NYU Abu Dhabi Lecture Series in New York: 3/1

The Middle East in Revolt

March 1, 2011 | 6:30 - 8:00 PM

Location: 19 Washington Square North

The Middle East is undergoing profound and unexpected changes. Panelists will discuss the uprisings across the region, the implications for US policy, and the future of the Middle East.

Mohamad Bazzi, Assistant Professor of Journalism, NYU; Adjunct Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

Hassan Fattah, Editor-In-Chief, The National

Marina Ottaway, Director, Middle East Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

James Traub, Contributing writer, The New York Times Magazine; Weekly columnist, Foreignpolicy.com; Visiting Professor, NYUAD

Co-sponsored by the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, NYU

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Space is limited. Please RSVP to 19wsn.rsvp@nyu.edu.

Visit NYUAD Events for more information.

Flickr Commons Photofinds: Early Spring

Our photofinds this week were all found by doing a keyword search for "early spring" in the Flickr Commons. Enjoy the nice weather today!

Pasque Flowers - This Early Blooming Spring Flower Survives
the Late Snow Storms of the Rocky Mountains, 05/1972
Photo by David Hiser; Part of the U.S. National Archives Collection




An Unconscious Woman on the Ground, circa 1900
Powerhouse Museum Collection



A Field of Flowers and Mount Tabor, 1915
Oregon State University's Collection

Register for National Practice Tests (GRE,LSAT,MCAT) at NYU on Sat 2/26 at Wasserman

Seats are running out for our GRE, LSAT, and MCAT Free Practice Tests on 2/26 here at NYU so please sign-up today and reserve your spot! Information for registration is at the end of this message.

Kaplan's free Practice Test Event is coming in February! After the test, one of our amazing instructors will give a short workshop on test-taking strategies, as well as provide you same day results, including your score and section performance. This opportunity is only once for the remainder of this school year, so take advantage of it now. To register, visit 2011 Spring National Practice Test -- http://www.jotform.com/form/10060420151

Updated Schedule: French & American Authors in Conversation

FESTIVAL of NEW FRENCH WRITING
French & American Authors in Conversation

February 24 - 26, 2011

Hemmerdinger Hall
NYU Silver Center, 1st floor
100 Washington Square East


Curated by Olivier Barrot & Tom Bishop


In French and English. Simultaneous translation available for this event.

The conversations between French and American authors that constitute the seven one-hour sessions of the Festival of New French Writing will each pair one French and one American writer, confronting their respective experiences and ambitions with respect to literary creation. Each animated by an American cultural critic familiar with the literatures of the two countries, the dialogues will explore the singular qualities of each author, national similarities and differences, as well as the future of literature.

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Updated schedule. Authors biographies and festival details available at www.frenchwritingfestival.com

Thursday, February 24
7:00 p.m. Geneviève Brisac & Rick Moody (moderated by Chad W. Post)

8:30 p.m. Stéphane Audeguy & Jane Kramer

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Friday, February 25
2:30 p.m. Pascal Bruckner & Mark Lilla (moderated by Adam Gopnik)

4:00 p.m. David B. & Ben Katchor (moderated by Françoise Mouly)

7:30 p.m. Atiq Rahimi & Russell Banks (moderated by Lila Azam Zanganeh)

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Saturday, February 26

2:30 p.m. Laurence Cossé & Arthur Phillips (moderated by Judith G. Miller)



4:00 p.m. Philippe Claudel & A. M. Homes (moderated by John R. MacArthur)

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Organized by the Center for French Civilization and Culture of NYU, Institut Français, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy

Comparative Literature Talk Tomorrow, 2/15: Questions of Blackness, Realism and Literary Production

Bode Ibironke Lecture: February 16, 1:00 - 3:00

13-19 University Place, Room 222

The 'African' in the African Writers Series:
Questions of Blackness, Realism and Literary Production

Dr. Ibironke holds a PhD in English (2008) from Michigan State University, and an MA in Comparative Literature from MSU. He specializes in African and African Diaspora Literatures. His dissertation examines the role of the publishing house Heinemann in the creation of an international reading-market for African novels. He has held a Big 10 CIC Postdoctoral Fellowship and is currently Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University.

The Dalai Lama Fellowship

New York University has been selected as one of nine universities to offer the Dalai Lama Fellowship, a new international educational program of the Dalai Lama Center.

