James A. Steintrager
Professor, English, Comparative Literature, and European Languages & Studies
School of Humanities
School of Humanities
Ph.D., Columbia University, 1997, Comparative Literature
University of California, Irvine
174 Krieger Hall
Mail Code: 2650
Irvine, CA 92697
174 Krieger Hall
Mail Code: 2650
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Libertinism, materialism and radical Enlightenment philosophy; sound studies; sociological approaches to cultural production
Websites
Research Abstract
My primary research interests are libertinism, materialism, and radical Enlightenment philosophy in France and Britain in the later seventeenth through the eighteenth century. In my monograph The Autonomy of Pleasure: Libertines, License, and Sexual Revolution (Columbia UP, 2016), I examine the radicalization of libertinism, its initial alignment and subsequent break with philosophie, and the consequences of making pleasure into a sovereign power in pre-Revolutionary France. This work has also allowed me to stretch back into earlier texts—for example, considering the reception of satires from classical antiquity—as well as forward—looking at the Marquis de Sade’s rehabilitation in theoretical texts in the 1960s and 70s, for instance, or examining parallels between my primary material and the later “democratic” sexual revolution. My previous monograph is Cruel Delight: Enlightenment Culture and the Inhuman (Indiana UP, 2004). Here I examined the construction of the category of “moral monstrosity” within philosophy in Britain and France and the deployment of this conceptual category in literature, journalism, and the visual arts, with debates about scientific curiosity, anatomy, vivisection, and criminality as my foci.
I have recently published a translation of the Marquis de Sade’s Journey to Italy, his massive Italian travelogues, with a substantial introduction and critical apparatus (University of Toronto Press, 2020).
At present, my main book project, tentatively titled “The Epistemology of Fantasy, examines the how literary texts—libertine and otherwise—complicate dominant Lockeian models of language and knowledge in the eighteenth century, providing a sort of constructivist complement to philosophy’s representational ideal. I have also been researching intellectual networks among antiquaries, collectors, and libertines across Europe—including Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Poland—in the eighteenth century, including figures central to the creation of the British Museum such as Charles Townley and William Hamilton.
Along with my primary research in the Enlightenment era, I have also published, edited, and translated extensively in the interdisciplinary field of sound studies. This includes a collection of essays entitled Sound Objects (Duke University Press, 2019), co-edited with my frequent collaborator Rey Chow, and a translation of and critical introduction to Michel Chion’s Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise (Duke University Press, 2018).
I have recently published a translation of the Marquis de Sade’s Journey to Italy, his massive Italian travelogues, with a substantial introduction and critical apparatus (University of Toronto Press, 2020).
At present, my main book project, tentatively titled “The Epistemology of Fantasy, examines the how literary texts—libertine and otherwise—complicate dominant Lockeian models of language and knowledge in the eighteenth century, providing a sort of constructivist complement to philosophy’s representational ideal. I have also been researching intellectual networks among antiquaries, collectors, and libertines across Europe—including Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Poland—in the eighteenth century, including figures central to the creation of the British Museum such as Charles Townley and William Hamilton.
Along with my primary research in the Enlightenment era, I have also published, edited, and translated extensively in the interdisciplinary field of sound studies. This includes a collection of essays entitled Sound Objects (Duke University Press, 2019), co-edited with my frequent collaborator Rey Chow, and a translation of and critical introduction to Michel Chion’s Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise (Duke University Press, 2018).
Publications
Marquis de Sade, Journey to Italy, translation, introduction and annotations (University of Toronto Press, 2020)
Sound Objects (Duke University Press, 2019). Co-edited with Rey
Chow.
Chow.
The Autonomy of Pleasure: Libertines, License, and Sexual Revolution (Columbia University Press, 2016)
The Sense of Sound, a special double issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 22.2/3 (2011). Co-edited with Rey Chow.
Cruel Delight: Enlightenment Culture and the Inhuman (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2004).
“Sade, Genealogy, Modernity, or Historicism Perverted,” in Understanding Sade, Understanding Modernism, ed. James Martell (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025): 67-80.
"The Cicadas Deafening Tymbals: Toward a Critical Sound Ecology," Qui Parle 34.2 (December 2025): 427-440.
“Dispatches to the Dead: Delegation, Consumption, and Mischievous Pleasure (Thinking with Robert Pfaller in the So-called Present),” James A. Steintrager and Rey Chow, Boundary 2 (2022) 49 (2): 295-213.
Dictionnaire Sade, ed. Christian Lacombe (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2021): entries on “Antiquaire,” “L’Arétin,” “Clitoris,” “Coprophagie,” “Italie,” “Naples,” “Pape,” “Sodomie,” and “Vénus Callipyge.”
“Deregulating the Libertine Mind: Wine, Wit, and Wanton Fancy,” in Emergent Nation: Early Modern British Literature in Transition, 1660-1714, Volume 3, ed. Elizabeth Sauer (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
“Listening with Adorno, Again: Nonobjective Objectivity and the Possibility of
Critique,” in Sound Objects (Duke University Press, 2019): 73-93.
Critique,” in Sound Objects (Duke University Press, 2019): 73-93.
“Sounding Against the Grain: Music, Voice, and Noise in The Assassin,” in The Assassin: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s World of Tang China, ed. Peng Hsiao-yen (Hong Kong University Press, 2019).
“The Thirdness of King Hu: Wuxia, Deleuze, and the Cinema of Paradox,” The Journal
of Chinese Cinemas (May 2014).
“The Temptation of Alexander Pope: Materialism and Sexual Fantasy in ‘Eloisa to
Abelard,’ Sex and Death in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Jolene Zigarovich (Routledge, 2013): 127-146.
“The Medium Is Not the Message: Rancière, Eschatology, and the End of Cinema,”
Rancière and Film, ed. Paul Bowman (University of Edinburgh Press,
2013): 169-184.
"Oscillate and Reflect: La Mettrie, Materialist Physiology, and the Revival of the Epicurean Canonic," in Dynamic Reading: Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism, ed. Brooke Holmes and W.H. Shearin (Oxford University Press, 2012): 162-198.
“Metal Machines, Primal Screams, Horrible Noise, and the Faint Hum of a Paradigm
Shift in Sound Studies and Sonic Practice.” Musica Humana 3.1 (Spring 2011):
121-151.
"Speaking of Noise: From Murderous Loudness to the Crackle of Silk," differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 22.2-3 (Summer-Fall 2011).
“In Pursuit of the Object of Sound: An Introduction.” Co-authored with Rey Chow. The
Sense of Sound, a special double issue of differences: A Journal of Feminist
Cultural Studies 22.2/3 (2011): 1-9.
“Global Ear: Hong Kong.” Co-authored with Andy Hamilton. The Wire 328 (June 2011):
16.
“Hermeneutic Heresy: Rey Chow on Translation in Theory and the ‘Fable’ of Culture,” Postcolonial Studies 13.3 (2010): 289-302.
“What Happened to the Porn in Pornography? Rétif, Regulating Prostitution, and the
History of Dirty Books.” Symposium 60.3 (Fall 2006): 189-204
"Liberating Sade." Yale Journal of Criticism 18.2 (2005): 351-379.
"An Unworthy Subject: Slaughter, Cannibalism, and Postcoloniality," Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong (Hong Kong University Press, 2005): 155-174.
“John Woo’s Bullet in the Head: Trauma, Identity and Violent Spectacle,” Chinese Films in Focus, ed. Chris Berry (London: British Film Institute, 2003).
Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=3345
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=3345
Last updated
01/27/2026
01/27/2026