Fredric Jameson

Fredric Ruff Jameson (April 14, 1934 – September 22, 2024) was an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He was best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jameson's best-known books include Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) and The Political Unconscious (1981).

Jameson was the Knut Schmidt Nielsen Professor of Comparative Literature, Professor of Romance Studies (French), and Director of the Institute for Critical Theory at Duke University. In 2012, the Modern Language Association gave Jameson its sixth Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement.

Fredric Ruff Jameson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 14, 1934. He was the only child of Frank S. Jameson (c.1890–?), a New York-born medical doctor with his own private practice, and Bernice née Ruff (c.1904–1966), a Michigan-born Barnard College graduate who did not work outside the family home. Both his parents had non-wage income over $50 in 1939 (about USD$1130 in 2024). By April 1935 he moved with his parents to Gloucester City, New Jersey, and by 1949 the family occupied a house in the nearby middle-class suburb of Haddon Heights, New Jersey. He graduated from Moorestown Friends School in 1950.

He completed a BA summa cum laude in French at Haverford College, where he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa society in his junior year. His professors at Haverford included Wayne Booth, to whom A Singular Modernity (2002) is dedicated. After graduation in 1954 he briefly traveled to Europe, studying at Aix-en-Provence, Munich, and Berlin, where he learned of new developments in continental philosophy, including the rise of structuralism. He returned to America the following year to study at Yale University under Erich Auerbach in pursuit of a PhD, which was awarded in 1959 for a dissertation on The Origins of Sartre's Style.

From 1959 to 1967 he taught French and Comparative Literature at Harvard University.

He was employed by the University of California, San Diego from 1967 to 1976, where he worked alongside Herbert Marcuse. He taught classes on Marxist literary criticism, the Frankfurt School, the French novel and poetry, and Sartre. He was then hired by Yale University through Paul de Man in 1976, and by the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1983.

In 1985 he joined Duke University as Professor of Literature and Professor of Romance Studies. He established the literary studies program at Duke and held the William A. Lane Professorship of Comparative Literature, renamed in 2013, as Knut Schmidt Nielsen Distinguished Professorship of Comparative Literature.

In 1985 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.