Call
for Papers
“Empire: A Retrospective”
The
Second Biannual Faculty and Graduate Students Colloquium
Organized
by
The
Graduate Program for Cultural Studies at the
November
18-21 2010
This conference will address the 10th anniversary of the publication of
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s seminal book Empire, the first volume of a trilogy that
saw its completion in October 2009 with the publication of the third volume, Commonwealth. The second volume, Multitudes, came out in 2004.
However, we are not italicizing the word “Empire” in the conference
title because we want to address the questions raised by the books much more
than glossing the texts themselves. The response in the academic world to
the trilogy has been extremely fertile, causing, among other things, a
rediscovery of Italian political thought, a questioning of historical and
cultural categories related to postmodernity, and the reframing of the
political stakes implicit in theoretical interventions. The dialogue that other
critics have opened with Negri and Hardt – sometimes sympathetic,
sometimes skeptical or outright polemical – will also be a fundamental
part of the conference. Figures such as Jameson and Zizek are only the
tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, current historical developments in the
international arena, also directly addressed in the trilogy, have pushed
us in the last decade us to reflect once more on the political and
cultural form “empire”, and we feel there is no better moment
for this discussion to take place.
We are looking for
graduate student papers that will address the following topics:
We need to receive 500-
words abstracts by April 20, 2010. All submissions should be attached
via e-mail to the following address [log in to unmask],
with names and university affiliations. The papers will be rendered
anonymous for the review process.
We
will give our responses by May 10. Those
graduate student participants chosen from outside the
Both
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have agreed to give the final keynote
address.
The format of the conference will include 4 panels, each anchored by an
external, invited scholar able to address authoritatively the issues at hand.
We are looking forward
to receive graduate student submissions at your earliest convenience.
The
whole CFP can be found on our website here:
http://www.pitt.edu/~cultural/EMPIRE_CFP.htm