A Conference of the University of Michigan US Literatures and Cultures Consortium
April 5th
3-5 - Practicing Uncertainty
Dalia Davoudi (Indiana, English) - Mystical Realism: Uncertainty and Epistemology in Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Holmes' Elsie Venner
Clancy Smith (Duquesne, Philosophy) - A Way Forward - A Re-Examination of the Work of C.S. Peirce in a Culture of Paralysis
Ali Chetwynd (Michigan, English) - The Place of Paralysis in the Postmodern Project Novel
Robin Zheng (Michigan, Philosophy) - Objectivity as Overlapping Consensus: Comparing Rawls and Longino
5.30-7 - Keynote sponsored by the English Department
Lisi Schoenbach (Tennessee, English) - The Democratic State
7.30 - Conference Dinner
April 6th
9-9.30 breakfast/coffee
9.30-11 - Making Mass Media Work for Her
Liz Rodrigues (Michigan, English) - Self as Data Collector in The Promised Land and The Education of Henry Adams
Logan Scherer (Michigan, English) - Godmothers and GoodFemmes: the Truth About Feminine Subjectivity in VH1’s Mob Wives
Kathryne Bevilacqua (Michigan, English) - Girls Talk: How Lena Dunham Teaches Us to Read TV
11.15- 12.45 - The Grounds of Americanness
Peta Long (Syracuse, Pan-African Studies) - “What Pragmatism Means?” Reflections on Individualism, Universalism and Capitalism in the American Society
Richard Pierre (Michigan, Comp Lit) - Sagacious or Serendipitous? Paul Celan’s Exportation of Robinson Jeffers
Akiva Gottlieb (Michigan, English) - Single-Entendre Principals - Christopher Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism and David Foster Wallace’s Battle Against Pseudo-Self-Awareness
12.45-2 - Lunch
2.15-3.45 - Grounds for Improvement
Calvin Walds (Syracuse, Pan-African Studies) - Reflexive Prophecy - James Baldwin and the Problem of History in Protest Novels
David Gurney (Arizona State, Philosophy) - Transhumanism and Racial Norms
Dina Karageorgos (Michigan, English) - Sarah Wright’s Unsung Marxism: This Child’s Gonna Live and the Aesthetic Dimension of the Cuban Revolution
4-5.30 - Pragmatism, Power and the Environment
Zachary Piso (Michigan State, Philosophy) - Collateral Learning as Operation of Power, Opportunity for Resistance
Monica List (Michigan State, Philosophy) - On the Erosion of Land and Ethics: The Misconstrual of Farmer Ethics as Environmental Ideology
Danielle Lake (Michigan State, Philosophy) - Pragmatism in a Wicked World
6-7.30 - Keynote sponsored by the Department of African and AfroAmerican Studies
Paul Taylor (Penn State, Philosophy/ African American and Diaspora Studies) - Dust to Dust; Or, What Pragmatism Might Mean, With Lessons From Race Theory
Sponsors: The US Literatures and Cultures Consortium with The University of Michigan Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, American Culture, Comparative Literature, English and History.