One fellow will be chosen from each university to receive up to $10,000 toward a year-long project of his of her design in one of four focus areas:

1. diminishing violence;
2. mitigating income and wealth inequities;
3. encouraging cross-cultural and inter-religious communications and
understanding;
4. promoting environmental sustainability.

All full-time students - undergraduate, graduate and professional students - who will be enrolled at NYU in Academic Year 2011 – 2012, are invited to apply.

For more information and to apply, please visit www.nyu.edu/civic.engagement

Please direct any inquiries to civic.engagement@nyu.edu or 212 998-2329.

Call for Applications: The Graduate Forum

THE GRADUATE FORUM
New York University

Sponsored by the

Graduate School of Arts and Science Dean’s Office

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
Spring 2011

The Graduate Forum, now entering its tenth year, is accepting applications from students across New York University for participation beginning in September 2011.

The Graduate Forum was established to encourage interdisciplinary inquiry into intellectual and moral problems, to question the foundations of the disciplines, and to experiment in translating basic research into a language accessible to a variety of audiences without oversimplification. Over the course of their tenure Forum members become part of an intellectual community that fosters creative cross-disciplinary discourse. At monthly dinners held during the academic year, Forum members make formal presentations of their work and enjoy genuinely interdisciplinary dialogue in sessions moderated by Acting Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, Malcolm Semple, joined by Assistant Dean for the Office of Academic and Student Life, Kathleen Talvacchia, and facilitated by Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra, a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature, and an alumna of the Graduate Forum.

Graduate students interested in participating in the Forum should submit an application by Tuesday March 8, 2011. Applications should consist of a letter of no more than 500 words describing your interest in the Forum and why you would make a good member, a curriculum vitae and a copy of your graduate transcript (unofficial copies are accepted). In addition, all nominations should include a letter of recommendation from at least one NYU faculty member who can comment on the student’s ability to contribute to the Forum. Students whose work addresses modes of visual representation and their products in any culture or period should consider applying to the more specialized Forum on Forms of Seeing, which is co-sponsored by GSAS and the IFA.

Considerations for selection include a promising academic record, the capacity for innovative thinking, the ability to contribute to interdisciplinary inquiry, and an interest in the new technologies of education. Each Forum member will be paid an honorarium of $500 per semester for her or his active participation. Student membership in the Forum is for a term of two academic years, unless a student graduates earlier. The Forum strongly encourages applications from students of diverse racial, ethnic, national and/or cultural backgrounds. Please refer to our website ( www.nyu.edu/ graduate.forum) for more information on past and present members as well as our meetings.

Nominations for membership beginning in the 2011 academic year will be due on Friday, March 11, 2011. They should be submitted electronically to Anna Antoniak at anna.antoniak@nyu.edu. The selection process may include interviews conducted in early April by current Forum members. Dean Semple will extend offers for membership by late April for a term to begin at the September 2011 Graduate Student Forum meeting.

Call for Applications: Forum on Forms of Seeing

New York University

Forum on Forms of Seeing

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS & APPLICATIONS
Spring 2011

Forum Description

The Graduate School of Arts and Science and the Institute of Fine Arts are pleased to invite nominations and applications for a specialized interdisciplinary forum for graduate students whose work addresses modes of visual representation and their products. Focused on the ways in which cultures give form to visual experience, the Forum on Forms of Seeing aims to bring together students from a wide range of graduate programs. Applications are encouraged from students who have strong historical and/or theoretical interests in images and visuality in the broadest sense, and who wish to become closely familiar with other disciplines concerned with visual representation.

Over the past few decades, many disciplines have become interested in “visuality” as a wider natural and cultural phenomenon that includes not only the traditional fine arts but imaging practices of all kinds, from cinema and popular print culture to digital reality techniques and scientific modeling. Anthropology, Philosophy, History, Literary Criticism, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience have taken significant interest in the concept of the visual, and relatively young disciplines such as Cinema Studies and Visual Studies or Visual Culture put visual representation at the center of their research. Art History itself has become more cognizant of the limitations of traditional medium-bound definitions of the image, and has taken up a more fluidly-defined visuality as one of its central problems. Reflecting the dramatic expansion of visuality as a category for scholarly inquiry, the Forum invites applications for membership from any graduate program at NYU.

