The Public Life of Love
a duet with David Kyuman Kim & Martha M. Umphrey
with moderator/discussant P.A. Skantze
Thursday, February 13
6:30 to 8 pm
David Kyuman Kim, Religious Studies and American Studies, Connecticut College
Martha M. Umphrey, Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought, Amherst College
P.A. Skantze, Performance Practices, University of Roehampton, and CSGS Global Visiting Scholar
On the eve of Valentine’s Day, join us for an interdisciplinary conversation about the paradoxes and possibilities of The Public Life of Love. Love is often understood as a matter of “private” life that belongs to the registers of intimacy, sentimentality, and the irrational. As such, love is the opposite of, or at least in tension with, such “public” values as law and reason. But is this opposition adequate or even historically accurate? US patriotism is a discourse of love—of country. There is also a strong African-American tradition that valorizes the social power of love, as in Martin Luther King’s prophetic message of love and social justice. And, of course, love American style is actively constructed and constrained by public arrangements. Laws regulate whom we may love and under what conditions. Public ceremonies, both secular and religious, render some forms of love imaginable, and consign some others to the margins. What happens if we resist assigning love to any one place or any one discourse and instead consider its multiple public lives, for better and for worse?
Department of Social and Cultural Analysis
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor
Co-sponsored by the NYU Department of Social & Cultural Analysis.
This event is free and open to the public. Venue is wheelchair accessible.
Facebook event page here.
For more information, please contact CSGS at csgs(at)nyu.edu or 212-992-9540.
