Liberalisms: Faculty Research Colloquium and Lecture Series Spring 2007

Neoliberal Subjects

Sponsored by the Humanities Center, the Department of English, the International Relations Program, and the Department of History. Supported in part by an National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant.

We are living in the midst of significant shifts in the reach and workings of capitalist dynamics around the world.  These shifts have frequently been attributed to a renewed commitment in dominant circles to the fundamental tenets of classic, nineteenth-century liberalism.  Certainly, amidst a rhetorical emphasis on “freeing” capitalist markets from inhibiting state regulation, considerable effort has been invested in making mechanisms of governance more favorable to the pursuit of private profit.  Equally central to this neoliberal agenda have been diverse efforts to reshape people’s attitudes and values, to produce subjects better suited to contemporary modes of profit-making and control.  Yet the neoliberal project has been rife with contradictions and its reach has been highly uneven, both geographically and socially.  How are people around the world construing and engaging the uneven economic, political, and cultural implications of this project?  How are its tensions being played out in the media and the arts and in relationships between citizens and states?  And what do the many challenges that the project faces mean for the future character of global capitalism?  In this series, scholars from a wide variety of disciplines will use diverse approaches and scales of analysis to explore these questions and encourage further discussion of the urgent issues they address.

In addition to four speakers, there will be workshops open to faculty and graduate students that will meet over the course of the semester.

Leaders: Rick Maddox and Roger Rouse.

Lecture Schedule

January

William Robinson
"Whither Global Capitalism? The Rise and Coming Demise of Neoliberalism"
Thursday, January 25, 4:30 pm
Margaret Morrison, Room 103, Carnegie Mellon University

February

Gerry Mackie*
"Democracy Defended" (*Final lecture in Deliberative Democracy Fall Series)
Tuesday, February 20, 4:30 pm
College Conference Room, Baker Hall 154R,
Carnegie Mellon University

March

Soyang Park
"Performing Community: World Cup Fandom and the Anti-Impeachment Movement in South Korea"
Thursday, March 1, 4:30 pm
Margaret Morrison, Room 103, Carnegie Mellon University

Lauren Berlant
"Capitalism, Compassion, and the Children: Post-Fordist Affect in Rosetta and La Promesse"
Thursday, March 29, 4:30 pm
Margaret Morrison, Room 103, Carnegie Mellon University

April

Nancy Postero
"Challenges to Neoliberal Multiculturalism: Unexpected Consequences in Bolivia"
Thursday, April 26, 4:30 pm
Margaret Morrison, Room 103, Carnegie Mellon University