CFP: Cosmopolitanism in Literature and Film (10/15/06; 2/1/07-2/4/07)

full name / name of organization: 
Robin Goodman
contact email: 

Please circulate widely:

The 32nd Annual FSU Conference on Literature and Film

Cosmopolitanism: Thinking Beyond the Nation

February 1-4, 2007
Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida

http://english.fsu.edu/filmlit/

Keynote Speakers:

    * Timothy Brennan, Professor, Departments of English and Cultural
Studies & Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota
    * Pheng Cheah, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, University of
California, Berkeley
    * Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Associate Professor of Modern Culture and
Media, Brown University
    * Patrice Petro, Director of the Center for International Studies
and Professor of English and Film Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
    * Screening, TBA

In his introduction to Cosmopolitics, Pheng Cheah writes, "The main
purpose is to explore the feasibility of cosmopolitanism as an
alternative to nationalism." Indeed, ever since Kant, the concept of
cosmopolitanism has been central to thinking about social relations,
culture, and the problem of war outside of the relations of the
nation-state. As the nation-state has organized the fields of
literary and cinema studies as well as the broader field of culture,
questioning such categorization is crucial, as it opens up new ways
of thinking about literary and filmic production as part of a larger
context of interaction. It can also account for novel ways of
describing the field of contemporary knowledge and experience.

The question of the nation seems particularly important now because
of two main transformations on the world scene: (1) economic
globalization, in which the category of the nation-state is only one
among many of possible identifications and sites of transaction, and
(2) the growing inevitability of perpetual war (what Kant called
"perpetual peace") and the endless expansion of global militarisms.
Is cosmopolitanism just another form of elitism that re-inscribes
social hierarchies, or does it provide an opening for new alliances?
What new cultural formations, social networks, and institutional
structures have arisen, both now and historically, in response to
what Bruce Robbins called "the moral and cultural existence of
non-citizens"? What resistances to global capitalism and global
warfare might fall outside of such liberal solutions as the
nationalized welfare state, nativism, or local communitarianism? In
what ways do the current circulations of language systems, aesthetic
orders, semiotic codes, national identities, and genres in film and
literature transcend economics and politics formerly envisioned in
national terms?

Possible topics include:

    * Marxist Internationalism in Contemporary Context
    * The Global Corporate Class
    * The Worldwide Proletariat Class
    * Civil Society
    * Race
    * Translation Studies
    * Migration
    * Immigration
    * Tourism
    * Labor
    * Borders and Border Crossings
    * Professionalism
    * Feminism
    * Global Hollywood
    * Modernism
    * Urbanization
    * Human Rights
    * Citizenship
    * National and Transnational Cinemas and Literatures
    * Consumption
    * Imperialism
    * Totalitarianism
    * Outsourcing
    * Global Markets for Film & Literature
    * New Media
    * The Intelligentsia
    * The Age of the World Picture
    * Cinema and the City

2007 Conference directors:

    * Robin Truth Goodman: rgoodman_at_english.fsu.edu
    * Barry J. Faulk: bfaulk_at_english.fsu.edu
    * Maricarmen Martinez: mmartine_at_mailer.fsu.edu
    * Frank P. Tomasulo: ftomasulo_at_film.fsu.edu
For more information, visit our website at http://english.fsu.edu/filmlit/

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Sat May 20 2006 - 10:08:26 EDT