Negative Cosmopolitanisms: Abjection, Power, and Biopolitics, 11-13 October 2012

full name / name of organization: 
Terri Tomsky, Eddy Kent, Imre Szeman (Organzers). The Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
contact email: 

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the array of negative cosmopolitanisms operating today—all those ways in which cosmopolitan subjects are still stigmatized, disempowered, excluded, and denied. Against the superficial liberal celebration of cosmopolitan diversity in the world today, negative cosmopolitanism instead reveals experiences of rupture, exile, oppression, and imperialism. The conference will bring researchers together to explore the histories and constitution of cosmopolitanism past and present, with the aim of better understanding the complex experience of power today.

Keynotes:
Timothy Brennan (University of Minnesota)
Pheng Cheah (University of California, Berkeley)
Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia)
Peter Nyers (McMaster University)

Themes you may wish to consider include:

*The history /representations of cosmopolitanism
*Slum- or ghetto-based cosmopolitanisms
*Imperial cosmopolitanism (e.g. the military complex, the War on Terror)
*Labor and Internationalism
*Community or the Commons
*Piracy
*Trafficking, dislocation, border-crossing
*State sovereignty/state vulnerability
*Communication & information technologies, new media
*Biopolitics
*Religious movements
*Feminism

Proposals shall consist of an abstract of 350-500 words and a one-page CV. Please send applications to Dr. Terri Tomsky by 21 October 2011.