Kristin Ross

Kristin Ross (born 1953) is an American literary theorist who is professor emeritus of comparative literature at New York University. She is primarily known for her work on French literature and culture of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Life and work Ross received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1981. She edited Anti-Americanism (2004) with Andrew Ross (no relation). In 2015, her book Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune was published.

For Fast Cars, Clean Bodies, Ross was awarded the Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies. Ross has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Ross has also translated several works from French, including Jacques Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Along with her research interests in French political culture and literature, Ross's work has focused on urban history, theory, politics, ideology, and popular culture.

Selected bibliography

(co-editor, with Alice Kaplan). Everyday Life, Yale French Studies, no. 73. Fall 1987. The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune. University of Minnesota Press. 1988. French translation, Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2012. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture. MIT Press. 1995. French translation, Groupe Flammarion, 2006. May '68 and Its Afterlives. University of Chicago Press. 2002. French translation, Le Monde Diplomatique/Complexe, 2005. (co-editor, with Andrew Ross). Anti-Americanism. New York University Press, 2004. "Democracy for Sale" in Democracy in What State?. Columbia University Press, 2011. Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune. Verso Books, 2015. French edition, La Fabrique, 2015. (translator and writer of preface). The Zad and NoTAV: Territorial Struggles and the Making of a New Political Intelligence. Verso Books, 2018. Translation of the Mauvaise Troupe's Contrées. The Commune Form:The Transformation of Everyday Life. Verso Books, 2024.