The Department of English presents "The Inevitability of Liberalism?" Over the past half-century the fortunes of liberalism in critical thought have fluctuated wildly. As the central ideological element of philosophical modernity, liberalism is the basis of political and aesthetic judgment, of investment in technological and scientific progress, and of all politics driven by hope, equality and belief in community. This symposium will celebrate the recent arrival of Amanda Anderson on the Brown faculty by considering liberal thought as a darker concept, one alive to a negativity that runs through its brightest convictions. What have been the effects of the dominance of liberal thinking in British and American studies? How central to liberal thinking is the dialectic of hope and defeat? How do theories of narrative, or the history of the novel more broadly, expand or complicate liberalism as a political form? Is a non-complacent liberalism possible? And is there any future for critical thinking beyond liberalism?This event is organized by Professors Timothy Bewes and Jacques Khalip and is made possible by the Department of English and the Wetmore Fund for Literature.
Friday, February 22, 2013
2:00-5:00 pm
Alumnae Hall, Crystal Room (194 Meeting Street)
2:00 pm: Welcome and Opening Remarks - Philip Gould (Department of English, Brown University)
2:15 pm: "Cold War Aesthetics: The Case of Trilling and Adorno" - Amanda Anderson (Department of English, Brown University)
2:45 pm: "When 'Liberal Democracy' Was an Oxymoron" - Catherine Gallagher (Department of English, University of California Berkeley)
3:15 to 3:30 pm: Break
3:30 pm: Response - Philip Gould (Department of English, Brown University)
3:50 pm: Response - Deak Nabers (Department of English, Brown University)
4:10 pm: Audience Q & A
5:00 pm: Reception
Event: "The Inevitability of Liberalism?"
On Friday, February 22, 2013, the Brown University Department of English will be sponsoring a symposium, "The Inevitability of Liberalism?" featuring Professors Amanda Anderson (Brown University), Catherine Gallagher (University of California Berkeley), Philip Gould (Brown University), and Deak Nabers (Brown University). The description and schedule is as follows.
Meeting: February 18, 2013
Our next meeting will be held on February 18, 2013 at 6pm (location forthcoming over email). Dinner will be provided from Kabob and Curry. Tim Syme will be workshopping two pieces, "Individuals, Social Justice and Political Action" and "How is X political?" Sara Pfaff will be workshopping a dissertation chapter entitled "'After the After': Timeless Bodies of Pluralism in John Henry Days and Aloft."
We will also, if time permits, look at several pieces on geography, public space, and democratic politics, including selections from Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre, and Edward Soja. All readings will be available on the google site (log-in required).
We will also, if time permits, look at several pieces on geography, public space, and democratic politics, including selections from Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre, and Edward Soja. All readings will be available on the google site (log-in required).
Visiting Scholar: Jodi Dean, February 8, 2013
Please join us on Friday, February 8, 2013 for our next Mellon meeting! We will be meeting at 12pm in the English Department (70 Brown Street), Room 315. We will be hosting Professor Jodi Dodi, professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. She teaches broadly within modern and contemporary
political theory, ranging from feminism to fascism, consumption, and
citizenship. Her research interests include digital media;
poststructuralism and psychoanalysis; neoliberalism and consumerism;
cultural studies; and feminism theory. Dean's impressive list of
publications boasts numerous journal articles, contributions to collected volumes, and seven monographs including Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Duke UP, 2009),
Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy (Cornell UP, 2002),
and her forthcoming work, The Communist Horizon (Verso, October 2012).
Dean has edited and co-edited several collected volumes addressing
questions of feminism, empire, and information networks. Dean also
serves as co-editor of Theory and Event, an electronic academic journal published quarterly by John Hopkins University Press. Professor Dean will come and talk with the workshop about some of her previous work, as well as a forthcoming project that she will be workshopping with the group. All readings will be available on the google site (log-in required). Lunch will be provided.
