Sianne Ngai

Sianne Ngai is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is the author of three field changing books on the affective, aesthetic, and social forms of capitalism: Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form (2020), Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (2012), and Ugly Feelings (2005). Ngai is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Copenhagen. Her work has been translated into multiple languages. Ngai’s first book, Ugly Feelings, is considered a seminal work of affect theory for its focus on politically ambiguous, non-cathartic negative emotions (irritation and envy as opposed to anger). Her second book, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, argues for the contemporary centrality of three everyday aesthetic categories, which are approached with the same philosophical seriousness given to the beautiful and sublime. Ngai’s third book explores the “gimmick” as an aesthetic judgment and form encoding a series of interconnected contradictions concerning labor, time, and value. She is currently working on a book about the ways in which Marx, Hegel, and a number of writers and artists inhabit error.