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Robert Wilkie

Associate Professor
English University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Robert Wilkie's office hours

Monday
noon to 1 p.m.
or by appointment
Tuesday
noon to 1 p.m.
or by appointment
Wednesday
noon to 1 p.m.
or by appointment
Thursday
By appointment only

Remote office hours offered: Please email for office hours link
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Robert Wilkie

Associate Professor

English

Specialty area(s)

Digital and Visual Cultural Theory; Rhetoric, Writing, and Technology; Contemporary Literature and Film.

Current courses at UWL

English 110: College Writing I ("Global Americas")
English 200: Literature and Human Experience ("Living in Undead Times")

Education

Ph.D. in English, University at Albany, SUNY (2008)

B.A. in English, Hofstra University (1996)

Career

Teaching history

English 110: College Writing I ("Global Americas")
English 200: Literature and Human Experience ("The Networked Life")
English 200: Literature and Human Experience ("Living in 'Apocalyptic' Times")
English 303: College Writing II ("Analyzing the Signs of Life")
English 304: Writing in the Arts and Humanities ("Writing in the Posthumanities")
English 311: Critical Theory ("Subjects/Texts/Things")
English 327: Publishing in a Digital Age
English 333: Introduction to Rhetoric and Writing Studies ("Rhetorical Theory in a Post-Truth World")
English 413: Writing Portfolio ("Memory, Archive, History")
English 497: Seminar in Rhetoric and Writing Studies ("Android Rhetoric")
English 497: Senior Seminar ("Rhetoric Unbound: Technology and Writing in the (Post)Human Era")

Research and publishing

Recent Books:

Human all too (Post)Human. Co-Editor. Lexington Books, June 2016.

The Digital Condition: Class and Culture in the Information Network. Fordham University Press, 2011.

Recent Essays:

"Training to Write like a Machine" (Forthcoming).

"A Machine of Affirmations: Fascism in the Age of Trump" in International Critical Thought . 13.3 (Fall 2023).

"游戏劳工：阶级、电子游戏和'一般智力'" in 澎湃新闻 (The Paper). Trans. Wen Yang Lei. (April 2022).

"Introduction: Talking Revolution: Marx's Speeches and the Speculative Communism" in Nineteenth-Century Prose. 45.2 (Fall 2018).

"When Left Theory 'Leaves Behind the Dream of a Revolution': Class and the Software Economy" in Media and Class: TV, Film, and Digital Culture. Edited by Andrea Press and June Deery. Routledge, 2017.

"Gaming Labor: Class, Video Games, and the 'General Intellect'" in the minnesota review. 87 (2016).

"Introduction: After the Law of Value is 'Blown Apart': Labor as Value in the Contemporary" in the minnesota review. 87 (2016).

"Ghostly Objectivity: Commodity Fetishism, Animated Monsters, and the Posthuman Object" in Human all too (Post)Human. Edited by Cotter et. al. Lexington Books, 2016.

"Giorgio Agamben's 'Cenobitic Communism' and the Limits of Posthumanism" in International Critical Thought. 5.1 (2015).

"Posthuman 'Visions' and the (Un)Seeing of Class" in Stories in Post-Human Cultures. Edited by Adam L. Brackin and Natacha Guyot. Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013. Republished by Brill, 2019.

"The Daydreams of iPod Capitalism" in Post Industrial Society (4 Volumes). London, UK: Sage Publications, 2010.

Recent Presentations:

"Training to Write Like a Machine: ChatGPT and the Onto-Theology of ‘Assessment’." SUNY Council on Writing's “Writing, Thinking, and Learning with AI: Exploring Relationships of Rhetoric and Artificial Intelligence.” October 14, 2023. Online and Stony Brook, NY. 

"Class Lessons in the (Post)Humanities," Third World Culture Forum. May 29, 2021. Shandong University Weihai Campus. Shandong, China.

