- Professor, English
- Professor, Medieval Studies
Research Interests
- Critical animal studies
- posthumanism
Education
- Ph.D., Columbia University
Karl Steel is Associate Professor of English, Brooklyn College, CUNY. He is the author of How to Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages (The Ohio State University Press, 2011) and How Not to Make a Human: Pets, Feral Children, Worms, Sky Burial, Oysters (University of Minnesota Press), and co-editor, with Peggy McCracken, of Postmedieval 2.1 ("The Animal Turn"), a special issue of Glossator, with Nicola Masciandaro, on "Pearl," and a special issue on "Fabulous Animals" for Early Modern Culture. His next project is tentatively titled The Irrational Animal, on the shared cultural histories of reason, unreason, and the idea of freedom, in relation to humans and animals.
recent courses:
- Problems in Posthumanism (Spring 2023)
- Little Beasts: Children, Animals, and Other Unruly Creatures (Spring 2022)
- Reason, Freedom, and Animality (Spring 2021)