CFP: "Critical Refusals" Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS & PARTICIPATION for the "Critical Refusals" Conference
https://sites.google.com/site/marcusesociety/call-for-papers-participation-2011-conference

We warmly welcome your participation:

University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA / USA
27-29 October 2011


This renascence is an affirmation of negation. It is an affirmation of the relevance of critical theory – in all of its emancipatory manifestations. This conference is organized by the INTERNATIONAL HERBERT MARCUSE SOCIETY, but it is bigger than our small group, and it is about more than the important critical theorist Herbert Marcuse. With concrete hopes for what we will question, learn, imagine, struggle for, and create together, we warmly invite you to join us in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania—once the academic home of W.E.B. Du Bois, Kwame Nkrumah, Noam Chomsky, and Donald Trump; the contradictions of this place will amaze you. This conference is an affirmation of critical intellectual inquiry and an affirmation that austerity must be refused, that oppression – in all of its forms – must be resisted with radical questions, liberatory ideas, and emancipatory movements for an alternative economy and better ways of living together. Join with us on the 40th anniversary of Marcuse's speech here at Penn in 1971 —to move forward with critical visions of qualitative change. See the website above for more information!

ABSTRACTS & PROPOSALS due by 23 April 2011
email: ATLamas@sas.upenn.edu

CALL for PAPERS and PARTICIPATION

The contributions that relate to any of the conference's themes or arenas, broadly interpreted. All manner of presentation is welcome – by faculty, independent scholars, students, activists, artists, and others. Many participants will present scholarly papers, but we also encourage other kinds of contributions, e.g., a debate about Marcuse's legacy, a panel discussion on academic life today, a roundtable on future directions for Critical Theory scholarship, an open-mic forum for former students of Marcuse and Angela Davis, a late-night discussion on future directions for the Left, workshops on critical pedagogy, author-meets-critics sessions, as well as videos, music, poetry, performance art, and other alternative – even experimental – formats that provoke critical awareness and imagination, that assess the potential for critical engagements in a variety of spheres, and that enable conference participants to get to know each other better.

The 2011 conference seeks papers, panels, workshops, art, and other forms of presentation related to the following three themes and four arenas:

Critical Refusal(s) Conference Themes
Theme One: Critical Spaces--Critical Theory meets Critical Theories of Urban Space, Struggle, and Overcoming
Theme Two: Critical Intersections--Class, Race, Gender, Queer, Disability, Ethnicity, Postcolonial, Africana, Indigenous, Caste, Animal, Nature….Critical Theory / CRITICAL THEORIES / Liberation Theories
Theme Three: Critical Theories--The Frankfurt School and Its Contemporary Heirs – Legacies, Debates, Possibilities
See the CFP (website above) for more details.

Featured speakers (confirmed) include:
Angela Davis
Stanley Aronowitz
Alex Callinicos
Enrique Dussel
Andrew Feenberg
Michelle Fine
Axel Honneth
Peter-Erwin Jansen
Douglas Kellner
Heather Love
Peter Marcuse
Charles Mills
Nina Power
David Roediger