Michigan State University's 2001 Modern Literature Conference.
GLOBALICITIES
A Conference on Issues Related to Globalization
Sponsored by the Program in Comparative Literature
Date: October 18-20, 2001
Location: Michigan State University
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
-GAYATRI SPIVAK, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities,
Columbia
University
-MICHAEL HARDT, Associate Professsor of Literature and Romance
Studies, Duke
University
MAHMOOD MAMDANI, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, Director,
Institute
of African Studies, Columbia University
SASKIA SASSEN, Professor of Sociology, The University of Chicago
A number of recent, important works make clear that the present
moment's
metaphor for the economic, political, social, and cultural interrelationships
between nations is "globalization," a concept that has
come to replace
earlier formulas of "modernization" and "civilization." This
conference,
"Globalicities," will focus on the limitations and implications
of
theoretically determining these relations.
We are interested in reflections on the anthropological, sociological,
economic, legal, linguistic, and aesthetical ways in which the
"global" has
been thought and actualized during the last 500 years. We particularly
are
soliciting serious investigations of the rhetorics and practices
of recent
theories of the global, postcolonial, and international. We
hope that our
neologism, "globalicities," stands in relation to commonsense
notions of the
global in the same way that temporalities and historicities
stand in relation
to conventional time and history.
In other words, our invitation is to treat the concept
of the "globe" not as
something given, but rather as something which is politically
fashioned
posterior to our always endless relations.
Possible areas or topics include, but are not limited to:
Theories of Narrative and the global
Rethinking travel, exile, migration, diaspora
Mestizo logics; or, hybrid theory "all the way down"
Development," "modernization" and "civilization" and the
fate of dependency theory
Race and gender in globalization theory
Post-structuralism and the critique of late-capitalism
Markets, profits, and violent conflicts
State violence, armed resistance, and limits of international
law
The return of the state in global theory
The rhetorics of geography, space, and place theory
Questioning post-Marxism's turn to "culture"
Subalternities and Solidarities
Markets, products and the construction of taste
Queering the sphere
Genetics, biotechnology and the globe
Abstractions for individual papers should be no more than 500
words long;
abstracts for panels are limited to a total of 1000 words. DEADLINE
for
Proposals: March 31, 2001
Please send abstracts and one-page vita for each proposed
panelist to:
Professor Kenneth Harrow
Director, Program in Comparative Literature
Morrill Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
fax 517 353 3755
e-mail harrow@msu.edu
As in past years, a selection of conference papers will be published
by the
Centennial Review, which in 2001 enters its 45th year of publication
and
interdisciplinary scholarship.
The Program in Comparative Literature has hosted the Modern
Literature
Conference for many years. Recently the program has developed
a special
emphasis in African and the African diaspora studies, and the
program serves
as a complement to interdiscipinary Ph.D. programs in Michigan
State
University's College of Arts and Letters, including the Literatures
of the
Americas and Postcolonial Studies, founded in 1998, and the
Ph.D. program in
Africa and the African-American Diaspora, which will be launched
in Fall 2001.
Olabode Ibironke
Comparative Literatures Progarm
318 Linton Hall
Michigan State University,
East Lansing, MI 48824
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