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The Graduate Students of the Department of French and Italian
at Northwestern University
Present an Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference

Cultural Bankruptcy: Bail Out or Bonus?
Rethinking Culture in the 21st Century
April 8-10, 2010

Keynote Speakers: Susan Hegeman and Phillip Wegner
Associate Professors of English, University of Florida


The postmodernisms have, in fact, been fascinated precisely by
this whole “degraded” landscape of schlock and kitsch, of TV
series and Reader’s Digest culture, of advertising and motels, of
the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film, of so-called
paraliterature, with its airport paperback categories of the gothic
and the romance, the popular biography, the murder mystery,
and the science fiction or fantasy novel: materials they no longer
simply “quote” as a Joyce or a Mahler might have done, but
incorporate into their very substance.
~ Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism

The cultural moment that Jameson describes in his 1991 work calls into question the nature of art—broadly understood as visual arts, cinema, architecture, music and literature—in the postmodern society. Devoid of depth and the ability to “think historically,” has cultural production truly become nothing but pastiche, art without affect or referent? If Jameson's evaluation is accurate, then we are faced with several particular concerns: the relationship between art and everyday life, canonicity in an age dominated by ideological pluralism, the reinterpretation of high/low distinctions in previous centuries, and the validity of the intellectual categories that have previously served as cornerstones of our discipline—divisions
of genre, historical period, national tradition, and medium, to name a few.

Whether our object of study is contemporary culture or the artistic production of past centuries, as scholars we share this current historical moment in which we write. How does our current cultural moment affect the way we read the past? How are we to understand culture? What are the implications of theories that attempt to repudiate culture as an object of inquiry? Can cultural production exist independently of capitalism? What is the current relationship between cultural producers and consumers? How has that relationship changed historically? Do modern and traditional forms of pastiche have similar or divergent functions and objects? Where do the historic, the synchronic and/or the diachronic stand in relation to cultural production? How do art and theory mediate the notions of surface and depth? We welcome papers from a variety of disciplines that address the above questions, in whole or in part, or a related topic.

Please submit your abstract of no more than 350 words to culturalbankruptcy@gmail.com by January 15, 2010. Include your name, address, e-mail address, school affiliation, and any A/V requirements in your email. Notification will be on or before February 15. Papers must be in English and no more than 20 minutes long. Conference participants will have the opportunity
both to formally present their paper and to workshop it the following day with the other presenters, the keynote speakers, and the conference moderators. To facilitate this we will require a final copy of the conference paper to be submitted by April 1.

Our speakers:    Susan Hegeman
Phillip Wegner

Conference Organizers:
Liz McManus
Abby Stahl
Brittany Murray

Please feel free to contact us with questions!
culturalbankruptcy@gmail.com

Tentative Schedule:

Thursday, April 8

	4-5:30		Opening talk – Susan Hegeman
	Evening		TBD

Friday, April 9

	9-9:30		Breakfast
	9:45-11:15		Panel 1
	11:30-12:30		Lunch
	12:30-2		Panel 2
	2:15-3:45		Panel 3
	4-5:30		Closing talk – Phillip Wegner
	6:30		Dinner

Saturday, April 10

	10-10:30		Breakfast
	10:45-12		Workshop Session 1
	12-1		Lunch
	1-2:15		Workshop Session 2
	2:30-3:45		Workshop Session 3
	4-:415		Closing Remarks
	Evening		Free to explore Chicago on own or with locals