Ramona Naddaff

Associate Professor
Director, The Art of Writing, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities
Rhetoric
PhD (Philosophy), Boston University

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Office

7327 Dwinelle Hall
Wednesdays 3-5pm, remote only and by appointment

Contact

510-643-4300
naddaff@berkeley.edu
Website

Research Interests

Ancient Greek Philosophy and Culture
Ancient Greek Rhetoric and Poetics
History of Philosophy
Theory of Literary Censorship
Theory of the Novel
Aesthetics

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Ramona Naddaff is currently working on a book provisionally entitled A Writers’ Trials: On the Writing, Editing and Censorship of Madame Bovary. This research project continues her thinking on the topic of literary censorship begun in Exiling the Poets: The Production of Censorship in Plato’s Republic (U of Chicago, 2003). She is the author of articles on, among other topics, Greek philosophy and literature, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, theory and practice of translation, literary censorship and music torture. A co-director and editor of Zone Books, Naddaff is responsible for publishing titles in philosophy, history, anthropology, political theory and history of science. She is also the series editor of the multi-volume anthology Postwar French Thought (The New Press, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2011). From 2008-2011, Naddaff was director of the Project on Interdisciplinary Innovation at the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities (University of California, Berkeley). In 2011, Naddaff received the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Association for Excellence in Teaching Award. Her awards also include the Humanities Research Fellowship (2012); Mellon Research Grant (2007-2012); the ACLS (2004-5). She currently serves as a faculty representative on the Committee on Research (University of California, Berkeley) and as Director of The Art of Writing Program at The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities. Naddaff is on the Board of Directors for Libraries Without Borders.
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Books

Literary Debate – Postwar French Thought Vol. II
Histories – Postwar French Thought Vol. I
French Philosophy Since 1945 – Postwar French Thought Vol. IV
Antiquities – Postwar French Thought Vol. III
Exiling the Poets: The Production of Censorship in Plato’s Republic
Zone 3: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part 1
Zone 4: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part 2
Zone 5: Fragments for a History of the Human Body, Part 3

Publications

“How did you do it?” Lettres à Gustave Flaubert, ed. Yves LeClerc (Paris: éditions Thierry Marchaisse, forthcoming 2016).
“No Blood, No Foul”: Music Torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay,” Musical Quarterly (forthcoming 2016).
“A Privileged Reader: An Editorial Collaboration Between Gustave Flaubert and Louis Bouilhet, ” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, vol. 43, Fall-Winter 2014-2015, pp, 17-33.
“No Second Troy” in Logos and Muthos, edited by William Wians (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009).
“Forget the ‘For’ and ‘Against’ (for the Moment), ” in Oser construire: Pour Francois Jullien, edited by Pierre Chartier (Paris: Empecheurs de penser en rond, 2008).
“Le social science Translation Project,” Agenda de la pensée contemporaine, Autumn 2007, no. 8, pp. 151-160.
“Confronting the Frugal Editors: The Revue de Paris’ Madame Bovary,” Law, Culture and the Humanities, 2007, no.3, pp. 266-92.
“Zone de traduction, Zone de guerre,” Agenda de la pensée contemporaine, autumn 2006, no. 5, pp.63-72.
“A Superior Disorder: Writing, Editing, and Censoring Madame Bovary” in Between Terror and Freedom: Politics, Philosophy and Fiction Speak of Modernity, edited by F. Dolan and S. Goa (Maryland: Lexington Press, 2006), pp.321-360.
“Social Science Translation Guidelines,” co-author. www. acls. Org., 2006.
Exiling the Poets: The Production of Censorship in Plato’s Republic (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, February 2003).

Lectures

Hearing Voices: The Sounds in Socrates’ Head,” Posthumanism and the Classics, conference at New York University, New York, NY, November 14-15, 2014.
“Painful Listening: Plato on the Use of Music Torture,” Reflections on the Study of the Past, conference at The Doreen B. Townsend Humanities Center, University of California, Berkeley, March-15-16, 2012.
“Plato and the Modern Acoustics of Torture,” for panel “Modern Echoes of Platonic Poetics,” Modern Language Association, January 8, 2012.
“Arguing from Example: Conflict and Style in the Dissoi Logoi,” Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, Fordham University, New York, October 22, 2011.
“Acoustical Pain and Suffering: Music as Torture,” Virreina Centre de la Image, Barcelona, Spain, Musica I Tortura Conference, June 17-18, 2010.“Interdisciplinary Innovation,” Introduction to Project for Interdisciplinary Innovation, Doreen B. Townsend Humanities Center, Berkeley, March 18, 2010.
“Voluntary Inspiration? A Reading of the Hippias Minor,” Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, Fordham University, New York, October 17, 2009.
“No Blood, No Foul: The Uses of Music Torture,” Thinking/Hearing Conference, University of Texas, Austin, October 2-4, 2009.

Awards

2012, Humanities Research Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley, for book project, A Writers’ Trials.
2011, Phi Beta Kappa, Northern California Association, Excellence in Teaching Award.
Spring 2010 Co-Convener, Strategic Working Group, “Old Things: Classical Studies and Contemporary Humanities,” Doreen B. Townsend Humanities Center, University of California, Berkeley.
Fall 2007-Fall 2011 Mellon Research Grant. University of California, Berkeley.
2004-2005 ACLS/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Junior Faculty Fellow.
Fall 2003-2007 Faculty Research Grant, Research Assistant Grant. University of California, Berkeley.
Spring 2003 CNRS-Berkeley Exchange Fellowship, two-month research tripin Paris France for study of the censorship trial of Madame Bovary.
Member of the Equipe Flaubert, Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes at the C.N.R.S. in Paris.
Fall 2002 Research Grant, Hellman Family Fund, for research on censorshipand the novel.
2001 Visiting Scholar, The Aspen Institute.

Courses

Aesthetics and Rhetoric – “They fill you with the faults they had”*: The Poetics, Philosophy, and Politics of 20th- and 21st-Century Families in America (SP 2022)
Classical Rhetorical Theory and Practice (FL 2021)
Special Topics (SP 2021)
History of Rhetorical Theory (FL 2020)

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