Stephen Felder

Stephen Felder has been a full-time faculty member at IVC since 2005. He teaches courses in Humanities, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies.

EDUCATION:
Ph.D.-- University of California, Irvine 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS & PRESENTATIONS

Books:

• Anxiety and the Contradictions of Culture: A Lacanian Approach to Gaze, Sex, Race, and Social Change. Lexington Books, 2024.

Peer-Reviewed Articles & Book Chapters:

• "Screening Neoliberalism in Nightcrawler and The Wolf of Wall Street," in Screening the Crisis: U.S. Cinema and Social Change in the 21st Century (2022).
• "Without Optimism: Sex, Žižek, and Apocalyptic Queerness," The International Journal of Žižek Studies (2017).
• "You Got Them T.V. Titties: Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and the Problem of Other Minds in Orange is the New Black," in Greene, Richard and Rachel Robison (eds.) Orange is the New Black and Philosophy, Open Court, 2015.
• "Time (Lord) as Subject and Subject as Time (Lord): Merleau-Ponty, Time, and the Relationship between the Doctor and River Song," in More Doctor Who and Philosophy (2015).
• "Sex & the City's Carrie Bradshaw and Nietzsche’s Free Spirit," The CCHA Humanist (2007).
• "What is the Fifth Sibylline Oracle?" Journal for the Study of Judaism, 33/4 (2002), pp. 363-385.
• "Berenice II," in Dictionary of World Biography: The Ancient World, Revised Edition. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2003.
• "Theodoret of Cyrrhus," in The Encyclopedia of the Ancient World, Salem Press, 2001.

Book Reviews:

• [Review] Musser, Jamilla Amber. Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance. In Lateral, September 1, 2019.
• [Review] Nasrallah, Laura. An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity. The Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2005.
• [Review] Jones, F. Stanley (ed.). Which Mary? The Marys of Early Christian Tradition. Review of Biblical Literature, 2004.
• [Review] Levine, Amy-Jill (ed.). A Feminist Companion to Mark. Review of Biblical Literature, 2003.
• [Review] de Silva, David A. Introducing the Apocrypha. Journal of Biblical Literature, 2003.
• [Review] Rowland, Christopher. Christian Origins. Journal of Biblical Literature, 2003.

Conference Presentations:

• "The Golgotha of Absolute Spirit and the Limits of Generative AI: A Hegelian Critique of the Use of ChatGPT in the Humanities," AI and the Humanities Symposium, Illinois State University, April 16-17, 2025.
• "Emotional Capitalism: Critiquing a Concept with Hegel and Lacan," Lack Conference, March 13-15, 2025, Otterbein University.
• "How Newness Retroactively Enters the World: Reading Bhabha with Benjamin." Cultural Studies Association Annual Meeting, Fairfax, VA, 2023.
• "What Are Your Drives?: Emancipatory Subjectivity in HBO’s Westworld." LACK Conference, University of Vermont, 2023.
• "Reckoning with Biopolitics in the Era of the Antivaxxer." Cultural Studies Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, 2022.
• "Anxiety as Tool and Tactic: The Collapse of Subjective Sovereignty and the Possibility of Political Change," Cultural Studies Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, 2020.
• "The Troubling Gap and [on] the Basis of Sex: Theorizing Gender in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Title VII," Cultural Studies Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, 2020.
• "That Which Deceives Not: Anxiety in HBO’s The Leftovers," Lack III Conference, Clark University, 2019.
• "From Aeschylus to Avatar: Rethinking Prometheus," Community College Humanities Association Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, 2010.
• "Sex & the City's Carrie Bradshaw: Nietzsche's Übermensch?" CCHA Pacific Western Division Conference, 2006.
• "Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity: A Reappraisal." Multicampus Research Group on Late Antiquity, University of California, Berkeley, December 2000.
• "Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians: The Sibylline ‘Suturing’ of Society in Roman Egypt." U.C.I. Department of Classics Lecture Series, 1999.
• "Jewish Identity and the Politics of Truth: Reading the Anti-Idolatry Polemic in The Fifth Sibylline Oracle." U.C.I. Graduate Student Conference on History and Theory, 1998.
• "Family Ties: The Social Status of the Symmachi." U.C.L.A. Graduate Student Conference on Late Antiquity, 1997.

UNIVERSITY TEACHING EXPERIENCE:

• Professor of Humanities, Irvine Valley College, (2005-Present).
• Lecturer in History and Humanities, University of California, Irvine. (1998-2005)
• Lecturer in Classics, Scripps College. (2001)
• Lecturer in Roman History, University of California, Riverside. (1999)
• Teaching Assistant, History, University of California, Irvine. (1996-98)
• Teaching Assistant, Composition, University of California, Irvine. (1996-1997)