Antonio Gramsci
THE VIII ANNUAL SOCIAL THEORY FORUM
Call for Papers
The VIII Annual SOCIAL THEORY FORUM
University of Massachusetts Boston
April 13 and 14, 2011
Italian Social Theory: from Antonio Gramsci to Giorgio Agamben
Organizing Committee:
Jorge Capetillo, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Spencer M. DiScala, Ph.D. Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Glenn Jacobs, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Charles Lemert, Ph.D. John E Andrus Professor of Sociology, Wesleyan University
Siamak Movahedi, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Alessandro Orsini, Ph.D. Professor of Political Sociology, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”.
Kalpana Seshadri, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English, Boston College
The Social Theory Forum cordially invites the submission of papers and proposals for its 8th annual meeting, to be held April 13-14, 2011 at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The theme of the conference is: Italian Social Theory from Antonio Gramsci to Giorgio Agamben. We invite proposals addressing the span of modern Italian social theory, including but not limited to thinkers such as Galvano Della Volpe, Norberto Bobbio, Paolo Virno, Giovanni Arrighi, Antonio Negri, and Umberto Eco.
Relevant themes may include: hegemony, culture wars, neo-Gramscianism and international relations, globalization, shifts in global capitalism; biopolitics, homo sacer, immigration, ethnicity and the war on terror, resistance, state sovereignty and power, nationalism, propaganda and agitation, Negri’s theory of “exodus”; technology experience, social media, digital labor, and Agamben’s “bare life.”
Conference organizers also welcome topics bearing on the relevance of Italian Social Thought for the understanding of cultural studies, semiotics, textual analysis, linguistics, structuralism, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism in contemporary scholarship and scientific research.
The conference will feature both invited and submitted papers and presentations, as well as audiovisual materials. Please send a one-page abstract or proposals as email attachment (MS Word Format) to Conference Organizers-Professors Jorge Capetillo and Glenn Jacobs – at: SocialTheoryAbstracts@libraryofsocialscience.com.
Upon selection and notification of approval by the organizing committee, submitters must send completed presentation paper manuscripts (12-15 pages, preferably in ASA format) by March 15, 2011.
We are in the process of securing a publishing venue for selected papers.
Papers will be anonymously peer-reviewed for possible publication. Details will be announced prior to the conference.
About the Social Theory Forum
Department of Sociology
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Histories of sociology describe how the discipline formed through nineteenth century struggles to understand the combined upheavals of socio-political revolutions and global expansion of the industrial revolution. These events radically altered established orders and posed questions that remain with us today: class, race, gender, and processes of social change, among others. The twentieth century brought even more tumultuous change, bringing with it great implications for social theory.
The Social Theory Forum (STF) is an annual international conference organized jointly by the sociology and other departments, interested faculty and students at University of Massachusetts Boston, in order to creatively explore, develop, promote, and publish cross-disciplinary social theory in an applied and critical framework. STF offers faculty and students of UMass Boston and other national and international colleges and universities an interactive medium to discuss various aspects of the way in which particular theoretical traditions can be relevant to present everyday issues, as well as to the current state and the future of social theory.
STF’s goals are:
* To critically engage with and evaluate classical and contemporary social theories in a cross-disciplinary and comparative cross-cultural framework in order to develop new integrative theoretical structures and practices;
* To foster individual and collective self-reflexivity in exploring social theories in global and world-historical contexts to aid people effectively address social problems;
* To foster an interactive and dialogical learning experience and research in theory within and across faculty, students, and community divides on and off campus; and
* To foster exchange of ideas open to constructive and integrative exploration of diverse and conflicting viewpoints, modes of thinking, and world-views.
Correspondence address
Attn.: Social Theory Forum
Department of Sociology
University of Massachusetts Boston
100 Morrissey Boulevard
Boston, MA 02125
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