Call for Papers, Bard Graduate Center Conference (Proposals Due 1/29)

Materials of Persuasion

Bard Graduate Center, New York
April 23, 2010

Few persons are capable of being convinced; the majority allow themselves to be persuaded.
Goethe

I’m in the persuasion business, and frankly I’m disappointed by your presentation.
Peggy Olson, Mad Men

Critics passing judgment, clergy seeking converts, advertisers selling products, and politicians running for office are all in the persuasion business. Persuasion is the key to the art of rhetoric, but there has always been a material dimension to persuasion as well.

Objects are vehicles of persuasion. We are persuaded to purchase and consume objects, and we use them to persuade others, to mediate the identities we put forth, and our interactions with each other. The roles of persuasive objects change over time as they pass from hand to hand. The mutable relationships between material objects, people, and desire are powerful, tantalizing subjects of study. So how does persuasion factor into these fluid equations? Makers, buyers, and users all have unique perspectives on the art of persuasion, as well as unspoken intentions that are constantly at work beneath the surface. Some of these intentions may be deceptive – persuasion can have a dark side. Finally, persuasion rests upon various types of evidence – what must we see in order to believe?

We invite scholars from diverse fields to explore these issues– come, and be persuasive.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Marketing, advertising, and the mechanics of consumer desire.
• Branding and the elevation of the status symbol: What’s in a name?
• The continuum of authenticity: Influences, appropriations, copies, knock-offs and forgeries.
• Persuasive scholarship: methodologies, authorial tone, and the use of revealed/suppressed information.
• Surface treatments: Gilding, varnishing, veneering, trompe l’oeil and faux materiality.
• The toolbox of persuasion: Emotion, rationalism, the hard sell, manipulation, and deceit.

The conference will take place on April 23, 2010, at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Those interested in submitting papers for consideration should contact gradsymp@bgc.bard.edu. Please include the title and a 250-word abstract of your paper topic, as well as a CV that includes your contact information and email address. Please send your submission no later than Friday, January 29, 2010. Accepted speakers will be notified in February.

The Graduate Student Symposium Committee

The Bard Graduate Center for Studies
in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture
18 West 86th Street
New York, New York 10024

West European Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships Available!

The Center for European and Mediterranean Studies awards Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships that support graduate students who will study a West European language as an integral part of an academic program. Eligible languages include: Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Portuguese (study of/in Portugal ONLY), Spanish (study of/in Spain ONLY), and Swedish.

FLAS applicants should have scholarly and professional interests that focus on Western Europe. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or have permanent resident status. Applicants must plan to enroll full-time in a graduate degree program at NYU for 2010-11. Incoming applicants to NYU and currently enrolled NYU students are eligible to apply. Students from all NYU graduate degree programs in all NYU graduate schools are eligible to receive FLAS Fellowships.

Competitive priorities for 2010-11 FLAS fellowships include 1) applicants who will achieve advanced-level language proficiency before graduation, and 2) master's level applicants who plan to pursue careers in public service, and 3) applicants studying less commonly taught languages, as defined by the Department of Education (Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish).

There are two kinds of FLAS fellowships:

Summer FLAS fellowships cover the cost of tuition plus a stipend of approximately $2,500. Summer language awards must be used to attend intensive language study programs in the U.S. or overseas that meet language proficiency standards set by the U.S. Department of Education. Attendance at any particular summer program with a FLAS fellowship will be contingent upon the availability of matching funds beyond the $4,000 Department of Education tuition cap.

Academic Year FLAS fellowships will consist of 24 points of NYU tuition remission and a stipend of at least $15,000. Academic Year FLAS fellowships are for students engaged in a domestic or overseas program of full-time language and area or international studies coursework.

The Summer 2010 & Academic Year 2010-11 FLAS fellowship application deadline is FEBRUARY 5, 2010, 5:00 p.m.

To apply, submit:

· completed FLAS fellowship application – download Summer 2010 or Academic Year 2010-11 form at http://cems.as.nyu.edu/object/cems.grad.fellowships.html#applyflas

· completed career interest form – download at http://cems.as.nyu.edu/object/cems.grad.fellowships.html#applyflas

· personal statement

· current transcript

· one letter of recommendation

to:

Jennifer Denbo, Assistant Director

Center for European and Mediterranean Studies

New York University

285 Mercer Street, 7th Floor

New York, NY 10003

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships - General Guidelines

1. All awards are subject to U.S. Department of Education policies.

2. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or have permanent resident status.

3. Eligible languages of study at NYU are Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Portuguese (Portugal ONLY), Spanish (Spain ONLY), Swedish. Competitive priority will be given to applicants studying less commonly taught languages (Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish).

4. Students in all graduate degree-granting programs at NYU are eligible to apply. Competitive priority will be given to master's level students and applicants who are considering careers in public service.

5. Students at all levels of language proficiency, except those with native fluency, are encouraged to apply. Competitive priority will be given to students who expect to achieve advanced-level proficiency before graduation.

