Critical Aesthetics
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
April 6-8, 2006
All events will take place in the A. D. White House unless otherwise indicated.
THURSDAY, APRIL 6
12:30-1:00: Check In
1:00-1:15: Opening Remarks
I. 1:15-3:00
The Idea of Literature
Moderator: Anthony Reed (English, Cornell University)
a. Ammon Allred (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University): “How
is Philosophy Possible?”
b. Amy Vegari (Compararive Literature, Brown University): “Mimesis and
Belief: The Aesthetic Work of the Contemporary Novel”
c. Audrey Wasser (Comparative Literature, Cornell University): “Difference
and the Question of Literature”
II. 3:00-4:45
Adorno’s Consequences
Moderator: Anna Parkinson (German Studies, Cornell University)
a. Robin Sowards (English, Cornell University): “Adorno’s Theology
and Its Consequences”
b. Samir Gandesha (Assistant Professor of Humanities, Simon Fraser University):
“The ‘Aesthetic Dignity of Words’: On Adorno’s Materialist
Philosophy of Language”
c. Ross Wilson (Junior Research Fellow, Emmanuel College of the University of
Cambridge): “Adorno and Subjective Universality”
5:00-7:00: Keynote Lecture
165 McGraw Hall
Simon Jarvis (Gorley Putt Senior Lecturer in English Literary History at the
University of Cambridge): “Is There a Philosophy of Verse?”
7:00: Reception
FRIDAY, APRIL 7
9:30-10:00: Breakfast
I. 10:00-11:45
Aesthetics, Inaesthetics, and Politics
Moderator: Bruno Bosteels (Associate Professor of Romance Studies, Cornell University)
a. Rafeeq Hasan (Philosophy, University of Chicago): “Aesthetics and Politics
as the Site of Decision: Reconsidering Rousseau’s Critique of the Arts”
b. Douglas McQueen-Thomson (English, Cornell University): “Rancière,
the Sensible, and the Artwork”
c. Julie A. Wilson (Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society, University
of Minnesota): “The Question of the Art Object and the Answer of Philosophical
Truth: Notes Towards a Dialogue between Adorno and Badiou”
II. 11:45-1:30
Aesthetic Temporalities
Moderator: Martin Hagglund (Comparative Literature, Cornell University)
a. Peter Milne (Philosophy, Emory University): “Subject to Time: Lyotard
on Kant’s Regress of the Imagination”
b. Robert S. Lehman (English, Cornell University): “Making Time: Benjamin,
Kant and the Temporality of Aesthetic Experience”
c. Jonathan Murphy (Comparative Literature, SUNY Buffalo): “‘Originary’
Repetitions: To Do Justice to Foucault”
Lunch: 1:30-2:30
III. 2:30-4:15
A. Affective States
Moderator: Adam Grener (English Cornell University)
a. Bulent Eken (Literature, Duke University): “Aesthetics of Intensity:
A New Paradigm for Literary Criticism?”
