Call for Papers
Critical Social Theory:
Freud & Lacan For the 21st Century
April 7 and 8, 2010
University of Massachusetts Boston
Dear Colleague,
I’m pleased to tell you about an exciting conference coming up April 7-8, 2010 at the University of Massachusetts, Critical Social Theory: Freud & Lacan for the 21st Century.
A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF THE MEETING APPEARS BELOW. I encourage you to participate in this meeting by submitting a ONE-PAGE ABSTRACT as an email attachment to the Chair of the Organizing Committee, Professor Siamak Movahedi at SocialTheoryAbstrac ts@libraryofsoci alscience. com no later than February 9, 2010.
The Social Theory Forum (STF) is an annual conference organized by the University of Massachusetts, Boston in order to creatively explore, promote and publish cross-disciplinary social theory—and to develop new, integrative theoretical structures and practices.
The 2010 meeting welcomes submissions in feminist theory, queer theory, literary criticism, social linguistics, conversational analysis, philosophy of mind, etc. that critically engage and interrogate Freud or Lacan. Conference organizers ask authors to submit a one page-page abstract as an email attachment to SocialTheoryAbstrac ts@libraryofsoci alscience. com no later than February 9, 2010.
Upon selection and notification of approval by the organizing committee, submitters must send completed presentation paper manuscripts (around 12-15 double-spaced pages in Times12 typeface) by March 22, 2010. As in previous years, papers will be peer-reviewed by anonymous referees for publication in a volume based on the conference.
PLEASE SEND YOUR ABSTRACT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE to Professor Movahedi at SocialTheoryAbstracts@libraryofsocialscience.com.
Best regards,
Richard Koenigsberg
Sponsors
Sigmund Freud Foundation Museum & Library, Vienna
University of Rome Tor Vergata, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, Rome
Clark University Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Worcester
City University of New York Department of Sociology, New York
Boston College Department of Sociology & Psychoanalytic Studies, Chestnut Hill
Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis & The Institute for the Study of
Psychoanalysis and Culture
Brunel University School of Social Sciences, London
Organizing Committee
Siamak Movahedi, Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Professor of Sociology, University
of Massachusetts Boston; Professor of Psychoanalysis and the director of the
Institute for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture, Boston Graduate
School of Psychoanalysis.
Samuel Binkley, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Sociology, Emerson College
Neal Bruss, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English, University of
Massachusetts Boston
Patricia Clough, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology and Women Studies, CUNY
Graduate Center
Jorge Capetillo, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology, University of
Massachusetts Boston
Lewis Kirshner, M.D. Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School;
Faculty Boston Psychoanalytic Institute
Glenn Jacobs, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology, University of
Massachusetts Boston
Murray Schwartz, Ph.D. Professor of Psychoanalysis and Literature, Emerson
College; Scholar Member, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute
This year’s conference in April 7th & 8th of 2010 at the University of Massachusetts Boston will explore the relationship between psychoanalysis and critical social theory. From its very beginning Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis has walked the border as a kind of fugitive discipline in academia yet one multifarious in its influence on the mainstream. Surely the welter of hostile and critical responses accompanying its trajectory in the history of ideas bears a kind of testimony to its rich intellectual
underpinning. In sociology it has had a creative influence on critical theorists such as Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, and others of the Frankfurt School, and now has engaged feminist theorists, post-structuralists and other sociologists interested in the way in which unconscious processes figure in the construction of hierarchical social relations.
Jacque Lacan’s French reading of Freud comes particularly close to the sociological imagination. His theory of the symbolic order and the linguistic precursors of the unconscious have added additional dimensions to the discourse of social theory. His notion of the decentered and alienated self rooted in the intellectual culture of Emile Durkheim, Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel Foucault find its corollaries in the writings of sociologists and philosophers such as George Herbert Mead, Charles Horton Cooley, and Erving Goffman. This year’s Social Theory Forum provides an opportunity for a re-examination and discussion of these fertile
intellectual domains for a new cross-disciplinary pursuit of scholarship in social theory. The conference organizers seek papers that employ rigorous analyses and interpretations of the past and present of these intellectual engagements that form the foundation of modern social theory.
Papers in feminist theory, queer theory, literary criticism, social linguistics, conversational analysis, philosophy of mind, etc. that engage and interrogate Freud or Lacan are all welcomed.
The conference will feature both invited and submitted papers and presentations. We welcome submissions from scholars and graduate students in humanities and social sciences and as well as from writers in allied disciplines. We ask that authors submit a one-page abstract as email attachment (MS Word Format) to SocialTheoryAbstrac ts@libraryofsoci alscience. com no later than February 9,
2010. Upon selection and notification of approval by the organizing committee, submitters must send completed presentation paper manuscripts (around 12-15 pages, preferably double-spaced in Times 12 typeface) by March 15, 2010. We are in the process of securing a publishing venue for selected papers. As in prior years, the papers will be peer-reviewed by anonymous referees for possible publication. Details will be announced before the conference.
About the Social Theory Forum
Department of Sociology
University of Massachusetts Boston
The Social Theory Forum (STF) is an annual conference organized jointly by the sociology, other departments, institutions, interested faculty and students at University of Massachusetts Boston in order to creatively explore, develop, promote, and publish cross-disciplinary social theory in a critical framework. STF offers faculty and students of UMass Boston and other area 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.
Correspondence address
Attn.: Social Theory Forum
Department of Sociology
University of Massachusetts Boston
100 Morrissey Boulevard
Boston, MA 02125
www.umb.edu
Please quote 10 Academic Resources Daily in your application to this opportunity!
