Date/Time
Date(s) - 25 Sep 2015
4:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Location
CUNY Graduate Center
Category(ies) No Categories
The CUNY Graduate Center PhD Program in English presents
Friday Forum
Sept. 25 |4:00PM|Room 4406 Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, b/w 34th & 35th)
Keywords: Four Scholars Talk about a Key Term that They are Historicizing, Complicating, and Otherwise Obsessing Over in Their Scholarship
In his 1976 study “Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society,” Raymond Williams offered not so much an etymological examination of certain influential terms as a historical and cultural account, noting that the “complexity….is not finally in the word but in the problems which its variations of use significantly indicate.” At some point in their work most scholars discover that there is a “keyword” that proves tantalizingly problematic if not vexingly complex–and that unraveling the word or term becomes a key component of their research. In the spirit of Williams’ influential study, this panel presents four case studies from the work of scholars who are embarking on projects that require them to contextualize a particular term.
A Panel Discussion featuring:
Kate Eickmeyer, Graduate Center on Whimsy
Evelyn Ender, Johns Hopkins University on Synesthesia
Richard Kaye, Hunter College and Graduate Center on Empathy
Nancy Selleck, University of Massachusetts at Lowell on Soliloquy
Moderated by Siraj Ahmed, Lehman College and the Graduate Center.
Reception to Follow↔