The Citizen-Subject Revisited
In recent years, the study of citizenship in the humanities has been animated by scholarship and theoretical work that explores the relationship between the concept of "the citizen" and the theories of natural right, shifting forms of normalization and subjectivization, and notions of the production and reproduction of biopolitical life which define citizenship itself. This work has sharpened our understanding of the specificity of modern citizenship, particularly in terms of the technologies and historical forms that supported and constituted it. However, the privileging of such approaches has directed attention away from other questions that had previously informed theories of citizenship and that require reconsideration and reformulation in light of more recent debates. The goal of this symposium is not merely to reanimate older approaches, or simply to challenge more recent ones, but to raise the question of what may have been elided in discussions of citizenship over the last several years. For example, papers may address the constitution of citizenship in relationship to:
- abstract equality and universality;
- sovereign equality;
- capital;
- property and personhood (human, corporate, etc.);
- the question of the differences between subject and citizen;
- structural differences in citizenship (republican, parliamentarian, democratic, etc.);
- violence (constitutive, exclusionary and revolutionary);
- questions of the non-citizen, the refugee, or the exile.

This one-day symposium, to be held on 24 October 2011 at the University at Albany, SUNY, will consist of several panels and a keynote address by Étienne Balibar. Please send abstracts of 500 words by 30 June 2011 to:
Kir Kuiken
Paul Stasi
Jennifer Greiman
Department of English University at Albany, SUNY