Topography of Autotheories: a Conversation between Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Coopan

In this episode, FQT associate director Che Gossett speaks with Vilashini Coopan, Professor of Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Alex Brostoff, Assistant Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at Georgetown University, about their co-edited anthology, Autotheories (MIT Press, 2025).  Professors Coopan and Brostoff discuss collaborative writing and the 2025 symposium they convened, "Intimacies of Relation: The Autotheoretical Turn" at UC Santa Cruz. Professors Brostoff and Coopan also discuss how autotheory shapes their own writing styles, the political genealogy of autotheory, and the reason they pluralize the concept, as well as the impact of autotheory on narrative writing, and the relationship between autotheory and affect.