Lauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago. She is the author of numerous essays and four books, The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia and Everyday Life (1991), The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (1997), The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (2004) and Cruel Optimism (2011). She is also editor or coeditor of numerous volumes, including Desire/Love (2012), Intimacy (2000), Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest (2001; with Lisa Duggan), Compassion (2004), and Sex, or the Unbearable (2013). She received the 1993 Norman Foerster Award for the best essay in American Literature and the 2012 René Wellek Prize from the Modern Language Association for Cruel Optimism.
