Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Benjamin Flaumenhaft ’27 is an undergraduate concentrating in Comparative Literature. His thesis, tentatively titled “Jean Genet’s Antisocial Theater,” thinks about social negativity by way of theatrical form, and vice versa. The thesis will trace a convergence of antirelational sentiment and staginess as it plays out across Genet’s murderous and relentlessly metatheatrical scenes. Reading the work of Genet alongside queer theoretical writings of an antisocial bent and theories of theater that privilege writing and non-presence, the project ultimately seeks to work out connections between terms like betrayal, antagonism, and failure, and formal mechanisms like script, staging, and gesture. Flaumenhaft’s intellectual interests include French modernisms, theater history, the Frankfurt School, and poetic coteries like the New York School and New Narrative.