This seminar welcomes theoretical and philosophical contributions that help reinterpret the chiasmic lines with which Benjamin concluded his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," namely, that if fascism aestheticized politics, then communism politicized aesthetics. While contributions need not deal with Benjamin's text directly, the seminar will focus on the historical dialectic between the terms "politics" and "aesthetics," as thematized by Benjamin, and, crucially, on how the relation between the two terms changes in the course of the modern period, from the eighteenth century onward. Theoretical contributions from a wide array of fields, disciplines, Western and non-Western literatures are invited, for example, critical theory (the Frankfurt School), postcolonial theory, poststructuralism, feminism, cultural theory, discourse analysis, and psychoanalysis.

Please send a 1-2 page proposal, preferably via e-mail, to the seminar's coordinator, Professor Beatrice Hanssen, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Barker Center 357, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: bhanssen@fas.harvard.edu. Submission deadline: September 15, 2000.