Eric Beck Rubin

Eric comes to the Daniels Faculty having completed an HonBA at the University of Toronto in South Asian Studies, an MArch in Architectural History and Theory at McGill University, and a PhD in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Eric's thesis at McGill examined the conflicting faces of Vienna on the cusp of the Great War through the works of Joseph Roth, Arthur Schnitzler and Robert Musil. His PhD thesis regards the representation of the Holocaust in the novels of Imre Kertész, Georges Perec and Jonathan Safran Foer. In both cases the focus is on the processes by which history is changed into and supplanted by fiction, the effects of this supersession on future works of fiction, and – specifically in the case of the PhD –  the differences in works by witnesses and non-witnesses to the historical events under description. He has taken these interests into the realm of architecture through an exploration of monuments and memorials to unresolved histories, seeking to discover the ways built works struggle to represent the various and fluid meanings of contentious historical events. 

Eric has previously taught courses in cultural and architectural history at the University of Waterloo and guest lectured and acted as critic at McGill University, the University of Toronto and Bergen Arkitekt Skole, Norway. His writing has appeared in scholarly and popular publications, and he is a recipient of a 2011 Toronto Arts Council grant for emerging writers.