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GROUND STORIES: The Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago 2012 Weissbourd Annual Conference
| Location: | Illinois, United States |
| Call for Papers Date: | 2012-02-20 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2012-01-04 |
| Announcement ID: |
190998 |
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CALL FOR PAPERS: GROUND STORIES
The Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago invites paper
proposals for the annual Weissbourd Memorial Conference, to be held May 18-19, 2012
at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, on the theme “Ground Stories.”
Our theme focuses on groundedness, a quality located in the stratigraphy – both real and
imagined – beneath a variety of structures, concepts, and institutions. One dimension of
the theme considers ground as itself a political and historical variable. How did ground
emerge as a definite material through fields such as geology and archaeology? How do
peoples today identify an underground stratum as the “first story” of their local residency,
often to exclude co-occupants or to delegitimize competing narratives? Who decides
what counts as the “ground story” of a given institutional architecture, the entrance and
exit for locals and visitors alike, the level that replicates its perimeter upward? What
arbitrations appear or intensify when we stand our ground, loose ground, break ground,
dig in? And when do we know that the ground beneath us is shaking – or giving way?
We also consider “grounding” as that with which claims are credentialized and certified.
In the moment they are grounded, propositions reckon with protocols of falsification and
become candidates for sanction. What tacit contingencies – historical, legal, political,
poetic, economic – govern this moment of grounding across disciplines and eras? When
do we sense that we’ve hit pay dirt, fathomed an idea, or run aground? How do images or
texts come to be touted as “fertile ground” in philosophy, religion, law and science? What
stories do we tell at and about grounding moments that fix canons and provide bedrock
upon which subsequent evaluation rests?
The objective of this conference is not to judge competing claims over what counts as the
first stratum of particular theories, nations or disciplines, but rather to call new attention
to those very competitions and the narratives that inform their adjudication. The Society
especially encourages work that critically reflects on “archaeologies of knowledge” and
other “excavatory” habits of thought, as metapractices that have become common ground
in many scholarly areas in recent decades, as well as new work on stratigraphic ways of
understanding political and social disputes. Ground Stories seeks to provide fresh ground
to rethink the quarrying of truths in fields ranging from history, politics and economics to
literary studies, critical theory, the sciences and beyond.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Our keynote address will be given by Martin Jay, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his works are: The Dialectical
Imagination (l973 and l996), Marxism and Totality (l984), Adorno (l984), Permanent
Exiles (l985), Fin-de-Siècle Socialism (l989), Force Fields (l993), Downcast Eyes (l993),
Cultural Semantics (l998), Refractions of Violence (2003), Songs of Experience (2004),
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying In Politics (2010) and Essays from the Edge (2011).
The title of Prof. Jay’s address is “Ungrounded: Max Horkheimer and the Founding of
the Frankfurt School.”
Speaking in response to Martin Jay will be Moishe Postone, author of Time, Labor and Social Domination (1993), Professor of History at the University of Chicago, and Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory.
TO PROPOSE A PAPER OR PANEL
To propose a paper, please submit an abstract of 250 words or less, along with a brief biography of the presenter. Please email this to conference co-chairs Spencer Leonard and Neil Verma at weissbourd12@gmail.com
To propose a panel, provide the above material for all presenters, along with a panel title and an explanation of its ambit, no more than 500 words in length.
The deadline for all proposals is February 20, 2012.
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Spencer Leonard and Neil Verma
Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts
University of Chicago
5845 S Ellis Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
773-834-0681
Email: weissbourd12@gmail.com
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