William Egginton is the Decker Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Comparative Thought and Literature, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and former director and founder of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. A scholar of literature and philosophy whose work ranges from early modern Europe to contemporary Latin America, he is the author of twelve books, most recently Alejandro Jodorowsky: Filmmaker and Philosopher (2024), which examines the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and surrealist dimensions of the work of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. His books, which explore such topics as psychoanalysis, the Baroque, and the philosophy of physics, include How the World Became a Stage (2003), Perversity and Ethics (2006), A Wrinkle in History (2007), The Philosopher’s Desire (2007), The Theater of Truth (2010), In Defense of Religious Moderation (2011), The Man Who Invented Fiction (2016), The Splintering of the American Mind (2018), and The Rigor of Angels (2023), which was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times and The New Yorker. He is also the co-author, with David Castillo, of Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (2017) and What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature (2022).
