Conferences

Each year the Center designates a theme that lends itself to multidisciplinary study as the subject for its research. Around this theme we present a full program of public lectures, seminars, symposia, and conferences.

April 30 - May 1, 2010
Debt

Keynote: Michael A. Gillespie (Political Science, Philosophy, Duke)

This conference will examine the idea of debt in its various senses. Debt has become a central element of US-dominated global capitalism, as the United States has borrowed massively from foreign lenders to finance consumer spending and meet the ballooning expenditures for its social programs, as well as to pay for two ongoing wars abroad. The notion of debt plays a crucial role in traditional as well as modern accounts of ethics that emphasize the indebtedness of subjects to each other and to society as a whole. The specter of catastrophic climate change has led theorists, environmental activists, and members of the clergy to underscore the debt of those living in the present to future generations in calling for restraints upon current patterns of industrial production and consumption.

The conference panels, in examining the meaning of debt in the areas of economics, the environment, and ethics, will address such questions as: How do notions of indebtedness affect moral and political life under postmodern global capitalism? How does the idea of indebtedness help us to understand interdependence, whether it pertains to the economy or to the environment? What are the challenges to developing an ethics based upon a sense of debt and obligation in a postmodern society?

Conference organizers: Peter Y. Paik (French, Italian, and Comparative Literature), and Merry Wiesner-Hanks (History)
Conference coordinator: Kate Kramer

Call for Conference Proposals

The Center seeks proposals that will further its mission of promoting cutting-edge research and encouraging dialogue across disciplinary boundaries in the humanities, arts, and humanistically informed social sciences. Topics should have the potential both of appealing to a broad range of researchers in and around UWM and of having a wider impact on scholarly debates in the humanities nationally and internationally. Any topic that falls within the humanities, broadly conceived, has interdisciplinary appeal, and does not duplicate recent conferences may be proposed. Descriptions and some programs of recent conferences are available below.

Past Conferences

Since 1968 (October 23-25, 2008)

In Terms of Gender: Crosscultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (May 4-5, 2007)

In/Dependence: Disability, Welfare, and Age (April 7, 2006)

Art of the State: Sovereignty Past and Present (October 21-22, 2005)

Routing Diasporas (April 8-9, 2005)

Museums and Difference (November 14-15, 2003)

9/11: Reconstructions (October 4-5, 2002)

Just Feelings: Citizenship, Justice, and the Emotions (April 27-28, 2001)

Representing Animals (April 13-15, 2000)

Knowing Mass Culture/Mediating Knowledge (April 29 - May 1, 1999)

Anthropology, Genetic Diversity, and Ethics (February 12-13, 1999)