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CCGES > Conferences and workshops > Workshop: “The Political Uses of Utopia”

Workshop: “The Political Uses of Utopia”

Political Uses of Utopia Workshop

April 18-19, 2013

Founders College, Brian Cragg Room (303)

The Political Uses of Utopia Workshop convened by Sylwia Chrostowska (Humanities/European Studies, York University), James Ingram (Political Science, McMaster University), and Martin Breaugh (Political Science, York University) will bring together Canadian and European scholars for a two-day discussion of the uses of utopia and utopianism for politics. It is supported by a SSHRC Connection Grant as well as the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Founders College, the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the departments of Political Science and Humanities, the Graduate Program in Social & Political Thought, and the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies (all at York).

Please be aware that there is NO REGISTRATION FEE for this event.

POLITICAL USES OF UTOPIA WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

DAY 1: THURSDAY APRIL 18, 2013

Founders College, Room 303

9:00 – Start

Welcome: Mauro Buccheri (Master, Founders College)

Introduction: Sylwia Chrostowska (York University)

9:15-10:45 – Session 1

Marcuse and the ‘Christian bourgeois concept of freedom’

Vincent Geoghegan (Queens University of Belfast)

10:45-11:15 – Coffee break

11:15-12:45 – Session 2

General Will or General Wish? Rousseau, Marx

Peter Hallward (Kingston University, London)

12:45-1:30 – Lunch break

Founders College, Room 305

1:30-3:00 – Session 3

Ideal Theory After Auschwitz? The Practical Uses and Ideological Abuses of Utopian Thought in Rawls and Adorno

Benjamin McKean (University of Chicago)

A Strange Fate for Politics? Jameson’s Dialectic of Utopian Thought

John Grant (University of Toronto)

3:00-3:30 – Coffee break

3:30-4:30 – Session 4

Intermediate Discussion

Moderated by Meghan Helsel (Johns Hopkins), Chris Holman (SUNY Stony Brook), and Ella Street (University of Toronto)

5:00 – KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Verney Room, South Ross Building, Room 674

Desire and Shipwreck: Powers of the Vis Utopia

Étienne Tassin (Centre de Sociologie des Pratiques et des Représentations Politiques, Paris 7)

Followed by reception (for guests only)

 

DAY 2: FRIDAY APRIL 19, 2013

Founders College, Room 303

9:00-10:30 – Session 1

Utopianism and Prefiguration

Ruth Kinna (Loughborough University)

10:30-11:00 – Coffee break

11:00-12:30 – Session 2

The Spectropolitics of Utopia

Matthew Beaumont (University College London)

12:30-1:30 – Lunch break

Founders College, Room 305

1:30-3:00 – Session 3

The Fragmented Space of Utopia: Gaps of Experimentation and Lines of Flight

Anders Fjeld (Paris 7)

Pluralism, Pragmatism, and Hope

Alexander Livingston (Cornell University)

3:00-3:30 – Coffee break

3:30-5:00 – Session 4

Concluding Discussion

Moderated by Meghan Helsel (Johns Hopkins), Chris Holman (SUNY Stony Brook), and Ella Street (University of Toronto)