Home

Anthony J. Cascardi

Sidney and Margaret Ancker Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, Rhetoric, and Spanish, and Jean and Irving Stone Dean of Arts and Humanities, Emeritus

Biography

Anthony J. Cascardi (B.A., Princeton University; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University), works on literature and philosophy, aesthetic theory, and early modern literature, with an emphasis on Spanish, English, and French. He teaches courses on Cervantes, literature and philosophy, aesthetic theory, and the early modern period. His books include The Subject of Modernity, Consequences of Enlightenment, Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics, and The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Philosophy.  His most recent book is Francisco de Goya and the Art of Critique (Zone Books, 2022). He serves as the academic editor of the Cambridge University Press Studies in Literature and Philosophy. Among his current projects is a book tentatively entitled Letters to a Future President on the Subject of Literature: What to Read and Why.

Professor Cascardi has received the Divisional Distinguished Service Award for Berkeley Senate Faculty Members, and his book Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics was awarded the Renaissance Society of America’s Gordan prize for best book in the year of its publication. He served as Director of Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities for five years, and as Dean of Arts and Humanities from 2011-2021.