PeopleFaculty

Kaplan 146
E-mail

Education

Ph.D. UCLA  1994
B.A. UCLA  1986

Research Interests

Twentieth and twenty-first century British and Irish literature; modernism; theory of language; philosophy of mind; visual art; history of writing; medieval and Renaissance antecedents to modern literature.

Colleen Jaurretche is a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of English at UCLA where she focuses on twentieth century British and Irish authors. Her first book, ‘The Sensual Philosophy’: Joyce and the Aesthetics of Mysticism (Wisconsin, 1997) investigates theological works from the six through sixteenth century in its examination of James Joyce’s writing in the context of the tradition of negative theology. Her second book, Language as Prayer in Finnegans Wake (UP Florida, James Joyce Series, 2020), brings together thinkers from antiquity, the Middle Ages, early Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to examine conditions of language as prayer. Jaurretche has also edited a collection of essays on Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and published essays in James Joyce Quarterly, European Joyce Studies Annual, and Joyce Studies Annual.

She is currently working on a memoir about what it’s like to grow up as the sane daughter and granddaughter of schizophrenics. Set in her native northeast Los Angeles, the story is told through the memories, migration narratives, and landscapes of her Mexican, European, and Indigenous family, as well as her own coming of age in the continental West. In the course of research she’s made many discoveries, including her Teme-Augama Anishnabai citizenship.

Public Humanities

In 2010 she co-founded and today co-directs the Libros Schmibros Lending Library in the historically underserved Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Since its inception, Libros Schmibros has put almost 70,000 books into people’s hands, hosted many public programs, and been installed as artist-in-residence at the Hammer Museum.

Selected Publications

‘The Sensual Philosophy’: Joyce and the Aesthetics of Mysticism (Wisconsin, 1997)

Language as Prayer in Finnegans Wake (Florida, James Joyce Series, 2020)

Courses Taught at UCLA

James Joyce Seminar; How to Read Finnegans Wake; Funny as Shite: Samuel Beckett and Flann O’Brien; Literary Cities: Dublin; Modern Drama; Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry; Undergraduate Honors Seminar: Hamlet. She also leads UCLA’s Dublin Travel/Study.

Interest Areas
• British Literature & Culture, 19th C. – Present
• Visual Culture / Media Studies / Digital Humanities
• Critical Theory
• Postcolonial Theory / Transnational Studies