**RISK!**

In a vast spectrum of human undertakings, perceptions, situations and experiences, risk is fundamental to our calculations of chance, probability or odds that bear on the future. Risk may or may not be reckless, but only “a relation of risk,” Heidegger states, “places human beings, and them alone, in the open site in the midst of beings.”

Friday May 29^th Scheduled Program:

9:00a  - Greeting and Opening Remarks: Professor Jon Snyder, French and Italian Department, UCSB

9:15a  -  Introduction of Professor Wolf Kittler by Erik Eppel

9:20a  -  Keynote One:  Professor Wolf Kittler, Germanic Studies/Comparative Literature, UCSB

                        “Risk, History, Trauma”

10:00a  -  Panel One: Modernity, Movements, Mafia, and Marivaux   moderated by Marthine Satris

            1)  Carlos Lin (Comp Lit, University of Southern California)

                        “The Problem of Modernity: Rethinking Bodies, Sexualities, and Modernizations”

            2)  Marzia Milazzo (Comp Lit, UC Santa Barbara)

                        “We Risk our Lives to Save our Dignity: The Youth-led Anti-Mafia Movement in Sicily”

            3)  Kane Anderson (Theater and Dance, UC Santa Barbara)

                        “The Rise of Super-Obama and the Risks of Pop Culture on Public Identity”

            4)  Anneleise Pollock (French and Italian, UC Santa Barbara)

                        “Chance, Risk, and Reward in Marivaux’s The Upstart Peasant”

11:20-11:30a  -  Coffee Break

11:30a  -  Panel Two: Chromatic and Other Configurations of the Political   moderated by Dan Reynolds

            1)   Yuting Huang (Comp Lit, UC Los Angeles)

                        “The Unknowable Risk – The Concept of Risk and the Ethics of Political Action”

            2)   Dana Solomon (English, UC Santa Barbara)

                        “The Constant Threat: Color-Coding the Politicization of Risk”

            3)  Rahul Mukherjee (Film and Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara)

                        “A Reply to Terrorism on a Wednesday : Bollywood Thriller’s Prescriptions for State and                                      Citizens”

12:45p  -  Lunch (catered)

1:45p – Introduction to Professor Didier Maleuvre by David Platzer

2:00p  -  Keynote Two:  Professor Didier Maleuvre, French/Comparative Literature, UCSB

                        “Risk and Creation”

2:45p  -  Panel Three: War, Identity, Chance: Fires   moderated by Karin Kroger

            1)  Emma Beaufort (Comparative Literature UC Santa Barbara)

                        “Risky Business: Psychological Warfare in Caribbean Households, 17^th-18^th Centuries”

            2)  Michelle Kendall (French and Italian, UC Santa Barbara)

                        “The Risk of Identity in Edouard Glissant”

            3)  Bret Brinkman (English, UC Santa Barbara)

                        “Risky Situations: Chance Encounters, Waste, and Space”

            4.) Chris Lee (Comparative Literature, UC Santa Barbara)

                        “The Greatest Fire: Strindberg, Ibsen, Ghosts”

4:15p  -  Concluding Remarks /Roundtable (Or, Monopoly versus Risk Showdown, TBA)

CLTC Faculty Advisor:  Professor Jon Snyder

Risk Conference - Mosher Alumni House - May 29, 2009

What does it mean to say that an act, object, emotion or concept entails “risk”? When and why may someone or something be said to be at risk? What is the relationship between risk and reward, or risk and danger? The notion of risk always bears within it the weight of its opposite, i.e. that which is secure, and implies that a threshold between the two has been crossed. How, when and where do such crossings occur?

In a vast spectrum of human undertakings, perceptions, situations and experiences, risk is fundamental to our calculations of chance, probability or odds that bear on the future. Risk may or may not be reckless, but only “a relation of risk,” Heidegger states, “places human beings, and them alone, in the open site in the midst of beings.”

*Risk* is also the theme of this year’s CLTC conference, which seeks interventions from throughout the UC system that consider the notion of risk in historical, literary, cultural, or aesthetic terms. Our interest in this topic this year stems from the risk-taking that led to the recent failure of the global financial system, but goes far beyond it. Although the Consortium for Literature, Theory, and Culture is grounded in the study of national and global literary and textual traditions, our conference seeks interdisciplinary and theoretical reflections on risk from the humanities, social sciences, and beyond.

The CLTC conference will take place on May 29, 2009, on the UCSB campus, from 10:00 AM to 5 PM (a light lunch will be provided). Please send a paper title and abstract to David Platzer (davidplatzer@umail.ucsb.edu) by May 1, 2009. Papers should be 20 minutes in length. For further information, see the CLTC website (www.cltc.ucsb.edu) or call 805-893-2131.

On Style and Space:

Heidegger’s Handy Figurality

Karen Feldman (German, UC Berkeley)

Thursday, March 12^th

5:00 p.m.

Phelps 6320

Sponsored by the Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies and the Consortium for Literature, Theory and Culture

Description:

In Being and Time Heidegger famously subordinates space to time, emphasizing at each turn the temporality of our way of being. On the other hand, Heidegger concedes that spatial representations permeate our language. In this paper I offer an interpretation of temporality and and the language of spatiality in Being and Time in order to argue that Heidegger’s literary and rhetorical strategies are essential to his philosophy. I will suggest that the language of Being and Time is highly figural and points to its own figurality, thereby evoking the eventlike, dynamic disclosure that is at stake in Heidegger’s formulation of the question of being.

This year we will be planning most of our conference on this website. To get things going, we have a draft of our CFP, written by graduate board member Carol Fischer, that we can develop here.  Add comments to help us think through the plan for the conference:

Carol writes:

Below is an initial, rather sloppy, first pass at an actual cfp modeled on last year’s format. We gotta start somewhere!

Risk implies an individual, personal response because the threshold of risk is ultimately relative. It is the fluidity or slipperiness of the threshold that seems to cause the greatest problems, producing the largest successes and the most abysmal failures. The Seventh Annual CLTC Graduate conference, “Risk:__________________ [a negotiation between life and death?]” will focus on the element of risk in and across various disciplines. While the Consortium of Literature, Theory, and culture is grounded in the study of national and international literary traditions, our conference seeks interdisciplinary and theoretical reflections on risk as well as practical applications.

We invite 250-word abstracts that speak to any of the following topics:
Risk-taking in writing, in art
Risk in economics. banking, government
The risk of paradigm shifts
risk in science and inventions
multimedia
risky behavior
performing risk: tightrope walking, the Olympics
ethics of risk
extreme sports
going against criticism, against any flow
risky thought, philosophy
the audience for risk
everyday risk

Spring Conference