Background
Chambers, Leigh Ross was born on November 19, 1932 in Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia. Son of Cecil Edward and Beryl Alma (Fayle) Chambers. came to the United States, 1975.
( For a generation or more, literary theorists have used ...)
For a generation or more, literary theorists have used the metaphor of "the death of the author" in considering the observation that to write is to abdicate control over the meanings one's text is capable of generating. But in the case of AIDS diaries, the metaphor can be literal. Facing It examines the genre not in classificatory terms but pragmatically, as the site of a social interaction. Through a detailed study of three such diaries, originating respectively in France, the United States, and Australia, Ross Chambers demonstrates that issues concerning the politics of AIDS writing and the ethics of reading are linked by a common concern with the problematics of survivorhood. Two of the diaries chosen for special attention in this light are video diaries: La Pudeur ou l'impudeur by Hervé Guibert (author of To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life), and Silverlake Life, by the American videomaker Tom Joslin (aided by his lover and friends, notably Peter Friedman). The third is a defiant but anxious text, Unbecoming, by an American anthropologist, Eric Michaels, who died in Brisbane, Australia, in 1988. Other authors more briefly examined include Pascal de Duve, Bertrand Duquénelle, Alain Emmanuel Dreuilhe, David Wojnarowicz, Gary Fisher, and the filmmaker (not a diarist) Laurie Lynd. Finally, Facing It takes on the issue of its own relevance, asking what contributions literary criticism can make in the midst of an epidemic. "Groundbreaking in its approach and potentially wide in its appeal. . . . The rigor of the ideas, their dramatic nature, and the political drive of the rhetoric all should win Facing It a large readership that could extend far beyond students of narrative or queer theory." --David Bergman, Towson University, editor of Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality Ross Chambers is Distinguished University Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, and author of Room for Maneuver: Reading (the) Oppositional (in) Narrative and Story and Situation: Narrative Seduction and the Power of Fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0472109588/?tag=2022091-20
( As atrocity has become characteristic of modern history...)
As atrocity has become characteristic of modern history, testimonial writing has become a major twentieth-century genre. Untimely Interventions relates testimonial writing, or witnessing, to the cultural situation of aftermath, exploring ways in which a culture can be haunted by its own history. Ross Chambers argues that culture produces itself as civilized by denying the forms of collective violence and other traumatic experience that it cannot control. In the context of such denial, personal accounts of collective disaster can function as a form of counter-denial. By investigating a range of writing on AIDS, the First World War, and the Holocaust, Chambers shows how such writing produces a rhetorical effect of haunting, as it seeks to describe the reality of those experiences culture renders unspeakable. Ross Chambers is Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Michigan. His other books includeFacing It: AIDS Diaries and the Death of the Author.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0472068717/?tag=2022091-20
( Ross Chambers, an eminent critic of French literature, ...)
Ross Chambers, an eminent critic of French literature, proposes an original theory of the development of French modernism. His work brings together practical criticism, textual theory, and historical analysis to fashion a new way of thinking about writing and reading as they intersect with history. Along the way, Chambers offers brilliant readings of texts from Madame Bovary to Les Fleurs du mal. After the failed revolution of 1848, the sense of disillusion that swept through France deeply affected the literature of the time. Chambers argues that literary melancholy and disorientation constituted a symptom of historical conditions rather than, as many other critics contend, a willful resistance to them. Enriched by careful readings of works by Flaubert, Nerval, Baudelaire, Gautier, and Hugo, this book is a subtle meditation on the powers of writing and reading and a suggestive contribution to current debates over the historical status of literary texts. Originally published in French, the book has been revised and expanded to include a new chapter on Gérard de Nerval's "Sylvie."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226100707/?tag=2022091-20
French and comparative language educator
Chambers, Leigh Ross was born on November 19, 1932 in Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia. Son of Cecil Edward and Beryl Alma (Fayle) Chambers. came to the United States, 1975.
Bachelor, University Sydney, Australia, 1953. Master of Arts, University Sydney, Australia, 1959. Doctor of Philosophy, University de Grenoble, France, 1967.
Lecturer in French University Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, 1957-1958, University Sydney, 1959-1963, McCaughey professor French, 1970-1975. Senior lecturer in French University New South Wales, Sydney, 1964-1968, associate professor, 1969-1970. Professor University Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1975-1985, Marvin Felheim distinguished university professor French and comparative literature, 1985—2007, Marvin Felheim distinguished university professor emeritus French and comparative literature, since 2007.
( For a generation or more, literary theorists have used ...)
( Ross Chambers, an eminent critic of French literature, ...)
( As atrocity has become characteristic of modern history...)
(Book by Chambers, Ross)
(Great BOOK!)
Fellow Australian Academy Humanities, American Academy Arts & Sciences.