NYU Comparative Literature and German Graduate Student Conference

"Making Friendship: Bonds, Boundaries, Becomings"
6 - 8 April, 2006

Call for Papers:
The conference topic, "Making Friendship: Bonds, Boundaries,
Becomings," seeks to explore the notion of friendship in its various
conceptualizations and codifications, both throughout history and in
the present. We emphasize the idea of friendship as a terrain of
constant negotiation, and as a mode of relation with a plurality of
meanings and implications. It appears particularly urgent to
interrogate the concept of friendship in an age of war, humanitarian
crises, and conflicts, as well as professional specialization and the
fragmentation of fields of knowledge. The conference seeks to
elaborate upon these diverse conceptualizations and stratifications of
friendship, from the Greek concept of "philia" (that necessarily
accompanies all pursuit of knowledge) to the politics and economy of
friendship, the friend/enemy distinction, and potential ways of
constructing, thinking about, or mobilizing friendship in the present.

Proposals may address, but are not restricted to, the following topics:
* textual representations of friendship
* friendship and cultural imagery
* friendship and conceptions of the subject
* "un/friendly" texts, inter-textual conversations
* the (implicit) reader: complicity and friendship
* friendship and eros/desire
* friendship and politics/economy
* friendship and strategies of exclusion
* friendship and the Other
* friendship as contract or gift
* friendship and mourning
* friendship, trust and betrayal
* friendship and the collective production of truth
* virtual friendship
* friendship and academia
* implications of friendship in a capitalist system
* friendship and war
* friendship and (mono)linguistic nationalisms
* friendship and reconciliation.

Papers should be 20 minutes long.

Please send abstracts (300 words) with full name, paper title, and
institution (use "Making Friendship" in the subject line) by December
31, 2005 to makingfriendship_at_gmail.com.

You will be notified on or before Febuary 8, 2006.

* makingfriendship_at_gmail.com

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Received on Wed Nov 16 2005 - 10:26:29 EST