The 32nd Annual FSU Conference on Literature and Film

Cosmopolitanism: Thinking Beyond the Nation

February 1-4, 2007
Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
http://english.fsu.edu/filmlit/

Keynote Speakers:

Timothy Brennan, Professor, Departments of English and Cultural Studies
& Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota

Pheng Cheah, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, University of California,
Berkeley

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Associate Professor of Modern Culture and Media,
Brown University

Patrice Petro, Director of the Center for International Studies and
Professor of English and Film Studies, University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Screening, TBA

In his introduction to Cosmopolitics, Pheng Cheah writes, "The main
purpose is to explore the feasibility of cosmopolitanism as an
alternative to nationalism." Indeed, ever since Kant, the concept of
cosmopolitanism has been central to thinking about social relations,
culture, and the problem of war outside of the relations of the
nation-state. As the nation-state has organized the fields of literary
and cinema studies as well as the broader field of culture, questioning
such categorization is crucial, as it opens up new ways of thinking
about literary and filmic production as part of a larger context of
interaction. It can also account for novel ways of describing the field
of contemporary knowledge and experience.

The question of the nation seems particularly important now because of
two main transformations on the world scene: (1) economic
globalization, in which the category of the nation-state is only one
among many of possible identifications and sites of transaction, and
(2) the growing inevitability of perpetual war (what Kant called
"perpetual peace") and the endless expansion of global militarisms. Is
cosmopolitanism just another form of elitism that re-inscribes social
hierarchies, or does it provide an opening for new alliances? What new
cultural formations, social networks, and institutional structures have
arisen, both now and historically, in response to what Bruce Robbins
called "the moral and cultural existence of non-citizens"? What
resistances to global capitalism and global warfare might fall outside
of such liberal solutions as the nationalized welfare state, nativism,
or local communitarianism? In what ways do the current circulations of
language systems, aesthetic orders, semiotic codes, national
identities, and genres in film and literature transcend economics and
politics formerly envisioned in national terms?

Possible topics include:
Marxist Internationalism in Contemporary Context
The Global Corporate Class
The Worldwide Proletariat Class
Civil Society
Race
Translation Studies
Migration
Immigration
Tourism
Labor
Borders and Border Crossings
Professionalism
Feminism
Global Hollywood
Modernism
Urbanization
Human Rights
Citizenship
National and Transnational Cinemas and Literatures
Consumption
Imperialism
Totalitarianism
Outsourcing
Global Markets for Film & Literature
New Media
The Intelligentsia
The Age of the World Picture
Cinema and the City

2007 Conference directors:
Robin Truth Goodman: rgoodman@english.fsu.edu
Barry J. Faulk: bfaulk@english.fsu.edu
Maricarmen Martinez: mmartine@mailer.fsu.edu
Frank P. Tomasulo: ftomasulo@film.fsu.edu
For more information, visit our website at
http://english.fsu.edu/filmlit/

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