Peter Brooks, Andrew W. Mellon Scholar, is a Professor in Comparative Literature and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He is also the Sterling Professor Comparative Literature Emeritus at Yale University, where he was the founding director of the Whitney Humanities Center. He has written extensively on narrative and narrative theory, 19th and 20th century novels, law and literature, and psychoanalysis. His publications include Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative, Psychoanalysis and Story-Telling, and Realist Vision. His most recent book, Enigmas of Identity, draws upon literature, law and psychoanalysis in order to examine the emergence of identity as it pertains to modern culture.
Peter Brooks will be the keynote speaker at the 2011 Comparative Literature Student Conference, entitled “Desire: From Eros to Eroticisim.” His talk “Desire at the End,” taking place the evening of November 10th, will discuss desire as defined by Sigmund Freud and its relationship with the art and literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.