[Discussion] CFP: Belonging: Community, Commonality, and the Politics of the Singular (grad)

[Gonul Pultar]

“Belonging: Community, Commonality, and the Politics of the Singular.”

In The Coming Community, Giorgio Agamben asks “What could be the 
politics of whatever singularity, that is, of a being whose community is 
mediated not by any condition of belonging (being red, being Italian, 
being Communist) nor by the simple absence of conditions…but by 
belonging itself?” The Graduate Students of the New York University 
Department of Comparative Literature invite graduate students from 
across the humanities to submit papers for their 2004 spring conference, 
“Belonging: Community, Commonality, and the Politics of the Singular,” 
April 2nd and 3rd.

Possible panel topics include but are not limited to: Aesthetic
Communities, Collectivity, Cosmopolitanism, Exiled Communities,
Friendship, Global Struggles, Hegemony, Hospitality, Imagined 
communities, Isolationism, Kinship, Mass Production, Masses, 
Media/Popular Culture, Nation/State, Nationalisms, Occupied Territories, 
Parties, Peoples, Private languages/Social Languages, Race, 
Refugees/Statelessness, Schools, Sex, Shared Spaces, Sociability, 
Solidarity, Sovereignty, Translation/Monolinguism, Tribes, and Universalism.

We are especially excited to announce that our keynote speaker this year
will be NYU Global Distinguished Professor Giorgio Agamben.  Also, in
memory of Professor Edward Said, we will also be hosting a special 
faculty roundtable discussion on the question of belonging in his work. 
  Students of his thought are especially encouraged to submit.

One page, single-spaced abstracts are due to Michael Tan 
(mkt209@nyu.edu), Alejandra Uslenghi (auslenghi@yahoo.com), Sabrina 
Waldron (sabrina_213hotmail.com) by February 15, 2003.  Please send 
copies to all members of the organizing committee.  Contact Michael Tan 
with any queries.