reading the Illegible asks us to reconsider poetry as a physical act, and helps us to see how the range of a text's linguistic and political maneuvers depends to a great extent on the material conditions of reading and writing as well as the mechanics of reproduction.
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Against Expression
An Anthology of Conceptual Writing
Craig Dworkin
Northwestern University Press, 2011
In much the same way that photography forced painting to move in new directions, the advent of the World Wide Web, with its proliferation of easily transferable and manipulated text, forces us to think about writing, creativity, and the materiality of language in new ways. In Against Expression, editors Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith present the most innovative works responding to the challenges posed by these developments.

Charles Bernstein has described conceptual poetry as "poetry pregnant with thought." Against Expression, the premier anthology of conceptual writing, presents work that is by turns thoughtful, funny, provocative, and disturbing. Dworkin and Goldsmith, two of the leading spokespersons and practitioners of conceptual writing, chart the trajectory of the conceptual aesthetic from early precursors including Samuel Beckett and Marcel Duchamp to the most prominent of today’s writers. Nearly all of the major avant-garde groups of the past century are represented here, including Dada, OuLiPo, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and Flarf to name just a few, but all the writers are united in their imaginative appropriation of found and generated texts and their exploration of nonexpressive language. Against Expression is a timely collection and an invaluable resource for readers and writers alike.
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Gertrude Stein
The Language That Rises: 1923-1934
Ulla E. Dydo
Northwestern University Press, 2008

The first extensive examination of Stein's notebooks, manuscripts and letters, prepared over a period of twenty years, Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises asks new questions and explores new ways of reading Stein. This definitive study give us a finely detailed, deeply felt understanding of Stein, the great modernist, throughout one of her most productive periods. From "An Elucidation" in 1923 to Lectures In America in 1934, Ulla E. Dydo examines the process of the making and remaking of Stein's texts as they move from notepad to notebook to manuscript, from an idea to the ultimate refinement of the author's intentions. The result is an unprecedented view of the development of Stein's work, word by word, text by text, and over time.

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