Call for Papers
Theme: Lukács and the World
Subtitle: Rethinking Global Circuits of Cultural Production
Type: Interdisciplinary Conference
Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara
Location: Santa Barbara, CA (USA)
Date: 20.–21.4.2018
Deadline: 15.3.2018
__________________________________________________
It is again time to take serious account of the thought of Georg
Lukács. Thanks, no doubt, to the persistence of Frederic Jameson’s
defense, the waning of intellectual currents generally hostile to
Lukács including certain strains of American cultural studies,
post-Marxism, and poststructuralism, as well as the mounting pressure
being brought to bear on modernism as an unproblematically valorized
cultural-historical category, the last few years have seen something
of a renaissance in Lukács studies. From special editions of
journals, ambitious translations projects, to monographs, edited
collections, and panels at major conferences, the last few years have
seen a resurge in interest in the 20th century’s most prominent
Marxist theorist. Recent accounts situate Lukács within a number of
important dynamics and contexts, including critical engagements with
contemporary theory and social movements, reassessments of the
concept of realism, and re-imaginings of Lukács within the dynamics
of decolonization.
“Lukács and the World” will bring together scholars from a wide
variety of disciplines to articulate a set of perspectives
simultaneously and equally attendant to particularized sites of
historical reception and to contemporary problematics in the
humanities. What, for instance, does it mean for scholarly debates on
Marxism and queer theory today that Lukács had a reception among
queer writers in Britain in the 1930s? How might we re-think the
contemporary paradigm of “alternative modernities” through the prewar
and wartime Japanese reception of him not only as a leading Marxist
cultural critic but also in the context of German phenomenology? How
can we challenge the canonized — i.e., Westernized — view of this
Hungarian-born thinker by illuminating his later and more precarious
adoption in areas such as Africa, the Middle East, and
(post-)socialist Cuba and China?
Addressing these previously neglected issues from a truly
transnational perspective, “Lukács and the World” aims to articulate
a new geopolitical framework for reexamining the history of
twentieth-century cultural production and one of its most important
theorists.
Keynote Speaker:
Tyrus Miller, UC Santa Cruz
We invite 250 word proposals from scholars working on any aspect of
Lukács’s international reception. We are particularly interested in
papers that will address:
– Lukács’s reception beyond Europe and in non-European languages
– Questions of decolonial and postcolonial Marxist aesthetics
– The relationship of theories of gender and sexuality to Lukácsian
thought
– Lukács and media theory
– The environmental humanities in the light of Marxist theories of
totality
Submission deadline is 15th March 2018.
Please submit your proposal and inquiry to:
saltoncox@english.ucsb.edu
Applicants will be notified of acceptance by 22nd March.
Organizers:
Glyn Salton-Cox and Naoki Yamamoto, UCSB
Contact:
Naoki Yamamoto, Assitant Professor
Department of Film and Media Studies
Univeristy of California, Santa Barbara
Email: yamamoto@filmandmedia.ucsb.edu
