Rate My Professor Robert Hughes

Robert Hughes is a Professor of English in the Department of English at The Ohio State University, serving on the Newark campus as Coordinator of the English Area since 2016. He is a scholar of comparative literature, specializing in the intersection of contemporary continental philosophies of art and aesthetics, feminist and phenomenological theories of the body, and nineteenth-century literature, with a focus on American literature from 1790 to 1865, as well as European art, literature, and philosophy of the period. Hughes earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Emory University in 2003, M.A. in English and American Literature from the University of Missouri in 1993, and B.A. cum laude in English from the University of Tulsa in 1990. Affiliated with the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State since 2013, he began his tenure-track career there as Assistant Professor in 2005, promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2011. Earlier appointments include Assistant Professor at Augusta State University from 2002 to 2005, Visiting Assistant Professor at Georgia College in 2001-2002, and Visiting Lecturer at Tartu University in Estonia in 2000-2001.

Hughes's scholarly contributions include the monograph The Aesthetic Subject in Contemporary Continental Philosophy and Literature: Thinking the Body-Thought (Routledge, 2024) and Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Beyond of Language (SUNY Press, 2010). He co-edited After Lacan: Clinical Practice and the Subject of the Unconscious (SUNY Press, 2002). Key articles feature “Bernard Stiegler, Philosophical Amateur, or, Individuation from Éros to Philía” in Diacritics (2014) and “Sleepy Hollow: Fearful Pleasures and the Nightmare of History” in Arizona Quarterly (2005), reprinted in multiple criticism volumes. An accomplished translator, he has rendered works by Peter Sloterdijk, including Making the Heavens Speak: Religion as Poetry (Polity Press, 2023) and If You Have Never Thought Gray: A Theory of Color (Polity Press, 2025). His honors include the Teaching Excellence Award from Ohio State University Newark campus in 2012 and 2020, the Most Valuable Professor Award from Augusta State University in 2005, and the Distinguished Teaching Award from Emory University in 1999. As co-director of the International Philosophical Seminar in Italy and editorial board member of Methis: Studia Humaniora Estonica since 2008, Hughes has presented extensively on thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, and Hélène Cixous, advancing discourse in aesthetics, literary theory, and phenomenology.