Non-human Encounters: Animals, Objects, Affects, & the Place of Practice
Conversations between cultural theory, psychoanalysis, & the arts
a forum with Nuar Alsadir, Emanuela Bianchi, Pablo Assumpção B Costa, Eleonora Fabião, Carla Freccero, Katie Gentile, Francisco Gonzalez, Ann Pellegrini, Donovan Schaefer, Julietta Singh, Nathan Snaza, & Michelle Stephens
March 24, Friday
2 to 6:30 pm
Nuar Alsadir, Poet & Psychoanalyst, NYC
Emanuela Bianchi, Comparative Literature, New York University
Pablo Assumpção B Costa, Global Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality, New York University
Eleonora Fabião, performance artist & theorist, professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Carla Freccero, Literature & History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
Katie Gentile, Interdisciplinary Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
Francisco Gonzalez, Personal & Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, and Staff Psychiatrist, Instituto Familiar de la Raza
Ann Pellegrini, Performance Studies and Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University
Donovan Schaefer, Lecturer in Religion & Science, Trinity College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Julietta Singh, English, University of Richmond
Nathan Snaza, English, University of Richmond
Michelle Stephens, English & Latino and Caribbean Studies, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey
This half-day symposium is the 9th annual collaboration between NYU’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the journal Studies in Gender and Sexuality. The question of the non-human is a vital one for psychoanalysis, but in the main remains a path not taken. There is, meanwhile, a growing scholarly literature, and across multiple fields, that explores the post- and non-human: e.g., critical animal studies, new materialisms, object-oriented ontology, post-colonial studies, affect studies, and queer of color critique. The broad goal of this year’s forum is to see what happens when clinicians, cultural theorists, and arts practitioners talk together about and beyond the limits of the human, through such keywords as animals, objects, and affects. Through an explicit foregrounding of the “place of practice,” panelists will also attend to questions of institutional location (e.g., classroom, cubicle, consulting room, museum or gallery, street corner) as well as histories of power. How does where we think, write, work, and with whom (or what) shape critical practices, conceptual possibilities, horizons of the sayable and sensible.
2 pm
Welcome and introduction
Katie Gentile (SGS) and Ann Pellegrini (CSGS)
2:15 pm
Panel 1: Placing Animals
Carla Freccero
Katie Gentile
Nathan Snaza
Moderator: Ann Pellegrini
3:45 pm
Panel 2: Placing Objects
Nuar Alsadir
Francisco Gonzalez
Julietta Singh
Moderator: Emanuela Bianchi
5:15 pm
Panel 3: Placing Affects
Eleonora Fabião
Donovan Schaefer
Michelle Stephens
Moderator: Pablo Assumpção B Costa
Performance Studies Studio
721 Broadway, 6th Floor, Room 612
This event is free & open to the public. RSVPs not necessary.
Preceded on Thursday evening by Darwin, Queerly: Evolution, Natural Law, & the Diversity of Desire, a lecture by Donovan Schaefer.
For more information, please contact the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality at csgs(at)nyu.edu or 212-992-9540.
Facebook event page here.
Co-sponsored by the NYU Animal Studies Initiative, Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality and Department of Performance Studies, and by the journal Studies in Gender and Sexuality.