Emplacing the Local
In an era of globalization, where new media connects us in an instant around the world with communities linked only in cyber-space, it would seem that our lives are lived less and less through emplacing ourselves within the spaces we regularly inhabit, and engaging in place-making; that is, seeing ourselves as engaged in the spaces within which we interact and form communities with those around us. In contrast to such pessimistic predictions, a number of scholars have articulated the ongoing importance of place as part of socially constructed spatialities of postmodernity and neoliberal capitalism at a subjective and community level. Additionally, scholars across the humanities and social sciences have been drawn away from the easy identification of subjects who are embedded in the time-space compression and increasing kinesis of the contemporary world to the importance of the local and of ongoing, situated practices of creating significance and history. Foregrounding the matter of place makes way for critical appraisal of questions of local importance, asking how research can and should be engaged, as praxis, with local politics, histories, environments, and arts.
Lectures
All lectures begin at 6 p.m. unless otherwise noted, and are held in Russell House, which is located at the corner of Washington and High streets.
A new look at an old question: the agreements and disagreements between the sciences and historical writing
February 4
Frank Ankersmit, University of Groningen
Martin Buber’s Two Zionisms and the Question of Palestine
Wednesday, February 13
Judith Butler, Berkeley | MEMORIAL CHAPEL | 4 p.m.
IRL (In Real Life)
February 18
Greg Goldberg, Wesleyan
Subterranean Gratification: Sites of Reading and Scenes of Mobility after the Picaro
February 25
Matthew Garrett, Wesleyan
On the Waterfront
March 4
Dara Orenstein, Wesleyan
That no tax will be paid, by white, black or indian: For Over-Reading the Speculative Atlantic, 1820-1860
April 1
David Kazanjian, University of Pennsylvania
“I Have Seen the Future” Selling the Interstate Highway System
April 8
Dolores Hayden, Yale University
Big Talk, Small Places: the Caribbean Epic
April 15
Indira Karamcheti, Wesleyan University
Secret Marriage, Revenge Murder, and Divas: Lope, Webster, and the Early Modern Theatrical Revolution in Spain and England
April 22
Michael Armstrong Roche, Wesleyan University
The Place of Archaeology: Re-membering Local Histories
April 29
Sarah Croucher, Wesleyan University
Turning Empire Inside Out: Negritude and the Politics of Radical Literalism
May 6
Gary Wilder, Graduate Center CUNY