Bill Brown (critical theory)

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Bill Brown is a professor of English at the University of Chicago. He occupies the named chair previously held by Wayne Booth and is currently chair of the Univeristy's English Department. His work focuses on American literature, with his second book, A Sense of Things, looking at the representation of objects in 19th century American literature. His interests have since progressed to modernism. He also has a long-standing interest in popular culture, and has written about Toy Story and Westerns, among other facets of American life.

His major theoretical work is on Thing theory, which borrows from Heidegger's object/thing distinction to look the role of objects that have become manifest in a way that sets them apart from the world in which they exist. He edited a special issue of Critical Inquiry on this subject, which won awards for best special issue of an academic journal in 2001.