How images in different periods and cultures imitate, model, render, or critique the world and our visual apprehension of it, for their makers and for their viewers, will be of central interest to the Forum. This historical and comparative approach may profitably be complemented by a philosophical understanding of the image as record of, or model for, acts of seeing. The creation, dissemination, function, signification, efficacy, duration, destruction, and demise of images will be welcome topics for the Forum.

Meeting Format

Membership in the Forum on Forms of Seeing will be for one academic year, commencing in September 2011 and ending in April 2012. All eight members will present and critique work in progress during monthly, moderated lunch sessions, scheduled on Fridays, from 12 – 3 p.m., at Washington Square and the Institute of Fine Arts. The meetings will culminate in a one-day event at the end of the semester, showcasing the year’s presentations. Members are expected to attend every session and to participate in the end-of-year symposium. A stipend of $500 is distributed per semester.

Application Procedure

To apply for membership in the 2011-12 Forum on Forms of Seeing, please provide a one-page statement of your scholarly interest in visual representation and the relevance of interdisciplinary debate about visuality for your graduate work. Your application should include a current transcript (unofficial is fine), CV, and a recommendation by a NYU faculty member. Please submit your completed application electronically by end-of-day Monday, April 4 to Anna Antoniak at anna.antoniak@nyu.edu.

The Forum on Forms of Seeing is supported by the Office of the Provost, the Graduate School of Arts and Science, and the Institute of Fine Arts and its Alumni Association.

Call for Papers: Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life (Due 3/1)

Call for Papers: Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life

The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) invites the submission of proposals for papers that address the core themes of its project on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life (described below). Accepted papers will be presented at a public conference at Columbia University, to be held June 3-4, 2011. Please email an abstract (of 300-500 words) and a CV to religion@ssrc.org (subject line: “SPEPL Conference Paper”) by March 1, 2011. Submissions will be reviewed by members of the SSRC Working Group on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life, and selected papers will be announced by April 15, 2011. Completed papers (of 6,000 to 8,000 words) must be submitted by May 15, 2011, as they will be circulated in advance and discussed in detail at the conference. Limited funding will be available to conference participants for travel and lodging.

Project on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life

Building on recent scholarship, and with support from the Ford Foundation, the SSRC project on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life explores the institutions and traditions that construct, condition, and demarcate spiritual activities and identities, and it considers the relations of these institutions and traditions to systems and patterns of political participation in the contemporary United States. In so doing, the project engages with multiple streams of scholarship and responds to recent public controversies over competing visions of the role of religion in U.S. public life.

Opinion polls show that the percentage of Americans claiming no religious affiliation is rising, although belief in a divine order and some form of deity has declined only slightly. Furthermore, belief in various non-orthodox, or non-Western, religious ideas—from reincarnation to the “mind-body connection”—is becoming increasingly popular. In sum, it seems that many Americans have begun to identify, at least nominally, as spiritual, while having become less likely to affiliate with recognized religious traditions. Meanwhile, academic work on civic associations continues to highlight the various religious and spiritual underpinnings of American political life. In light of these recent trends and developments, the project asks:

What are the consequences of the increasing salience of “spirituality” for American civic and political life? Do actors and groups publicly identified as spiritual challenge commonly held understandings of social and political involvement? How strongly are they committed to any particular set of political goals or ideals of citizenship? How do they engage in public life, and do their patterns of involvement differ in a systematic way from the patterns of others? What kinds of alternatives to, or cautionary tales about, dominant understandings of political engagement might political expressions of “spirituality” present?

Submissions for the conference should address issues related to these broad questions. In so doing, authors are encouraged to pay careful attention to the following considerations. First, the project has addressed spirituality in America as an historical phenomenon with various traditions, legacies, and institutional frameworks that shape its participants’ conceptions of religion, politics, and culture. Second, while the project recognizes that spirituality is often linked to politically “liberal” or “progressive” registers of civic expression (in contrast, for example, to “conservative” religion), there are many instances that counter this association; likewise, there are many examples of spiritual projects serving the reproduction of dominant norms and institutions. Third, the project is acutely aware that the boundaries between religious and spiritual forms are continually contested, and that this contestation itself is often an enactment of strategies that make room for various incipient public projects.

