Noah Bendzsa ( They/Them )
PhD student
- BA Honours English (Carleton, 2022)
Noah Bendzsa is a Ph.D. student in English at McGill University and a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. Prior to coming to McGill, Noah completed two years of doctoral work in Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States. He is an intellectual historian and an Americanist, with interests in the history of Marxism as well as theory and criticism. His degree at Carleton taught him how to analyze texts in the “work-like” fashion described by Dominick LaCapra, mixing historiography and critique.
My intellectual and personal trajectory has been formed by my professors at Carleton rather than specific courses I took. Aware that I wished to study American intellectual history, my professors encouraged me to apply to Ph.D. programs in the U.S. My training in literary theory and close reading helped secure me a place at Carnegie Mellon. Some of what I currently do is also based on the skills I learned from studying book history and publishing as an undergraduate at Carleton, though I have effectively transitioned from literary criticism per se to intellectual and cultural history.
This fall, I transferred to the English Department at McGill University in Montreal. Several of my former professors at Carleton helped me make the decision to move. In particular, I am indebted to Dana Dragunoiu, Jody Mason, and Sarah Brouillette for their advice and support. I’m proud to have been able to call each of these women “teacher,” and now “friend.”