Keynote Address for Contemporality: A Symposium on Culture, Politics, and Time by David Scott, with presentations by Brian Goldstone, Harry Harootunian, Janet Roitman, Kristin Ross, Joan Scott, and Sara Pursley, with comments by Gary Wilder

he question of the relationship of social movements to the state is one of the most pressing of our time. The Occupy Movement, as well as those in Greece and Spain, organize around goals but often without specific demands on the state. Historical experience shows that the autonomy of social movements is necessary for social change. At the same time the state controls important resources, is in a more powerful position than the movements, and tends to try and control or repress them. How can this dilemma be approached beyond either a simple total rejection of the state or a cooptation of the movements? Can autonomy be constructed while with a relationship to the state?

Please join us at "Bodies, Histories, & Empire in Africa: Symposium" and welcome Professor Megan Vaughan—our newly arrived Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center.

Said is Dead. Long Live Said! Friday, September 27 | 7 PM - 9 PM Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, CUNY 141 [...]

Carbon Democracies? Politics, Money, and the Pursuit of Oil A discussion with Timothy Mitchell, Mika Minio-Paluello, James Marriott, and Anna Galkina, moderated by May Boeve [...]

Felix Muruchi Poma: Bolivia’s Process of Social Change Felix Muruchi’s personal history as a miner, construction worker, student and union activist, nonprofit organization, political prisoner [...]

Join Gary Wilder as he explores Aimé Césaire's distinctive critical orientation to politics, culture, and knowledge during the period of decolonization as he pursued projects that were at once situated and world-historical, realist and utopian, pragmatic and aesthetic, timely and untimely. The aim is to recognize Césaire as an innovative thinker of his time who can also speak directly to many of the political and theoretical predicaments of our times.

Anthropologists Ruth Behar and Paul Stoller consider the possibilities and place of fiction within the social sciences, and reflect on the kinds of creative and experimental writing that they and other academics have engaged in. The panel will be moderated by Sujatha Fernandes, Associate Professor of Sociology at CUNY.

A Roundtable with Ann Laura Stoler on the publication of Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (Duke University Press, 2013). Stoler will be in conversation with Uday Mehta, Chelsea Shields, Neferti Tadiar, Megan Vaughan, Gary Wilder.