Sara Marcus
English
Assistant Professor
- American and African American literature
- American popular music
- Feminism
- Social movements and the arts
- LGBTQ+ movements and culture
- Emotion in politics
- Sound studies
Marcus’s Latest News
Marcus in the News
The New Yorker
The Disciplining Power of Disappointment: In a new book, Sara Marcus argues that American politics are defined by unfulfilled desire.
August 11, 2023
If optimism is the disposition of the victor, then what is the outlook of the victim or survivor of conquest and domination? For Sara Marcus, an assistant professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, it is disappointment. In a new book, “Political Disappointment,” Marcus describes the titular emotion as “untimely desire” or “a longing for fundamental change that outlasts a historical moment when it might have been fulfilled.”