Rate My Professor Benjamin Robinson

Benjamin Robinson is an Associate Professor and chair of Germanic Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. He holds a B.A. in Government from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, awarded in 1997. His research focuses on 20th-century and contemporary literature and culture, with particular attention to institutions of law, economics, and science; modernism and socialism; and questions of literary reference and realism in phenomenological and sociological traditions. Robinson’s first book, The Skin of the System: On Germany’s Socialist Modernity, was published by Stanford University Press in 2009. He has also authored numerous chapters and articles, including “Alain Badiou” in Contemporary Critical Theorists (2010), “Is Socialism the Index of a Leftist Ontology?” in A Leftist Ontology (2009), “Against Memory as Justice” in New German Critique (2006), and “The Specialist on the Eichmann Precedent” in Critical Inquiry (2003). Robinson participates in and co-initiated the Center for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities at IU, where he has helped organize symposia featuring scholars such as Alain Badiou. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on topics including German film and literature, socialism, modernism, and cultural politics, integrating philosophical perspectives from Plato to Heidegger.