The Center for Literature and Psychoanalysis was founded through an Academic Challenge Grant in 1986 for the purposes of promoting faculty development, enhancing the training of graduate students, and enhancing the research profile of the English Department and the University, as well as to develop other initiatives that might benefit the University, the local and regional communities, and the people of the state of Ohio.

During the years since its founding, the Center has assumed a leadership role in developing psychologically and socially beneficial interactions between psychoanalysis and the study of culture and society. We wish to build on this foundation in ways that will strengthen our department, enhance the University's national and international stature, and, most importantly, promote important social benefits through the appropriation of psychoanalytic theory for cultural analysis and for education.

CPL Mission Statement

At a time when psychoanalytic theories of gender, race, and class have immediate and timely applications in our culture-local, national, and international-our Center's clinical foundations and international ties place it in a role of leadership in this important and rapidly developing field. We wish to continue the Center's commitment to promoting the personal and social benefits of culture through the psychoanalytic investigation of the role played by culture-and by the teaching and analysis of cultural artifacts-in psychological change and in those social changes that are entailed by these psychological changes. This mission is threefold. It includes:

• Promoting the production and dissemination of new knowledge concerning the psychological effects of culture, with particular attention to the psychological changes that might be fostered by the study of literature and other discourses and cultural phenomena.
• Promoting the adaptation and utilization of such knowledge in ways that benefit our students and society at large, with particular attention to ways in which our own activity as teachers, scholars, and cultural analysts might be adapted (e.g., through new pedagogical materials and methods, or new areas or modes of scholarly inquiry, cultural analysis, or dissemination of knowledge) to promote greater tolerance and justice in our increasingly global and culturally diverse society.
• Promoting continued dialogue between clinicians and psychoanalytically oriented scholars in the humanities and social sciences, as a way of achieving the first two goals as well as fostering interdisciplinary communication and collaboration in the rapidly expanding field of cultural studies.

Contact Information

For information about the Center for Psychoanalysis & Literature, contact:

Professor Mark Bracher, Director
Center for Literature & Psychoanalysis
Department of English
Kent State University
P.O. Box 5190
Kent, OH 44242

mbracher@kent.edu