Stoekl's recent work has focused on issues of energy use, sustainability and economy in a literary-cultural and philosophical context (both French and international). His book Bataille's Peak follows up on earlier work on Georges Bataille, but from a framework of current questions of energy use and depletion (which Bataille formulated, he argues, already in the 1940s). He is presently engaged in a larger project considering theories of the city from the past (the surrealists, situationists and Le Corbusier) in light of current theories--aesthetic, political, energetic--of sustainable urbanism. He has lectured extensively here in the US and abroad, and has recently served as Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins and Westminster University (London).
Stoekl suggests the following readings to accompany the talk:
"Derangements of Scale," by Timothy Clark in *Telemorphosis: Theory in the Era of Climate Change*, vol 1, ed. Tom Cohen (Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities P, 2012): 148-166
"Scale Critique for the Anthropocene," by Derek Woods, *Minnesota Review*, 83 (NS), 2014: 133-142
"The Apocalypse is Disappointing," by Maurice Blanchot, in *Friendship*, trans. E. Rottenberg (Stanford CA: Stanford UP, 1997): 101-108
"Ethics and the Face," in Emmanuel Levinas, "Totality and Infinity*, trans. Al Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1969): 194-219.