We are also delighted to sponsor a public talk that evening. Professor Dean will give a lecture entitled "Communicative capitalism: this is what democracy looks like" on Friday, February 8, 2013 at 4pm in Pembroke Hall, Room 305. This lecture is also co-sponsored through the generous support of the Department of Political Science, the Department of Sociology, and the Graduate Student Council at Brown University.
Meeting: January 28, 2013
Welcome back! We are looking forward to starting our Spring Semester with a brief meeting on Monday, January 28th at 7pm. Our meeting will be held off-campus, location to be sent over email. Readings will include several essays from an edited collection responding to Jurgen Habermas, Habermas's 1964 "Public Sphere" encyclopedia entry, and some optional readings from Hannah Arendt. Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is on reserve at the Rockefeller Library. Readings are all available via the google site (log-in required).We have a tentative Spring schedule posted on the syllabus.
Meeting: December 10, 2012
Our final meeting of the fall semester will be held Monday, December 10, 2012 at 7:00, location forthcoming over email. We will be reading Michael Warner's Publics and Counterpublics (2002)--if you still haven't picked up your copy, email Devon. If you are pressed for time, please try and read the first chapter and the essay co-written with Lauren Berlant, "Sex in Public." We also look forward to workshopping a paper from Michael Benitez, who has agreed to present a piece in progress on Oscar Wilde and the public sphere entitled "Wilde
Perfection: (New) Aestheticism, Weaponized Discourse, and the Aesthetics of
Sexuality in The Picture of Dorian Gray." More details to follow over email.
At Monday's meeting, we will also go over plans for our Spring semester schedule--please think about possible dates that you would be willing to workshop a chapter or recent piece you have been working on. We will update the site with the spring semester syllabus in the next few weeks.
At Monday's meeting, we will also go over plans for our Spring semester schedule--please think about possible dates that you would be willing to workshop a chapter or recent piece you have been working on. We will update the site with the spring semester syllabus in the next few weeks.
Visiting scholar: Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, November 26
Please note that the location has changed to Room 315 from the originally scheduled October meeting.
Please join us for our next Mellon Workshop meeting on Monday, November 26 at 12pm, at 70 Brown Street (The English Department), Room 315. We will be hosting Professor Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, professor of English at Northeastern University, whose research interests include Early American literature and drama; feminist, political and aesthetic theory; transatlantic print culture; Atlantic colonialism; and the early novel. In her first book, The Gender of Freedom: Fictions of Liberalism and the Literary Public Sphere (Stanford UP, 2004), Dillon argues that narratives of citizenship and subjectivity within liberalism include - and, indeed, rely upon - depictions of women that encourage affective identification as an unspoken political act and thereby complicate the distinction between private and public spheres. Currently, Dillon is working on her manuscript for New World Drama: Theatre of the Atlantic, 1660-1850, as well as co-editing a volume of essays on early American culture and the Haitian Revolution.
For Monday's meeting, we will be reading selections from Dillon's The Gender of Freedom, a recent essay entitled "John Marrant Blows the French Horn," as well as a forthcoming essay from Professor Dillon. All readings are available here (log-in required). There are also additional, optional readings available for this week's discussion.
Meeting: November 5, 2012
Our next Mellon meeting will be held Monday, November 5, 2012 at 12pm in
Partridge Hall (Third World Center), Room 104. We will be reading selections from David Eng's The Feeling of Kinship (2010), Corey Brettschneider's "The Politics of the Personal: A Liberal Approach" (2007), Sharon Krause's "Lady Liberty's Allure: Political Agency, Citizenship and The Second Sex" (2000), and a chapter from Svetlana Boym's The Future of Nostalgia (2001). All readings are available for download here.
Our readings this week deal with questions about race, gender, sexuality, and the public/private sphere. We will think through how various identities are represented publicly while nevertheless facing political privitization.
Join us for lunch and discussion! We will also discuss the recent schedule changes and plan for the rest of the semester.
Our readings this week deal with questions about race, gender, sexuality, and the public/private sphere. We will think through how various identities are represented publicly while nevertheless facing political privitization.
Join us for lunch and discussion! We will also discuss the recent schedule changes and plan for the rest of the semester.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)