Seminars

Values for Theory

Organizer: Anna Kornbluh

What key concepts or foundational principles might best equip theory as an engaged practice for the 21st century? What sorts of norms and ideals should organize criticism and theory; how and... more

Emotion and the Future of the Nation

Organizer: Mazalit Haim

In conceptualizing nationalism and “nation-ness,” Benedict Anderson considered not only their emergence and historical transformations but also “why […] they command such profound emotional... more

Figurations of Beginning: Genesis, Generation, Inception, Translation, Transmission

Organizer: Patrick Dove

This seminar explores the question of beginning together with the resources afforded by language (understood in a broad sense that includes text, image, and gesture among other modalities) for... more

More than an Object: Dissent, Resistance, and Protest in Cultural Production

Organizer: Estibalitz Ezkerra Vegas

This seminar invites papers that examine the relationship between cultural production of any kind (literature, plastic and visual arts, film, music, dance, theater) and dissent, resistance, and... more

Questions

Organizer: Johanna Winant

This seminar focuses on how literary texts ask and don’t answer questions. Attentive to literary fascination with puzzles, riddles, enigmas, obscurity, perplexity and uncertainty, mystery and... more

Pornography, Propaganda, Representation

Organizer: Dana Glaser

This seminar investigates “pornography” and “propaganda” as two categories that attempt to set boundaries around acceptable language. They work as genre designations as often as they work as... more

Informing Life

Organizer: Armando Mastrogiovanni

This seminar was organized by Adam Rosenthal, Deborah Goldgaber, and Armando Mastrogiovanni. Since the birth of modern molecular biology and genetics in the middle of the last century, the life... more

From Praising Prophet Muḥammad to Praising The Christ, a Christian Version of The Sufi Muslim Poem al-Burdah

Organizer: ABDULLAH ALSARHAN

Al-Burdah of al-Buṣīrī (d. 1294-97/694-7) is an iconic poem that established a literal tradition of praising the prophet Muḥammad by following a specific form of poetry influenced by praising Arabic... more

South Asian Untranslatables

Organizer: Eesha Kumar

South Asian texts and cultures offer a panoply of terms that are difficult to translate. Consider bhāva — a keyword in premodern philosophy, dramaturgy, and poetics — which may refer to an emotion, a... more

Hotel Cosmopolitan

Organizer: Ethan King

This panel brings together diverse readings of the hotel as a peculiarly evocative transfer point in narratives of modernity and postmodernity. It examines the uncanny power of the hotel to symbolize... more

Feeling Conflicted: States of Ambivalence and Narratives of Confusion

Organizer: Omid Bagherli

Not so much thinking “with” or “through” contradiction as about contradictory thoughts and feelings, this seminar will explore unique expressions of ambivalence and confusion in contemporary... more

Antisocial Femininity: Refusal Toward the Relational

Organizer: Chelsea Largent

As we figure out what new social configurations look like, and whether or not we want to be a part of them, it seems we are at a point in queer and feminist theory where the futurity of our current... more

State of the Field: Postcolonial Literature, Dead and Alive

Organizer: Rebecca Oh

Postcolonial literature has died and been resurrected more times than a zombie in modern film. Often dubbed the Franken-child of Marxism’s commitment to real material conditions and deconstruction’s... more

Pascal at 400: A Critical Prospective

Organizer: Chad Córdova

Pascal at 400: A Critical Prospective While those with whom he was engaged in complex dialogue, like Montaigne and Descartes, have been the subject of critical rereadings and returns – ones that... more

Visual Cultures of Colonialism

Organizer: Olimpia Rosenthal

The production, circulation, and display of images offers critical insight to understand the myriad ways in which colonial domination has been justified and contested across time and geographies.... more

The Inclusivity of Literature: The metamorphic elements within Golding’s Metamorphoses (1567) and Journey to the West (1592)

Organizer: Xiaoyu Gao

Gender, race and class are generally addressed when speaking of inclusivity. Instead of addressing literary issues in this paper, I argue that inclusivity is created within the literature, within the... more

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