"Assemblage Writing: Posthuman Rhetoric and the Onto-Silencing of Class," Institute for Research in the Humanities Seminar. March 4, 2019. Madison, WI.

"Marx's Speeches" (Co-Chair), MLG ICS 2018. June 17, 2018. Albany, NY. 

"Composing the Nonhuman: Class and Vitalist Rhetoric," CCCC Annual Convention. March 17, 2017. Portland, Oregon.

"The Speculations of Capital: Class, Critique and Posthumanism," MLA Annual Conference. January 6, 2017. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

"On The Digital Condition," The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. June 9, 2015. Beijing, China.

"On The Digital Condition," South Central University for Nationalities, June 4, 2015. Wuhan, China. 

"Commodity Fetishism and the Posthuman Object." PCA/ACA Annual Conference. April 19, 2014. Chicago, Illinois.

"Posthuman 'Visions' and the (Un)Seeing of Class." 8th Global Conference: Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction. July 19, 2013. Oxford, United Kingdom.

"The Spontaneous Ideology of Systems: Posthuman Specificity and Class Totality." Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. September 29, 2012. Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

"Gaming Ideology: Labor and Class in the 'Ludo Economy'." Class/Aesthetics/Worlds Conference. October 15, 2011. Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"The 'Posthuman' Eye: Class, Ethics, and the Digital Image." Versatile Image: Photography in the Era of Web 2.0 Conference. June 24-26, 2011. Sunderland, England.

Kudos

presented

Robert Wilkie, English, presented "Training to Write Like a Machine: ChatGPT and the Onto-Theology of 'Assessment'" at SUNY Council on Writing's "Writing, Thinking, and Learning with AI: Exploring Relationships of Rhetoric and Artificial Intelligence” conference on Oct. 14 online. Although there are breathless reports in the media regarding the ability of ChatGPT and other natural language processing tools to “pass” various writing assignments, and that this is a harbinger of an existential crisis for the teaching of writing, Rob Wilkie's presentation addresses what is left out of these accounts--the way in which the obsession with quantifiable assessment that has come to dominate the discussion of teaching has already transformed higher education into (job) training to write like a machine.

Submitted on: Oct. 15, 2023

published

Robert Wilkie, English, authored the article "A Machine of Affirmations: Fascism in the Age of Trump" in International Critical Thought published on Sept. 20 by Taylor & Francis.

Submitted on: Sept. 30, 2023

published

Kimberly DeFazio and Robert Wilkie, both English, co-authored the article "The Immeasurable Humanities" in La Crosse Tribune published on Feb. 26 by Lee Enterprises. The op-ed, on “evidence-based” teaching as the metaphysics of pedagogy in the managerial university, is published in the Sunday Tribune.

Submitted on: Mar. 15, 2023

published

Kimberly DeFazio and Robert Wilkie, both English, co-authored the article "Negative Capability, the Pedagogy of Metrics and the Managerial Machine" in The La Crosse Tribune published on Aug. 28 by The La Crosse Tribune. “Negative Capability, the Pedagogy of Metrics and the Managerial Machine” is an article on the humanities as the ethical consciousness of a democratic society. The task of the humanities is to cultivate “negative capability,” capability of being in uncertainties, doubts and tolerant of ambiguity and otherness. The humanities of the “negative capability” is being displaced by a managerial anti-intellectualism that has turned the humanities into “assessable” skills.

Submitted on: Sept. 2, 2022

published

Robert Wilkie, English, authored the article "游戏劳工：阶级、电子游戏和'一般智力'" in 澎湃新闻 (The Paper) published on April 30 by 上海报业集团. Rob Wilkie’s essay "Gaming Labor: Class, Video Games, and the 'General Intellect'" has been translated into Chinese and is published and available online in 澎湃新闻 (The Paper). The essay is a theoretical analysis of contemporary labor conditions, Marx’s “labor theory of value,” and the managerial control of labor.

Submitted on: May 1, 2022

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