Marxist Literary Group Summer Institute on Culture and Society: This year's special topic will be "Representation, Marxism and the Global Spaces of Politics." The Keynote Speaker is Michael Hardt, Program in Literature, Duke University.
The Department of Comparative Studies will host the annual meeting of the summer Institute on Culture and Society (ICS) June 24-28, 2013. The summer Institute is sponsored by the Marxist Literary Group, which is an affiliated organization of the Modern Language Association. The institute focuses on productive engagement with current theoretical and critical approaches and their points of intersection with the Marxist critical tradition. As such, the institute is of interest to anyone working in related fields, such as cultural studies, interdisciplinary gender and race studies, media studies, comparative literature, national or ethnic cultures, aesthetics, the critique of political economy, or issues related to social justice broadly understood. The institute’s particular perspective is also marked by its unique format. It takes place over 5 days and follows a workshop format in which only one session runs at a time in order to allow everyone to contribute to an ongoing conversation that can develop and deepen over the course of the week.
This year's special topic will be "Representation, Marxism and the Global Spaces of Politics." The topic invokes a range of questions relevant to contemporary politics, aesthetics and social realities; to the ways in which ethnicity, gender and race provide a point of departure for political projects that challenge older paradigms; to the ongoing wave of uprisings throughout the world and how they are to be understood in today’s global economy, the ongoing necessity to develop adequate socio-economic analyses, and the ways in which past and present conditions and struggles are represented and, in turn, shaped by various aesthetic practices and modes of communication. These present concerns and struggles are of course related to older histories and theoretical models. Hence this year’s Institute will also be devoted to a study of primary texts within leftist and Marxist traditions, which will be led by experts in the field.
A strong showing from our own department is anticipated, as well as from other departments at OSU, who will be joined by American and international scholars from as close as Canada and as far away as Sao Paolo, Brazil. In the past, attendees have included Fredric Jameson (one of the founders of the MLG), Gayatri Spivak, Aiwah Ong, Ato Quayson, Bruce Robbins, Eugene Holland, Imre Szeman, Alberto Toscano, Michelle Yeats, Neil Larsen, Susan Willis, Paul Smith, Rebecca Comay, Ian Balfour, Grant Farred, Barbara Foley, Peter Hitchcock, Stanley Aronowitz and Maria Elisa Cervasco.
Confirmed attendees for the 2013 ICS include Barbara Foley (Rutgers), Jane Winston (Northwestern), Kanishka Chowdhuri (St. Thomas), Eugene Holland (Ohio State), Richard Daniels (Oregon State), Mathias Nilges (St. Francis Xavier), Jason Read, Paul Smith, and others.
