Events (2011-2012-2013)
New Directions in Culture, Politics and Theory
Presented by the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies and
the Department of English and Film Studies
All talks held in Humanities Centre Lecture Theatre 3 (HC L-3), unless otherwise noted.
3:30 pm to 5:00 pm
Winter 2012
Thursday, March 8 and Friday, March 9, 2012
Visit to campus by Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London).
Thursday, March 8 / Humanities Centre L-3, 3:30 – 5:00pm: “Capitalism and Panorama: Staging Totality in Social Theory and Art.”
Friday, March 9 / Salter Reading Room, 3rd Floor HC, 3:00pm – 4:30pm: Graduate Student Seminar: “The Opacity of Capital and the Transparency of Socialism: The Aesthetics of the Economy and its Discontents.”
Fall 2011
Thursday, September 15 and Friday, September 16, 2011
Visit to campus by Gáspár Miklós Tamás (co-sponsored by the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies)
1. Thursday, September 15 / Humanities Centre L-3, 3:30 – 5:00pm: “The Failure of Liberal Democracy in Eastern Europe – and Everywhere Else.”
2. Friday, September 16, 2011 / Salter Reading Room, 3rd Floor HC, 3:00pm – 4:30pm: Graduate Student Seminar: “A Post-Capitalist Order: Normative Ideas vs. History.”
Gáspár Miklós Tamás has long been one of the most important political voices in Europe. Trained as a philosopher and author of numerous scholarly books and articles, his is a life that has been intimately bound up with the political history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A prominent dissident in the 1980s and a parliamentarian in the first years of the Hungarian government following the end of Communism, Tamás has moved increasingly to the Left over the past two decades. Throughout his life, he has retained an unrelenting commitment to social and political justice, which he pursues both through his theoretical and political writings (he is a regular contributor to the TLS and to the most important Hungarian dailies) and his direct involvement in political action. Though his work has been translated into numerous languages (including English), his ideas and positions still deserve to be better known in the English-speaking world than they are at present. An interlocutor in recent debates with Slavoj Žižek, and a figure once described as Hungary’s Václáv Havel, it is likely Tamás’s commitment to the politics of a part of the world sometimes off the radar that has made him less of a global public intellectual than one might expect. This visit to Edmonton—part of a North American tour that will take him to Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and New York—will give us a chance to get to know his ideas better.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Premiere screening of Capitalism Is The Crisis, followed by Q & A with director Michael Truscello. Screening will take place at the Garneau Theatre (8712 109 Street), 7:00pm-9:00pm.
Capitalism Is The Crisis is a documentary film about radical politics in Canada and the United States in the age of neoliberal austerity. Beginning with the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto, this film examines radical politics and features original interviews with prominent thinkers such as Chris Hedges, Derrick Jensen, Richard J.F. Day, David McNally, Leo Panitch, Gary Kinsman, Heather Gautney, Dana Williams, Peter Gelderloos, Sedef Arat-Koc, Ajamu Nangwaya, Wayne Price, Alex Khasnabish, Max Haiven, Mohamed Jean Veneuse, and more!
Michael Truscello is a filmmaker and assistant professor of English at Mount Royal University. His essays have appeared in journals such as Postmodern Culture, Film-Philosophy, and TEXT-Technology, and in books including Postanarchism: A Reader, Transgression 2.0 and The Automobile and American Culture.
Wednesday, October 5 to Friday, October 7, 2011
Visit to campus by Arif Dirlik (co-sponsored by the China Institute)
1. Wednesday, October 5, 2011 / Humanities Centre L-3, 3:30 – 5:00pm:
“The Idea of a ‘Chinese Model’: A Critical Discussion”
2. Thursday, October 6, 2011 / Humanities Centre L-3, 3:30 – 5:00pm: “Transnationalization and the University: The Perspective of Global Modernity”
3. Friday, October 7, 2011 / Salter Reading Room, 3rd Floor HC, 3:00pm – 4:30pm: Graduate Student Seminar: “Further Reflections on Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism”
Arif Dirlik is a distinguished intellectual historian of modern China and of revolutionary thought, a noted critic of the age of global capitalism, and an international expert on Asia-Pacific as a space of cultural production. He has been remarkably engaged in nurturing new areas of inquiry and new scholars by organizing workshops and symposia, editing special issues of journals and heading book series for Rowman & Littlefield, SUNY, and Duke University; participating on editorial and advisory boards of several dozen journals and series in a diverse range of fields; and contributing key note addresses at conferences and seminars around the world. His published articles and chapters are seminal contributions in dozens of fields. He has authored, co-authored, and edited over twenty book-length studies, many of which have been expanded and translated into half a dozen languages.
