Dr. Gabriel Quigley
Position
Credentials
MA (University of Toronto), MA (New York University), PhD (New York University)
Area of expertise
Global modernism, postcolonial studies, philosophy, aesthetics, legal studies, disability studies
My research combines global modernism, postcolonial studies, and philosophy. While I have published on a range of topics—including revolution, nothingness, disability, the university, and miracles—my current research focuses on the aesthetic, philosophical, and legal dimensions of the relationship between modernism and humanitarianism. I am currently completing a book project titled Modernism and the Event, which analyzes how paradigms of contingency in modernist writing shaped philosophical conceptions of “the event.” I am also developing two other projects: Modernism and Human Rights, which argues that the current framework of international human rights law is a modernist invention, and Fanonian Aesthetics, which examines the place of art (including literature, theatre, dance, cinema, the visual arts, and music) in Frantz Fanon’s reflections on race, psychiatry, and colonialism.
My work has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Modern Literature, Derrida Today, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, French Studies Bulletin, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, and Critical Inquiry, along with several edited volumes. I edited a special issue of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies titled “Samuel Beckett in the Postcolony,” a special issue of French Politics, Culture & Society titled “The Disalienist: The Political Psychiatry of Francesc Tosquelles,” and I co-edited the volume Beckett Ongoing: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). I am also the Assistant Editor of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.
I have been awarded a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, a James Joyce Fellowship, an NYU Public Humanities Fellowship, a SSHRC Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, a University of Toronto Arts and Science Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, and the NYU Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award in the Humanities, among other honors.
Select Publications:
Edited Volumes
With Michael Krimper, Beckett Ongoing: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).
Special Issues
“Samuel Beckett in the Postcolony,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (2025).
“The Disalienist: Francesc Tosquelles’ Permanent Revolution,” French Politics, Culture & Society (2026).
Journal Articles
“White Erethism: Beckett, Crevel, Cunard” in “Samuel Beckett in the Postcolony,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 27, 1 (2023): 124-139.
“Moments of Rupture: Woolf, Whitehead, Deleuze,” Journal of Modern Literature 47, 4 (2024): 20-38.
“Justice, Law, and the Educative Power: Revisiting ‘Force of Law,’” Derrida Today 14, 2 (2021): 186-206.
“‘A worthless reptile’: Samuel Beckett and the Turkish Language Reforms,” Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 31, 1 (2019): 250-262.
Book Chapters
“Ezra Pound and the Paideuma of Whiteness,” Marking Whiteness: Modernity’s Self, Modernism’s Other, edited by Sonita Sarker and Jennifer Nesbitt (Clemson University Press, 2025): 33-54.
“‘Where you are worth nothing’: Beckett, Geulincx, and an Ethics of the Miracle,” Beckett Ongoing: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024): 95-118.
“Care, Pig!: The Abject Caregiver in Beckett’s Plays,” The Portrait of an Artist as a Pathographer, edited by Jagannath Basu and Jayjit Sarkar (Vernon Press, 2021): 33-48.
Translations
Alfred Jarry, “Ubu on the Hill,” French Studies Bulletin 42, 161 (2022): 1-19.
Gérard de Nerval, Petits châteaux de Bohême, in Bohemians: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2023). Excerpts.
Fanny zu Reventlow, Herrn Dames Aufzechnungen oder Begebenheit aus einem merkwürdigen Stadtteil, in Bohemians: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2023). Excerpts.
Reviews
“Review of The Philosophy of Virginia Woolf: Moments of Becoming by Thomas Nail,” Journal of Modern Literature (forthcoming).
“Review of Beckett and Cultural Nationalism by Shane Weller and Samuel Beckett and the Second World War by Will Davies,” The Beckett Circle (2024).
“Review of Brutalisme by Achille Mbembe,” Critical Inquiry 49, 2 (2022): 296-7.