interdisciplinary

Challenging Political Economy: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Emmanuel College within the University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, 8-9 December 2011
Keynote Speakers
Frank Stilwell (University of Sydney, Australia)
Ella Dzelzainis (University of Newcastle, UK)
Since its inception in the late eighteenth century, Political Economy has been used as a lens through which to examine and address parochial and international social issues, from gender equality to class, abolitionism, environmental concerns, imperialism and globalisation. Throughout history, the response to Political Economy has often been controversial, from popularising and translating economic texts, to burning and banning them.

In the context of ubiquitous technology, the question of duration has emerged as a powerful interdisciplinary tool for investigating the interstices that both separate and sustain medial, technological, cultural, and artistic practices. Indeed, as claims to a post-media characterization of our digital landscape collide with deeply disciplined artistic and intellectual practices, questions of the body, the human, the flesh, the social, and even time become increasingly difficult to pose (let alone answer). Thus, duration—a concept with variegated genealogies in Bergson, Deleuze, Whitehead, and others, as well as in most artistic disciplines—suggests a point of intervention that avows the multiplicity of the problem: what happens to duration after media?

Theories of Life in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Rutgers Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference

"Theories of Life in the 20th and 21st Centuries" brings together
scholars from across the humanities to investigate the centrality of
theories of "life" to twentieth and twenty-first century theory and
cultural production. In fields as diverse as vitalism, feminism,
animal studies, political theory, aesthetics and psychoanalysis,
presenters will highlight how the humanities investigates the
ontological properties and ethical imperatives of life.

Plenary Speaker: Donna V. Jones, UC-Berkeley English: "The Career of
Living Things is Continuous"

Paper proposals exploring connections and fissures between trauma, memory, and narrative in Ethnic American Literature are invited for a Special Topic Session at the upcoming Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association convention. Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief CV to Natalie Carter (nlcarter@gwmail.gwu.edu) at The George Washington University, by March 01, 2011. Receipt will be acknowledged, and notifications will be sent by March 15.

Keynote Speaker: Professor William Hughes, Bath Spa University