Thursday, November 3 and Friday, November 4, 2011
Visit to campus by Cesare Casarino (co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy)
1. Thursday, November 3, 2011 / Humanities Centre L-3, 3:30 – 5:00pm: Lecture: “Speculations of the Black Atlantic; or, Spinoza’s Dream of the Long Twentieth Century.”
2. Friday, November 4, 2011 / Salter Reading Room, 3rd Floor HC, 3:00pm – 4:30pm: Graduate Student Seminar, Topic: “Marx Before Spinoza”
Cesare Casarino is Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Modernity at Sea (2002), co-author (with Antonio Negri) of In Praise of the Common: A Conversation on Philosophy and Politics (2008), co-editor (with Saree Makdisi and Rebecca Karl) of Marxism Beyond Marxism (1996), as well as co-translator (with Vincenzo Binetti) of Giorgio Agamben’s Means without End (2000), among other books. His essays on literature, cinema, philosophy have appeared in journals such as Cultural Critique, Parallax, Angelaki, Raritan, Social Text, October, and boundary 2.
2012-2013 Lectures and Events
Thursday, September 6 to Sunday, September 9, 2012
Keynote lectures as part of Petrocultures
Ursula Biemann (video artist, Switzerland)
Warren Cariou (University of Manitoba)
Allan Stoekl (Penn State University)
Thursday, October 11 to Saturday, October 13, 2012
Keynote lectures as part of Negative Cosmospolitanisms
Timothy Brennan (University of Minnesota)
Pheng Cheah (University of California, Berkeley)
Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia)
Peter Nyers (McMaster University)
Wednesday, October 17 to Friday, October 19, 2012
Visit to campus by Lauren Berlant (University of Chicago). Sponsored by the Alberta Institute for American Studies.
2010-2011 Lecture Series
Thursday, September 16
“Synthesis and Horizon in the Science of Experience” /
Nicholas Brown on Hegel [198.15KB]
Nicholas Brown, Director of African-American Studies and Associate Professor of English, University of Illinois-Chicago
Wednesday, September 29
“History of the Political Center: The Case of The Economist“ /
Andrew Pendakis on the center [315.72KB]
Andrew Pendakis, Lecturer, North American Studies Program, University of Bonn
Thursday, October 14
“The Small World of Petrocarbons”
Gordon Laird, journalist and author
Tuesday, November 9
“On Film, Theory, & ‘Film as Philosophy’: Or, Philosophy Goes ‘Pop’”
Todd Dufresne, Director of the Advanced Institute for Globalization & Culture, and Research Chair of Social and Cultural Theory, Lakehead University
Thursday, January 13
“Of Anarchists, Terrorists, and an Abu Ghraib Novel”
Terri Tomsky, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, English and Film Studies, University of Alberta
Thursday, February 3
“Luminous Trash: Throwaway Robots in Blade Runner, the Terminators, AI, and Wall-E.”
Patrica Yaeger, Henry Simmons Frieze Collegiate Professor of English and Women’s Studies, and editor of PMLA, University of Michigan
Wednesday, February 16 / FAB 2-20 @ 3:30pm (Note: New Date)
“The Work of the Work”
Althea Thauberger, visual artist, Vancouver.
Co-sponsored with the Department of Art and Design
Tuesday, March 1
“The Aesthetics of Saturation”
Marija Cetinić, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, English and Film Studies, University of Alberta
Tuesday, March 8
“The Softer Side of Competitiveness”: Brand Management as National Knowledge”
Melissa Aronczyk, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, Carleton University