Robert Barsky

Photo of Robert Barsky

Robert Franklin BarskyisCanada Research Chairin Law, Narrative, and Border Crossing. He is a Professor in the College of Arts and Science and Associate Faculty in the School of Law atVanderbilt UniversityinNashville, Tennessee.He is an expert onNoam Chomsky,literary theory,convention refugees,immigration and refugee law, borders, work through the Americas, andMontreal.His biography of Chomsky titledNoam Chomsky: A Life of Dissentwas published in 1997 byMIT Press,followed in 2007 byThe Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower,and in 2011 by a biography of Chomsky's teacher:Zellig Harris: From American Linguistics to Socialist Zionism.His most recent books areUndocumented Immigrants in an Era of Arbitrary Law(Routledge Law, 2016) andHatched!,a novel (Sunbury Press, 2016).

Background

Barsky was born and raised inMontreal.He attendedBrandeis UniversityinWaltham, Massachusetts,and after graduating moved toVerbier,Switzerlandwith the intention of pursuing a career inskiing.In 1985, he returned toCanadato undertake graduate work atMcGill Universityin Montreal, first onLord Byronand then, following-up on his work as atranscriberof refugee hearings, on the discourse of convention refugees for aPhDinComparative Literature.After the PhD he continued work for theInstitut national de la recherche scientifique(INRS), before taking up a post-doc with Michel Meyer onrhetoricand argumentation at l'Université libre de Bruxelles,inBelgium.

Work

Barsky is the author or editor of numerous books on narrative andrefugee law( "Undocumented Immigrants in an Era of Arbitrary Law: The Flight and Plight of Peoples Deemed 'Illegal',Constructing a Productive Other: Discourse Theory and the Convention Refugee HearingandArguing and Justifying: Assessing the Convention Refugees' Choice of Moment, Motive and Host Country), on radical theory and practice ( "Zellig Harris: From American Linguistics to Socialist Zionism",The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower,Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissentand an edition ofAnton Pannekoek'sWorkers Councils) on discourse andliterary theory(Introduction à la théorie littéraire,an edited volume withMichael HolquisttitledBakhtinand Otherness, an edited collection with Eric Méchoulan titledThe Production of French Criticism,an edited collection titledMarc Angenotand the Scandal of History,an edited collection with Saleem Ali for www.ameriquests.org on "Quests Beyond the Ivory Tower: Public Intellectuals, Academia and the Media" ) and ontranslation— in both theory and practice (including the translation of Michel Meyer'sPhilosophy and the Passions). He has been involved with a range of journals, includingSubStance,for which he served as an editor, and he is the founder of415 South Street,a literary magazine atBrandeis University,Discours social/Social Discourse,and the international on-line journal AmeriQuests. His novel, "Hatched", appeared in 2016.

Barsky has been the Canadian Bicentennial Visiting Professor atYale University,a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Toulouse, the Law School of the VU Amsterdam, under the auspices of theDutch Royal Society,and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities,University of Edinburgh.He is the Faculty Director of the W.T. Bandy Center, the Founding Director of Quebec and Canadian Studies, and the co-Director, with Daniel Gervais, of the Literature and Law Seminar at the Robert Penn Warren Center.

External links

• Robert Barsky website
• Barsky talk about public intellectuals
• "LIFE: Interview with 'Faculebrity' Prof. Robert Barsky | InsideVandy".Archived fromthe originalon 2008-05-13.Interview with Barsky
• Barsky interviewed for New Books on Language, about Zellig Harris