The goal of Political Concepts is to serve as a platform for revising, inventing, and experimenting with concepts while exploring the political dimension of their use and dissemination. Participants operate under the assumption that our era urgently needs a revised political lexicon that would help us better understand the world in which we live and act, and that the humanities at large can and should contribute toward such a revision.

This gathering of Political Concepts will be hosted by the CUNY Graduate Center’s Committee on Globalization and Social Change. Since 2010, along parallel lines, this group has spent successive years critically reconsidering and reworking foundational concepts in an effort to more adequately grasp the global political present and to envision alternative political futures.

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CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

THURSDAY // SKYLIGHT ROOM (9100)

Opening Remarks > 3:00pm
Susan Buck-Morss & Ann Stoler, political concepts board members

Panel I > 3:30–5:30pm
Chaired by Joan Scott, Institute for Advanced Study
Erotic Transformation/ Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University  
Bios/ Brooke Holmes, Princeton University 

Panel II > 6:00–8:00pm
Chaired by Jacques Lezra, UC Riverside
Unmixing/ Sadia Abbas, Rutgers University 
Universal History/ Antonio Y. Vázquez-Arroyo, Rutgers University 

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FRIDAY // ROOM 9205/9206

Opening Remarks > 10:45am
Gary Wilder, Director of the committee on Globalization and Social Change

Panel III > 11:00AM–1:00pm
Chaired by Jay Bernstein, The New School 
Lex Animata/ Jesús R. Velasco, Columbia University
Dictatorship/ Andreas Kalyvas, The New School

Panel IV > 2:30–4:30pm
Chaired by Duncan Faherty, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Occult/ Banu Bargu, University of California, Santa Cruz
Decolonization/ Seloua Luste Boulbina, Denis Diderot University

Panel V > 5:00–7:00pm
Chaired by Gary Wilder, The Graduate Center, CUNY
仁“The one” and “the many”/ Lydia Liu, Columbia University
Diaspora/ Ato Quayson, New York University

A live-stream of this event will be available through the Graduate Center website.