COSMOPOLIS / COSMOPOLITICS

May 58 2010

Humanities and Citizenship After Neo-Liberalism?

SIMON FR A SER UNIVERSIT Y / HARBOUR CENTRE 515 WEST HA STINGS STREET, VANCOU VER BC

BACKGROUND

Now in its 28th year, the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University is committed to the idea of studying pressing contemporary problems; one of these concerns is the notion of citizenship in a globalized world where the nation and the state have changed fundamentally as they are dominated by transnational corporations. The conference will conclude the project called Imagining Citizenship that has focused on these issues in the last few years. Study groups comprising academics and members of the wider community have been meeting to discuss ideas of citizenship in relation to the environment, culture, social justice, religion, modernity and the university from the perspective of the humanities.

In the framework of the humanities, the city is a key site for thinking through the new conditions for a cosmopolitan citizenship. Citizenship is not the narrow and often violent and exclusionary horizon of the nation state; rather, the citizen is the subject of possibility, a subject alive with the search for meaning, rich in new directions and new urgencies. This conference seeks to address the following question:

How can the humanities reinvigorate and participate in a new cosmopolitan citizenship in the age of neo-liberal crisis and decline?

COS M O P O L I S/COS M O P O L I T I C S: H U M A N I T I E S A N D CI T I Z EN SH I P A F T ER N EO - L I B ER A L ISM ?

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

K E Y N OT E S P E ECH E S

P E R FO R M A N C E A N D I N S TA L L AT I O N S

Ramin Jahanbegloo (University of Toronto) Wendy Brown (University of California at Berkeley)

P R E S E N TAT I O N S

Len Findlay Lisa Robertson Sherilyn MacGregor Sourayan Mookerjea Douglas Moggach Shelagh Day Dave Diewert Frank Cunningham

The program also includes a performance by Ali&Ali 7: Hey Brother (or Sister) Can You Spare Some Hope & Change? and a series of video installations created as part of a community-engaged art project at the Purple Thistle Arts and Activist Centre in East Vancouver: Finding Home.

[N OT E ]
This event is free, but registration is required. Please go to www.sfu.ca/reserve and to http://websurvey.sfu.ca/survey/55848256

www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute

SI M O N F R A SER U N I V ER SI T Y, VA N CO U V ER BC | M AY 5 8 , 2 010

SCHEDULE

EN Q U I R I E S

Email Karen Meijer at Karen_meijer_2@sfu.ca

W E D N E S DAY, M AY 5

RM 190 0 FLETCHER CHALLENGE C ANADA THE ATRE

7:30 pm
K E Y N OT E

Ramin Jahanbegloo

T H U R SDAY, M AY 6

RM 70 0 0 E ARL & JENNIE LOHN

9 am 10:30 am
S E SS I O N 1

2:30 pm 4 pm
Ali and Ali 7: Hey Brother (or Sister) Can You Spare Some Hope & Change?
P ER FO R M A N C E : 190 0 FLETCHER CHALLENGE C ANADA THE ATRE

Citizenship and the University Len Findlay Richard Day, Michelle Pidgeon
SPE AKER: RESPONDENTS:

4:30 pm 5 pm
D I S CU SS I O N O F T H E P ER FO R M A N C E

11 am 12:30 pm
S E SS I O N 2

Citizenship and the Media

6:30 pm 7:30 pm
K E Y N OT E

Sourayan Mookerjea R E S P O N D E N T S : David Beers, Stuart Poyntz

SPE AKER:

Wendy Brown
RM190 0 FLETCHER CHALLENGE C ANADA THE ATRE

7:30 pm
R EC EP T I O N

COS M O P O L I S/COS M O P O L I T I C S: H U M A N I T I E S A N D CI T I Z EN SH I P A F T ER N EO - L I B ER A L ISM ?

A D D I T I O N A L I N FO R M AT I O N

www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute

/ R EG I S T R AT I O N

www.sfu.ca/reserve

FRI DAY, M AY 7
S E SS I O N 3

RM 14 0 0 1430 SEG AL CENTRE

SAT U RDAY, M AY 8

RM 14 0 0 1430 SEG AL CENTRE

10 am 11:30 am
Citizenship and Domestic Space Lisa Robertson R E S P O N D E N T S : Derek Simons, Jordan Strom
SPE AKER:

9 am 10:30 am
S E SS I O N 6

Citizenship and Social Justice SP E A K ER : Shelagh Day R E SP O N D EN T S : Darcie Bennett, Margot Young

11:30 am 1pm
LUNCH

11 am 12:30 pm
S E SS I O N 7

1 pm 2:30 pm
S E SS I O N 4

Citizenship and Modernity Douglas Moggach R E S P O N D E N T S : Lars Rensmann, Peyman Vahabzadeh

SPE AKER: S E SS I O N 8

Citizenship and Religion SP E A K ER : Dave Diewert R E SP O N D EN T S : Libby Davies, Itrath Syed

1:30 pm 2:30 pm
Citizenship and the City SP E A K ER : Frank Cunningham

3 pm 4:30 pm
S E SS I O N 5

2:45 pm 4:30 pm
R O U N DTA B L E

Citizenship and the Environment Sherilyn MacGregor Michael Hathaway, Hannah Wittman
SPE AKER: RESPONDENTS:

The Right to the City W I T H : Nick Blomley, Trevor Boddy, Frank Cunningham, Manisha Singh
TECK G ALLERY LOUNGE

4:45 5:15
I N S TA L L AT I O N S

Finding Home (discussion)

SI M O N F R A SER U N I V ER SI T Y, VA N CO U V ER BC | M AY 5 8 , 2 010

SPEAKERS

[K E Y N OT E S]
Ramin Jahanbegloo is a well-known

[SE SSIONS]
Len Findlay is known for working at the

Iranian-Canadian philosopher. He taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto from 19972001. He later served as the head of the Department of Contemporary Studies of the Cultural Research Centre in Tehran. Presently he is a Professor of Political Science and a Research Fellow in the Centre for Ethics at University of Toronto. Professor Jahanbegloo regularly addresses both scholarly and general public audiences through his lectures and essays on tolerance and difference, democracy and modernity, and the dynamics of Iranian intellectual life.
Wendy Brown; professor of Gender &

intersection of literary studies, cultural studies and the humanities. He specializes in cultural studies and critical theory, critical pedagogy and collaborative research, at the University of Saskatchewan. Currently, he is endeavouring to establish in a number of different settings how critical theory, combined with critical pedagogy and collaborative research, can help decolonize Canadian universities while repoliticizing them in ways more receptive to the needs and knowledge of different communities.
Sourayan Mookerjea is Associate

Womens studies and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She is best known for intertwining the insights of Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Frankfurt School theorists, Foucault, and contemporary continental philosophers to critically interrogate formations of power, political identity, citizenship, and political subjectivity in contemporary liberal democracies. Browns current research focuses on the relationship of theories of political sovereignty to global capital and other transnational forces.

Professor in Sociology at the University of Alberta. He teaches cultural studies and writes on racism, empires, migration, and class in Canada. He was a member of the artists collective Basic Research, which constructed the public space The Spectacular State: Fascism and the Modern Imagination held in Vancouver in 1995. His research interests also include postcolonial studies, contemporary social theory, language, dialectic image, communication, global flows, and built space and identity.

COS M O P O L I S/COS M O P O L I T I C S: H U M A N I T I E S A N D CI T I Z EN SH I P A F T ER N EO - L I B ER A L ISM ?

Lisa Robertson is the author of several

Sherilyn MacGregor teaches

Dave Diewert is a former professor of

books of poetry, including The Weather, Debbie: An Epic, and The Men, along with numerous reviews of poetry, art, and architecture, which have been published widely. Her poetry brings freshness and vehemence to what are often formal examinations. Her work interrogates the changing shape of feminism, the idea of a lyric lineage, the canonization of a maledominated philosophical tradition, the daily forms of discourse around which we organize our lives, and the formative and plastic possibilities of language itself.
Douglas Moggach holds the Research

Chair in Political Thought at the University of Ottawa. He is the recipient of a Canada Council Killam Research Fellowship, and is a member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. His research interests include contemporary political philosophy and political thought, German philosophy, and the history of ancient and modern political thought.

environmental politics in the School of Politics, International Relations & Philosophy at Keele University, UK. Her research is rooted in feminist and green political theory and explores a range of themes relating to citizenship, social justice and ecological sustainability. She is author of Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and the Politics of Care (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2006), has recently published articles on gender justice and the politics of climate change, and is currently co-editing (with Timothy Doyle) a two-volume series titled Global Perspectives on Environmentalism.
Shelagh Day is a founding president of

Biblical Languages at Regent College. He is now a sessional lecturer at Regent College where he teaches Biblical Greek and Hebrew as well as courses on Amos and other Old Testament book studies. He is the founder of Streams of Justice. org, a Vancouver network of several faith communities, chiefly Christian, who engage in social justice reflections, forums, and actions. He is also a community activist in East Vancouver.
Frank Cunningham is professor

the Womens Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), editor of the Canadian Human Rights Reporter (Canadas reporter of record on anti-discrimination law) and has co-written two books and numerous articles on womens equality rights. She is also the director (along with Gwen Brodsky) of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre at the University of British Columbia. In 2008 she received a Governor-Generals Award for her outstanding contributions to the advancement of women in Canada.

emeritus of Philosophy and Political Science, University of Toronto. His main teaching is in the area of urban philosophy, and contemporary political philosophy with a focus on democratic theory. He has also taught environmental ethics and engineering philosophy. His recent publications include Citiesa Philosophical Inquiry. in the Research Bulletin of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies: University of oronto, 2007.

SI M O N F R A SER U N I V ER SI T Y, VA N CO U V ER BC | M AY 5 8 , 2 010

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE Since its inception in 1983, the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University has been dedicated to the exploration of the critical perspectives that relate social concerns to the cultural and historical legacy of the Humanities. The Institute seeks to facilitate the development of attitudes that lead toward active engagement in society. In taking such a role, the Institute hopes to contribute reflective, contemplative, and critical public points of view on the conflicts and contentious issues of our time.

T H E I N S T I T U T E FO R T H E H U M A N I T I E S
/ Initiates, plans and supports interdisciplinary programs, conferences, seminars and research which bring together faculty in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts, with each other and with members of the wider community to discuss and study areas of common concern, and of social and intellectual significance;

Through these programs and initiatives the Institute hopes to bring together the resources and expertise of the University and the interests and the needs of groups in the wider community.
H IS TO RY

Encourages, facilitates, and participates in independent, multidisciplinary research on a variety of themes and issues related to modern cultural studies;
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Works closely with the Department of Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in support of its teaching program;
/

The Institute for the Humanities began in 1983 as a home for research, public programming and for the development of ideas concerning social issues. The Institute was one of the first such Institutes in Canada to pursue these goals. The mandate to build audiences for the humanities in the public sphere has been carried out along four broad interrelated themes: humanities and modernity; community education; cultural roots of violence and non violence; human rights and democratic development.
T H E I N S T I T U T E FO R T H E H U M A N I T I E S W I S H E S TO AC K N O W L E D G E T H E S U P P O R T O F T H E S I M O N S FO U N DAT I O N A N D T H E J . S . W O O DS W O R T H E N D O W M E N T

Establishes contacts with organizations and universities where similar programs and Institutes exist.
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I N S T I T U T E FO R T H E H U M A N I T I E S

Simon Fraser University / Harbour Centre / 2444515 West Hastings Street T: 778-782-5855 / www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute

Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 5K3