6. All applications must include a personal statement, a current transcript, and one letter of recommendation (preferably from your advisor, department chair, or language instructor) as well as the completed application and career interest forms. Students applying for both summer and academic year FLAS fellowships submit only one set of supporting materials.

Summer 2010 Awards

1. Summer awards are for intensive language study.

2. Each individual program of language study must be approved by the Department of Education in advance of any payment for tuition or stipend.

3. Eligible programs must offer a minimum of 140 contact hours in the classroom and last at least 6 weeks.

4. Each award will cover tuition and will provide a stipend of approximately $2,500.

5. Attendance at any particular summer program with a FLAS fellowship will be contingent upon the availability of matching funds beyond the $4,000 Department of Education tuition cap.

6. FLAS fellows may receive funding from other sources to cover tuition above the $4,000 tuition cap.

Academic Year 2010-11 Awards

1. All 2010-2011 awards are contingent on renewal of the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies' U.S. Department of Education Title VI FLAS grant for 2010-2014.

2. Students must have full-time status (a minimum of 12 points each semester), or full-time equivalency status, in 2010-11.

3. Students must enroll in at least one language course and one area or international studies course in each semester of the 2010-11 academic year.

The Title VI FLAS Fellowship program at NYU is administered under the directives of the Office of International Education Programs, Office of Post secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education.

Deadline Extended for NYU Comparative Literature Graduate Student Conference on Disagreement

Deadline Extended: 300 word abstracts due to disagreement.NYU@gmail.com by 01/18/2010!

Disagreement: Comparative Literature Graduate Student Conference at New York University (Spring 2010)

March 5-6, 2010

Can we disagree? The question forces you to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ to commit to one path or the other. Perhaps it even forces you to choose your allies, to prepare for combat.

If we can disagree, how do we do this? Why the desire to disagree in the first place? This questioning asks us to examine the epistemological and material conditions of disagreement; the possibility of dialogue and understanding; the relationship between eristic and dialectic; the role and function of polemos; and the relation between negation, negativity, difference and disagreement.

What forms, moreover, does disagreement take within literary texts? How might literature subvert, use, or propagate ideology? In view of deconstructionist readings that present a text in disagreement with itself, what is the connection between the rhetorics and the materiality of disagreement? As for translation, does it assume an incompatibility between texts that can be termed disagreement?

In the context of academic practices, the issue of disagreement concerns the ethos and the methodology of a community of researchers whose discussions operate according to different models of argumentation. This questioning opens up the possibility of a debate between different disciplines and approaches: for example, how does the model of scientific falsification relate to more interpretive paradigms? How do the forms of disagreement in literary texts compare to the forms it takes in art, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences?

This discussion may also lead us into the political dimensions of disagreement: violence as a form of disagreement; the contradictions inherent in theories of social contract; the figure of authority and tradition; and the moral demand to disagree in the public sphere. Does disagreement, an allegedly belligerent, disruptive force, play a role in the formation of communities? How does this role agree with the community-building functions of consensus?

Finally, does the very possibility of disagreement lead us to an unspoken universality that transcends (or destroys) language games, the linguistic community, and even language itself?

Being together and being against each other–if these are the two modes of disagreement–we invite you to come and disagree with us. Submissions from any discipline on all possible permutations of disagreement are welcome.

300 word abstracts due 01/15/2010 to disagreement.NYU@gmail.com. Please visit our website, http://disagreement.wordpress.com , for more information.

Call for Submissions: Spring 2010 Issue of Anamesa

Spring 2010 Issue of Anamesa
blur boundaries, re-imagine links, explore the between

Anamesa, a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal of graduate student writing and art based at New York University, is now accepting submissions for its Spring 2010 print issue. Graduate students across all disciplines are encouraged to send in writing (including but not limited to academic essays, creative non-fiction, reportage, interviews, reviews, short stories, poetry, and other unclassifiable prose creations) and art of all sorts (such as photography, drawings, paintings, film stills, posters, prints, etc.). Anamesa considers material from diverse subject matter, and publishes creative and intelligent works that exemplify the transdisciplinary spirit of the graduate community.

Submission guidelines for papers: Include complete paper (up to 6000 words), abstract (up to 200 words), and cover sheet. Academic papers must adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style. All paper submissions—both non-fiction and fiction—are blind-reviewed so there should be no author-identifying information in the text of the paper. Although the publication will be in English, we are also interested in texts in translation.

Submission guidelines for art works: Visual art submissions must be in digital format with a minimum resolution of 300 DPI and no smaller than 5 x 7 inches.

The submission deadline is February 12. Send submissions and queries to anamesa.journal@gmail.com. Please include a cover page with your name, departmental affiliation, expected degree and date, telephone number, and email address. We accept multiple submissions, but we ask that you place each submission in a different email message with the subject heading listing the relevant genre (e.g., “essay,” “fiction,” or “photography”).

For further information and to view previous issues of Anamesa, visit www.anamesajournal.org. Printed copies of Anamesa are available at the office for the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master's Program in Humanities and Social Thought at 14 University Place.