Working Group on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life

Courtney Bender (Co-chair), Associate Professor of Religion, Columbia University
Carolyn E. Chen, Associate Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University
William E. Connolly, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Theory and International Relations, Johns Hopkins University
Kathryn Lofton, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Religious Studies, Yale University
Elizabeth McAlister, Associate Professor of Religion, Wesleyan University
Omar M. McRoberts (Co-chair), Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago
John Lardas Modern, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Franklin and Marshall College

Social Science Research Council

The Social Science Research Council is an independent nonprofit organization devoted to the advancement of social science research and scholarship. Founded in New York City in 1923 as the world’s first national coordinating body of the social sciences, today the SSRC is an international resource for innovative, interdisciplinary public social science. Through its Program on Religion and the Public Sphere, the SSRC seeks to deepen engagement and cooperation among social scientists working on religion, secularism, and related topics; to support critical scholarship in this crucial area of study; and to increase public awareness of the social and political dimensions and ramifications of religion in the contemporary world.

Theories of Life in the 20th and 21st Centuries Rutgers Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference (2/26)

Theories of Life in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Rutgers Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference

"Theories of Life in the 20th and 21st Centuries" brings together scholars from across the humanities to investigate the centrality of theories of "life" to twentieth and twenty-first century theory and cultural production. In fields as diverse as vitalism, feminism, animal studies, political theory, aesthetics and psychoanalysis, presenters will highlight how the humanities investigates the ontological properties and ethical imperatives of life.

Plenary Speaker: Donna V. Jones, UC-Berkeley English: "The Career of
Living Things is Continuous"

Saturday, February 26, 2011
9am-7pm
Murray Hall, Plangere Center
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
More Information and free registration at:
http://theoriesoflifeconference.wordpress.com/
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Schedule:
9:00 am Coffee and Tea

9:15 Introduction

9:30-11:00 Panel 1: Philosophies and Life: Values, Objects, Methods
moderator, Octavio Gonzalez, Rutgers University English

- "Hunger and Happiness" - Richard Dienst, Rutgers University, English
- “The Strange Fact of Critical Theory: Medusa, Feminist Poetics, and
the Wonder of Ekphrasis”- Anne Keefe, Rutgers University, English and
Tyson Lewis, Montclair State University, Department of Educational
Foundations
- “Life After Death: Freud’s Biogonic Myth”- Benjamin Fong, Columbia
University, Religion
- “What is a Lichen?: Species, Symbiosis, Reduction” - Derek Woods,
University of British Columbia, English

11:15 -12:45 Panel 2: Vitalist Traditions in Cultural Expression
moderator, Fred Solinger, Rutgers English

- “The Vitalist Debate in American Literature, 1950-2000”- John
McClure, Rutgers University English
- “Nietzschean Vitalism in German Musical Modernism”- Jonathan Gentry,
Brown University History -
- “The Limits of Life in the 20th and 21st Century: The Fetus and the
Refugee”- Heather Latimer, University of Manchester, English and
American Studies
- “History in the Service of Life: Nietzsche and Deleuze” - Allison M.
Merrick, University of Southampton, Philosophy

12:45-1:45 Lunch

2:00-3:15 Panel 3: Posthuman Ontologies and Subjectivites
moderator, Becca Klaver, Rutgers University, English

- "Life or Lives: The Question of 'Actually Existing Animals' " -
Marianne DeKoven, Rutgers University, English
- “Life After Humanism”- Rachel Greenwald Smith, Saint Louis University, English
- “"Artificial Life: Figuring the Robot and the End of the Human(ist)
World” - Bryan Conn, Case Western Reserve University, English

3:30-4:45 Panel 4: The (Bio)Politics of Life: Regulating and Organizing Life
moderator, Candice Amich, Rutgers English

- “Life at War: Biopower and Feminist Dissensus” - Harriet Davidson,
Rutgers University, English and Women and Gender Studies
- “Liberated Futures/ Multi-Dimensional Ruptures: Late Marcuse and
Black Critical Theory"- Carter Mathes, Rutgers University, English
- “When Thought and Life Coincide: Plasticity and Agamben’s
Form-of-Life”- Kelly Kawar, UC-Santa Barbara, English

5:00 - 7:00 Plenary Session: Donna Jones, UC-Berkeley English,
"The Career of Living Things is Continuous" - Introduced by Carter
Mathes, Rutgers University, English

A reception will follow.

For complete schedule, abstracts and registration:
http://theoriesoflifeconference.wordpress.com/
Contact: Philip Longo, phlongo@eden.rutgers.edu, Tyler Bradway,
tyler.bradway@gmail.com