[Discussion] CFP: Making Friendship: Bonds, Boundaries, Becomings (grad) (12/31/05; 4/6/06-4/8/06)

[gpultar@cstgroup.org]

From: Making Friendship Conference <makingfriendship@gmail.com>

NYU Comparative Literature and German Graduate Student Conference

"Making Friendship: Bonds, Boundaries, Becomings"
6 - 8 April, 2006

Call for Papers:
The conference topic, "Making Friendship: Bonds, Boundaries, Becomings," seeks
to explore the notion of friendship in its various conceptualizations and
codifications, both throughout history and in the present. We emphasize the idea
of friendship as a terrain of constant negotiation, and as a mode of relation
with a plurality of meanings and implications. It appears particularly urgent to
interrogate the concept of friendship in an age of war, humanitarian crises, and
conflicts, as well as professional specialization and the fragmentation of
fields of knowledge. The conference seeks to elaborate upon these diverse
conceptualizations and stratifications of friendship, from the Greek concept of
"philia" (that necessarily accompanies all pursuit of knowledge) to the politics
and economy of friendship, the friend/enemy distinction, and potential ways of
constructing, thinking about, or mobilizing friendship in the present.

Proposals may address, but are not restricted to, the following topics:
* textual representations of friendship
* friendship and cultural imagery
* friendship and conceptions of the subject
* "un/friendly" texts, inter-textual conversations
* the (implicit) reader: complicity and friendship
* friendship and eros/desire
* friendship and politics/economy
* friendship and strategies of exclusion
* friendship and the Other
* friendship as contract or gift
* friendship and mourning
* friendship, trust and betrayal
* friendship and the collective production of truth
* virtual friendship
* friendship and academia
* implications of friendship in a capitalist system
* friendship and war
* friendship and (mono)linguistic nationalisms
* friendship and reconciliation.

Papers should be 20 minutes long.

Please send abstracts (300 words) with full name, paper title, and institution
(use "Making Friendship" in the subject line) by December 31, 2005 to
makingfriendship@gmail.com.

You will be notified on or before Febuary 8, 2006.

* makingfriendship@gmail.com


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