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Seminars

Tides of Progress: Print Culture and Anglo-Hispanic Exchanges, 1880-1940

Organizer: Peter Hulme

In 1914, the editors of Puerto Rico’s Revista de las Antillas declared their intent to “speak in the Caribbean of world culture, and in the world of Caribbean culture”; in 1921, the US... more

Bearing Witness to COVID-19: Care, Culture, and Memory Activism

Organizer: Jay Rajiva

Attempts to memorialize the vast number of marginalized people in the U.S. who have died from the COVID-19 pandemic face two challenges. On one hand, attempts are met with the response that it is “... more

Cyber-feminism and Gender Violence

Organizer: Deepanjali Mishra

Feminism has always fought for asserting women’s rights and bringing out their needs and justifies their struggle in order to be considered at par with their male counterparts. One of their... more

On Touch: Tactility/the Haptics/or the Sensationalist School

Organizer: Jiaqian Zhu

Among the senses the haptic sense is the most elusive - which is hard to describe in language but always multi-sensory. Theorists like Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)/Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966)/... more

Mysticism in Arabic Aesthetics

Organizer: Riham Debian

The proposal tackles the nature and the characteristics of the mystic in Arabic aesthetics through the axes of intergenrational contiuity and its interface with intertextuality and the identity of... more

Gender-Based Violence in the 21st Century: A Global and Interdisciplinary Approach to the Other Pandemic

Organizer: Ana León-Távora

Data collected by the World Health Organization in 2020 show that cases of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) increased exponentially during the first surge of Covid-19 when stay-at-home restrictions... more

Archetypes of Imagination, Modes of Thought, and Meanings of Social Revolution

Organizer: Rujie Wang

The seminar welcomes research and scholarship on works of art (films and visual culture included) thematically devoted to the social question of justice. Panelists are expected to share their... more

Seeing the Ordinary Anew

Organizer: Magdalena Ostas

Traditions of scholarship on the concepts of the ordinary and everyday converge around a fundamental point: to take an interest in the ordinary is to take an interest in what has been there all along... more

Disarticulating Authorship

Organizer: Tess Takahashi

Art historian Mignon Nixon argues that "rather than the death of the author, it might be possible to imagine the transformation of authorship." Nixon's assertion forms part of a much larger question... more

Shibboleth: A Critical Concept for Comparative Literature

Organizer: Samuel Catlin

A “shibboleth” is an utterance or custom whose enunciation or performance distinguishes between members of otherwise potentially indistinguishable groups. In the horrific biblical story from Judges... more

Recent Developments in the Field of Comparative Poetics

Organizer: Ahlam Othman

This seminar aims at engaging academic researchers and critics in a discussion/ reevaluation of Eurocentric approaches to the field of comparative poetics. As early as 1975, James J. Y... more

Strength, Spiritualism and Romance in Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Organizer: Nwankwo Nwaezeigwe

STRENGTH, SPIRITUALISM AND ROMANCE IN ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART Nwankwo Tony. Nwaezeigwe ... more

'Wrong Art': Contemporary Conformity, Morality, and the Issue of 'Artistic Value'

Organizer: Armando Maggi

This seminar addresses the issue of 'wrong' works of art, that is artistic artifacts that we perceive as 'wrong,' 'unacceptable,' although they also seem to express an artistic value. The questions... more

The Ottoman Empire, Its Minoritized Voices, and the Global South

Organizer: Arif Camoglu

This seminar shifts the focus from hegemonic narratives of and about the Ottoman Empire to epistemic, aesthetic, sociocultural and political imaginaries of minoritized communities in and outside the... more

Rigor

Organizer: Liza Michaeli

Kafka. All this agitation should be controlled Weil. May this body move or be still, with perfect suppleness or rigidity, in continuous conformity to thy will Peter 4 : 7. Be ye therefore Sober... more