Sarbanes, Janet
Critical Theory; Cultural Studies; Writing
Current Courses (see Curriculum details for more information)
Strange Relations: Writing Bodies and Embodied Writing
Workshop in Narrative
Bio
Janet Sarbanes (Ph.D. English, UCLA) teaches fiction, special topics and narrative theory courses in the MFA Writing Program, and cultural studies in the BFA program of the School of Critical Studies. She is the author of the story collection Army of One, (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions 2008), and is working on a book of critical essays concerning the role of aesthetic practice in utopian, subcultural and countercultural social formations, two of which have recently appeared in Utopian Studies and Popular Music and Society. She has also published in Black Clock, Afterall, Merge, Plum Ruby Review, Zyzzyva and the anthologies Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography and the Noulipan Analects. An excerpt from her novel in manuscript, Wendy’s America: The Adventures of the President’s Daughter, is forthcoming from the Chicago Review. She serves on the board of Les Figues Press.
Links
Review of Army of One in The LA Weekly
“Homesick for the World,” image/text collaboration with Susan Simpson, on Viralnet
Recent Work & Publications
Selected Fictions
Excerpt from Wendy’s America: The Adventures of the President’s Daughter, forthcoming Chicago Review.
Army of One, short story collection. Los Angeles: Otis Press, 2008.
“Responsible Hedonism,” Black Clock 7, Spring/Summer 2007.
“Alien Encounter,” Black Clock 3, Spring/Summer 2005.
“Why Orange?” Merge: Sound/Thought/Image, Spring 2005.
Criticism
“The Shaker ‘Gift’: Charisma, Aesthetic Practice and Utopian Communalism,” Journal of Utopian Studies, Volume 20:1 2009.
“Interview with Rebecca Baron,” in Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography, Duke University Press (2007).
“An Independent Group? Bernadette Corporation, Post-Pop Collective.” Afterall Journal, Autumn/Winter 2006.
“Musicking and Communitas: The Aesthetic Mode of Sociality in Rembetika Subculture,” Popular Music and Society, February 2006.
Praise for Janet Sarbanes’ Army of One
As far as story structure goes, Sarbanes has some kind of mad PowerPoint jones. In the wrong hands, that could be a disaster — like some postmodern trick gone awry — but Sarbanes is a writer of great precision; each discrete chunk of prose is like a little seismic event. – Marc Weingarten, LA Weekly
Stingingly funny fiction debut . . . This reader can’t shake a feeling … both silly and dead-serious, noble and self-incriminating, a mirage or Rorschach blot that shimmers beyond all manner of spirit-killing convention, and which Sarbanes gets at, story after story, from oblique and totally original angles. – Rachel Kushner, BOMB Magazine
Events
Short Story Panel, West Hollywood Book Fair
Reading with Benjamin Weissman and Kelly Sears, The Eighth Veil, Los Angeles
Three Lives from LA: Vanessa Place, Janet Sarbanes, Veronica Gonzalez, ALOUD series, Los Angeles Public Library
Solo reading, Machine Project, Los Angeles
Solo reading, Writers LIVE series, Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore
Reading with Doug Nufer, Subtext series, Seattle
Reading with Marisa Silver, New American Writing Series, Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles