The 2014 ACLA meeting at New York University offers a singular opportunity to address New York’s tenuous reputation as a global capital—and, more broadly, the notion that governance, finance, or culture can (still) be located in capital, in a capital, or in capitals. In what sense do we speak of capitals at all? The difficulty of these questions is rooted in the semantic density of the term ‘capital’ itself.
Unpacking these diverse valences, in turn, allows us to understand the capital importance of the term for the critical projects in which Comparative Literature is engaged. Are there other forms of capital at work today? What constitutes (a) capital? How does capital move? How do we spend (political, economic, cultural) capital? How do competing capitals negotiate their spheres of influence or dominance? What happens when we shift from a local to a global sense of capital, and vice versa? Is there a time of capitals, as there is of capital? Can modernity be indexed, not just to capital, but to capitals? What is the relation between Comparative Literature and capital(s)?
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: Typography; Geography; The Metropolis and the Metropole; Empire and the (post)colonies; Cultural capitals; Capitalization; the Genealogy of Capital(s); the Persistence of Capital; Economy of Translations; the Center and the Periphery; Canons and Capital and The Capital and the Corporeal.
Seminars related to the above theme will be especially welcome, although the conference will be open to comparative seminars on other topics.
Keynote: Judith Butler
Seminar Proposal Deadline: October 1, 2013
Deadline for Paper Proposals: November 1, 2013
For more information, contact info@acla.org