IPRH Tenth Annual Conference
“Rupture”
March 27 and 28, 2008
Levis Faculty Center

The IPRH Tenth Annual Conference on “Rupture” will feature a keynote address by W.J.T. Mitchell and presentations by the IPRH Faculty and Graduate Student Fellows for 2007-08. We will also take the opportunity of the tenth anniversary of the IPRH to direct our glance backward, at the first decade of the IPRH, and forward, as we consider the exciting possibilities for interdisciplinary exchange at the start of the next ten years.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thursday, March 27
Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor

Welcome – Christine Catanzarite (IPRH Interim Director)

Opening Remarks – Richard Wheeler (Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate College)

Panel Discussion – The IPRH at 10
Panelists:
Michael Bérubé (Paterno Family Professor of Literature, Penn State University/IPRH Director, 1997-2001)
Matti Bunzl (Associate Professor, Anthropology/IPRH Director, 2003-2007)
Christine Catanzarite (IPRH Interim Director/Associate Director, 1997-2007)

Panel Discussion – The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center and the University
Moderator:
Michael Bérubé

Panelists:
Andrea Goulet (Associate Professor, French/IPRH Faculty Fellow, 2003-04)
Brett Kaplan (Associate Professor, Comparative and World Literature/IPRH Faculty Fellow, 2006-07)
William J. Maxwell (Associate Professor, English/IPRH Faculty Fellow, 2000-01/IPRH Advisory Committee, 2001-03)
Anthony Perman (Doctoral Candidate, School of Music/IPRH Graduate Student Fellow, 2006-07)
Deke Weaver (Assistant Professor, Art and Design/IPRH Faculty Fellow, 2006-07)

Keynote Address: W.J.T. Mitchell
Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9-11 to Abu Ghraib
Cloning Terror describes a double rupture:  1) at the level of the history of war, it examines the image of a “global war on terror” as a catastrophic literalization of what was previously “only a metaphor”; 2) at the level of the history of images, it analyzes the literalization of the most ancient forms of iconophobia, based in the notion that the virtual or metaphoric “life of images” might become actual in the phenomenon of cloning.  The conjunction of these two innovations in war and technoscience provides a framework for constructing an “iconology of the present,” and perhaps a prognosis for healing the rupture that has marked the post 9-11 epoch.

W. J. T. Mitchell is Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. He is editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Critical Inquiry, a quarterly devoted to critical theory in the arts and human sciences. A scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology (the study of images across the media). He is known especially for his work on the relations of visual and verbal representations in the context of social and political issues.

Moderator:
Laurie Hogin (Associate Professor, Art and Design/IPRH Advisory Committee, 2007-2009)

Friday, March 28
Levis Faculty Center, Third Floor

Coffee and pastries

Panel Discussion – War and Postwar

Moderator:
Michael Rothberg (Associate Professor, English and Director, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory/IPRH Faculty Fellow, 2003-04)

Panelists:
Kevin Coe (Speech Communication) ***
Jonathan Ebel (Religious Studies) *
Ellen Moodie (Anthropology) *
Lisa Nakamura (Institute of Communications Research/Asian American Studies) *
Victor Pickard (Institute of Communications Research) **

Lunch break

Panel Discussion – Social Ruptures, Past and Present

Moderator:
Dianne Harris (Professor, Landscape Architecture/IPRH Faculty Fellow, 2004-05/IPRH Advisory Committee, 2007-2009)

Panelists:
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann (History) ***
Jin-kyung Park (Institute of Communications Research) **
Renee Trilling (English/Medieval Studies) *
Jamie Warren (History) **
Hui Xiao (East Asian Languages and Cultures) **

Panel Discussion – Rupturing the Arts

Moderator:
Philip Graham (Professor, English/IPRH Faculty Fellow, 2003-04)

Panelists:
Jed Esty (English) *
Melissa Free (English) **
William Hope (Anthropology) **
Marc Perry (Anthropology/African American Studies) *

*    IPRH Faculty Fellow
**   IPRH Graduate Student Fellow
*** IPRH/Nicholson Graduate Student Fellow