CFP: The New Comparativism (grad) (5/20/05; 10/8/05)

CFP: Columbia Center for Comparative Literature and Society

Graduate Student Conference:

The New Comparativism

8th Oct 2005

Taking as our point of departure the inadequacy of current languages of
comparison-sensed by some as a crisis in the field of literature-we, a
group of graduate students from across the humanities and the social
sciences working under the umbrella of the Center for Comparative
Literature and Society at Columbia University, seek to seriously examine
the possibility of charting the scope of and generating methodologies
for a New Comparativism. We call for papers that discuss and/or
demonstrate a re-imagining of the field of Comparative Literature and
its relationship with other disciplines engaged in comparative work,
with particular attention to how previous literary scholarship has
provided the academy with modes of comparative reading that are becoming
increasingly applicable not only across many of the other disciplines
that comprise the social sciences and the humanities, but also in legal
and architectural studies and finance.

This conference wishes to examine the possibility of reformulating the
literary or going beyond it entirely, and to elicit questions that arise
from the meeting of two or more disciplinary approaches in order to
sketch the outlines of a methodology that may be called the 'new
comparativism'.

Graduate students from inside and from outside of traditional literary
disciplines are encouraged to participate. We invite 20-minute
presentations that might engage with, but are not limited to, the
following questions:

o To what extent do emergent discourses of global comparison pose
a different set of demands on current academic practices and
disciplinary boundaries?

o How could comparative literature differ from current models of
interdisciplinarity?

o To what extent will the literary continue to be central to the
object and govern the methods of a 'new comparativism'; Are the
possibilities of a 'new comparativism' limited by positing its origins
in the literary?

o To what extent do area studies, cultural studies and
comparative literature lay claim to the same objects and modes of
enquiry? How might be the points of convergence between languages of
comparison in the social sciences and in comparative literature be
rethought?

o How can we rethink the way in which communication technologies
structure the possibilities for new languages and methods of comparison;
What is the relationship between infrastructure and comparison?

Our first panel will be a "Methods" panel composed of eminent faculty
members engaged in comparative work from a wide range of disciplines.
The panel will be anchored by a paper by Professor Gayatri Spivak,
Director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society.

We are in the process of recruiting faculty discussants from New York
area universities for all panels and are awaiting the confirmation of an
exciting keynote speaker.

Date: 8th October, 2005

Venue: Columbia University

Abstracts of 250-300 words, accompanied by a brief bio, should be
e-mailed to Adam Bund at ahb2004_at_columbia.edu and Olivia Harrison at
och2101_at_columbia.edu by 20th May, 2005. Selected participants will be
informed by 15th July.

 
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Received on Tue May 03 2005 - 20:55:03 EDT