b. Keith Robinson (Assistant Professor of Language, Linguistics, and Philosophy,
University of South Dakota): “Deleuze and ‘Critical Aesthetics’”
c. Joe Swenson (Philosophy, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign): “Sublimation
and the Promise of Happiness: Nietzsche on the ‘Physiology of Aesthetics’”
B. Category and Critique
Moderator: Rebecca Colesworthy (English, Cornell University)
a. Alan Young-Bryant (English, Cornell University): "Genre and the Secrets
of Exemplarity"
b. Lucia Aiello (Assistant Professor of Italian and Humanities, John Cabot University):
“Reflections on Some Ambiguities and Consistencies in ‘Feminist
Aesthetics’”
c. John Hicks (English, Cornell University): “Translation, Anti-poetics,
and Genre: Laura Riding’s The Life of the Dead (1933)”
4:30-6:30: Featured Lecture
Gabriel Riera (Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University):
“Dangerous Liaison: Heidegger and the Work of Art”
6:30: Reception
SATURDAY, APRIL 8
8:30-9:00: Breakfast
I. 9:00-10:45
Romantic Legacies
Moderator: Bradley Depew (English, Cornell University)
a. Magda Romanska (Theater, Film and Dance, Cornell University): “NecrOphelia:
Death, Femininity and the Making of Modern Aesthetics”
b. Alexis Briley (Comparative Literature, Cornell University): “Walter
Benjamin’s ‘Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Frühromantik’
and the Romantic Messianism of the Aesthetic”
c. Jared McGeough (Centre for Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario):
“Perceptive Mind and Affective Eyes: William Blake’s Romanticism
without Organs”
II. 10:45-12:30
The Resistance to Aesthetics
Moderator: Sean Connolly (Comparative Literature, Cornell University)
a. Heidi Arsenault (English, Cornell University): “Baudelaire with Derrida”
b. David Miller (Assistant Professor of English, John Cabot University): “Sublime
Theory: Poetics as Anti-Aesthetics”
c. Anthony Abiragi (French, New York University): “Jean-Luc Nancy: The
Resistance of Poetry”
12:30-1:15: Lunch
III. 1:15-3:00
A. Marxist Aesthetics
Moderator: Ryan Plumley (History, Cornell University)
a. Ilya Kliger (Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale
University): “Bakhtin’s Critical Aesthetics and the Dialectics of
Modernism”
b. Aaron Hodges (Comparative Literature, Cornell University): “The Scandal
of the Extrinsic: History and the Aesthetic in Fredric Jameson”
c. Max Brzezinski (English, Duke University): “Fire-Brands: Western Marxist
Brand Aesthetics in Charlie Chaplin and Siegfried Kracauer”
B. Psych-Aesthetics
Moderator: Tracy McNulty (Assistant Professor of Romance Studies, Cornell University)
a. Diana Reese (Assistant Professor of German Studies and Feminist, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University): “Roger Caillois, Mimesis and
Legendary Psychasthenia”
b. Stacy Keltner (Assistant Professor of History and Philosophy, Kennesaw State
University): “Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and Kristeva’s ‘Arendtianism’”
c. Andrew Skomra (Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture, SUNY Buffalo):
“Linguistricks and the Unattainable Object of a Vain Pursuit”
3:00-3:15: Coffee Break
IV. 3:15-5:00
A. Poetry and Poetics
Moderator: Alex Papanicolopoulos (English, Cornell University)
a. Ben Glaser (English, Cornell University): “Hitherto Overpainted: Lyric
and the Crisis of Phenomenology in James Merrill’s ‘Changing Light
at Sandover’”
b. Todd Carmody (English, University of Pennsylvania): “Sincerity, Objectification,
and Collage Aesthetics”
c. Daniel Shore (English, Harvard University): “Milton’s Belial
and the Aesthetics of Rhetoric”
B. Hearing, Dwelling, Thinking
Moderator: Paloma Yannakakis (Comparative Literature, Cornell University)
a. Markus Breitschmid (Assistant Professor of Architecture, Virginia Polytechnic):
“Nietzsche’s Building-Thoughts: Architecture, Aesthetics, Metaphysics”
b. Michael Gallope (Music, New York University): “Towards a Phonographic
Ontology”
c. Jessica Wiskus (Assistant Professor of Music, Duquesne University): “Merleau-Ponty
and Incompossibles: From Painting to Music”
V. 5:00-6:45
Idealism and Aesthetics
Moderator: Andrew Chignell (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University)
a. Hiba Hafiz (Comparative Literature, Yale University): “Sensus Communis
and the Standards of Taste”
b. Matthew Edgar (Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Xavier University): “Hegel,
Richter, and the Art of Forgiveness”
c. Peter Gilgen (Assistant Professor of German Studies, Cornell University):
“Of the Small Sublime”
6:45-7:00: Closing Remarks
7:00: Reception
This event is free and open to the public. Funding is provided by the Class of 1916, the Society for the Humanities, French Studies, the School of Arts and Sciences, EGSO and the GPSAFC, German Studies, the Rose Goldsen Lecture Series, Romance Studies, History of Art, and Music.
Conference Organizers: Heidi Arsenault, Alexis Briley, Rebecca Colesworthy, Ben Glaser, John Hicks, Aaron Hodges, Rob Lehman, Douglas McQueen-Thomson, Audrey Wasser, Daniel Wilson, and Alan Young-Bryant.
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