Rebecca Falkoff

Rebecca Falkoff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and has taught at prestigious institutions including Berkeley, Northwestern, New York University, University College London, and Johns Hopkins University.

Her research interests span hoarding and collecting, environmental humanities, health humanities and narrative medicine, critical theory, psychoanalysis, waste and discard studies, and science and technology studies. Her work explores the entanglements of psychic and narrative economies through interdisciplinary lenses.

Professor Falkoff's scholarly output reveals a consistent focus on material culture, particularly waste and accumulation. Her publications traverse Italian literary traditions while engaging with contemporary theoretical frameworks in environmental humanities and psychoanalysis. She demonstrates particular expertise in translating complex theoretical concepts into accessible cultural analysis.

Her teaching portfolio includes cross-listed courses such as Waste: Theories And Poetics (offered through Comparative Literature, French, Health Humanities, and Italian departments) as well as specialized courses in Italian literature, crime fiction, and writing.

She has led reading groups at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn and the Providence Athenaeum, demonstrating her commitment to public intellectual engagement beyond traditional academic settings.