LCSL Summer Seminar 2016 – Modernities: Old Problems, New Approaches
May 11 - 13, 2016
12:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Location
Daley Library, room 1-470
Address
801 S. Morgan St., Chicago, IL 60607
Calendar
Download iCal FileThere has never been general agreement how to define Modernity, nor has there been a consensus about its temporal range. According to our institutional habits and structures, we discern Early Modernity from Modernity in the strict sense of the term, which begins with Enlightenment and continues to influence us despite all post-Modern proclamations of its death. There are as many Modernities as narratives conceived to capture its essence, or delineate a historical profile. But, what exactly is this “modern” feature that allows us to talk about Modern-ity (Early or Late) across time and space? Is there a common language we can use to talk about different Modernities, or we are, as often is the case, condemned to argue with each other through incommensurable idioms? Is—to use one of so many possible examples—the philosophical Modernity of German Hegel close to the literary Modernity of Polish Gombrowicz, or the artistic Modernity of French Manet? If there is an evident connection, as noted by Robert Pippin, between the first one and the last (through abstraction), what to do with the middle in this company, besides invoking Sartre or Bataille? If Cervantes is Modern, how does his Modernity match the Modernity of Balzac, or the Modernity of Cézanne? And how to avoid Eurocentrism in defining Modernity? Are Borges and Bolaño modern in the same way as their European models? Do art, philosophy, and literature go along the same—modern—lines, or do art and literature need a philosophical justification for their modern character? Adorno and Horkheimer (also Zygmunt Bauman) were ready to conflate Modernity and the Enlightenment, and yet is there a room in this paradigm for Romanticism or other—earlier or later—cultural formations? If there is, as Antoine Compagnon suggests, a notable core of anti-modern writers and thinkers from the 19th century on, can we also think about other paradigms such as Anti-Modernities? These questions motivated by the plurality of Modernity across historic time, disciplines, and cultural landscapes will provide a conceptual framework for our second LCSL Summer Seminar to take place May 11-May 13, 2016.
The LCSL Summer Seminar, as proven by 2015’s inaugural installment, provides a venue for faculty and students from across programs in the humanities at UIC to engage each other in a substantial and concerted analysis of a topic of wide interest. As part of an effort to establish meaningful intellectual and practical connections between the humanities programs that comprise the LCSL and across LAS and Art and Architecture, the LCSL Summer Seminar provides an ideal site for an intensive exploration of our common intellectual interests, led by faculty across fields and with notable benefits for our graduate students.
Date posted
Jun 12, 2020
Date updated
Jun 12, 2020