cfp.english.upenn.edu

Date: Friday, March 11, 2011
Location: Stony Brook Manhattan Campus, Midtown NYC

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Stanley Aronowitz – CUNY Graduate Center

Event Description:

Home to the longest-running graduate conference in the nation, the English Department at Stony Brook University invites scholars of all disciplines to submit papers to its 2011 Manhattan event.

Derived from the Latin verb “complicare,” meaning to “fold together,” Complicity conveys conflicting messages: On the one hand, it is rarely used without a certain connotation of dismissal, condemnation, or indictment; on the other, its mostly ignored kinship with concepts such as solidarity, loyalty, commitment, and responsibility undermines its notoriety as a quintessentially “negative” word – particularly in the context of political activism.

Complicity offers a productive set of ambivalences that awaits to be discussed and reinterpreted: Is it somehow avoidable? Need one strive to avoid it? Can one possibly engage the label with impunity? How might one strive to endorse or resist the “folding-together” expressed in the word’s definition in new and productive ways, and how have contemporary and past artists, intellectuals, and activists attempted to do so?

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

Manifesto Writing (Futurism, Dada, Expressionism, Surrealism);
Aesthetics and politics of the Avant-Garde; Memoirs, Autobiographies, Confessions; Polemic; Existentialism - Personal Responsibility; Solidarity; Collaboration; Networks; Utopias and Dystopias; Reform enterprises; Rebellions; Revolutions; Communism, Fascism, Nazism; Patriotism; Nationalism; Empire; Fanaticism; Discrimination; Violence; War; Terrorism; Conspiracy; Self-interest; Dissent; Condemnation, Punishment, and Exile; Regret; Disavowal; Typologies; Orientalism; Knowledge Production; Subjecthood; Psychoanalysis; Jurisprudence; Eco-activism; Fashion; Advertisement; Consumer Trends; Pornography; Technology; Surveillance; Biopolitics.

Submit abstracts of 250 words by January 31, 2011 to
Burcu Kuheylan and Matthew Kremer, Stony Brook University, SBcomplicity2011@gmail.com
Please make your name and paper title the subject of the email.