Nationalism (hopefully NOT nationalist) Reading Group
Dear all,
The fourth meeting will take place from 6:20pm on the 19th of June (Thursday).
The venue: the Office 512 the Building #10, Seikei University (please
note that the doors of the building are locked after 6:30pm. If you
arrive later than that time, please call me on 090-2749-6928).
The texts: Raymond Williams, _Culture and Society_ Chapter 6 and 7
(whose file I can send to those who need it. If you do so, please email me).
After our discussion, there will be a kind of wine get-together in my office.
If you can make it, please let me know.
See you next Thursday!
Best wishes,
Fuhito Endo
Nationalism Discussion Group (The Third Meeting)
Dear all,
The third meeting will take place from 6:20pm on the 29th of May (Thursday).
The venue: the Office 512 the Building #10, Seikei University (please
note that the doors of the building are locked after 6:30pm. If you
arrive later than that time, please call me on 090-2749-6928).
The texts: Raymond Williams, _Culture and Society_ Chapter 4, 5 and 6
(whose file I can send to those who need it. If you do so, please email me).
After our discussion, there will be a kind of wine get-together in my office.
If you can make it, please let me know.
See you next Thursday!
Best wishes,
Fuhito Endo
Nationalism (hopefully NOT nationalist) Reading Group
Dear all,
The second meeting will take place from 6:20pm on the 8th of May (Thursday).
The venue: the Office 512 the Building #10, Seikei University (please
note that the doors of the building are locked after 6:30pm. If you
arrive later than that time, please call me on 090-2749-6928).
The texts: Raymond Williams, _Culture and Society_ Chapter 3 and 4
(whose file I can send to those who need it. If you do so, please email me).
After our discussion, there will be a kind of wine get-together in my office.
If you can make it, please let me know.
See you next Thursday!
Best wishes,
■
SUNYのチャールズからこのようなメールが。拡散希望です：
Dear friends:
I am writing to let you know about the recent updates to our new Liberal Studies Program at SUNY Albany. I know that students who applied to doctoral programs in the USA have received responses on April 15. I hope this program might benefit some students who may still be looking for opportunities for next fall. Please circulate the message below, if it might be helpful to your students.
I hope you will forgive this group e-mail, which is sent with the utmost collegiality and friendship. I will be in Taiwan this summer, and I hope I will have the chance to see some of you again!
very best wishes, Charles
*********************************
Dear friends and colleagues:
I am the director of the new Liberal Studies MA Program at SUNY Albany, an innovative interdisciplinary program designed for highly motivated students seeking opportunities for advanced training in areas of literary study and contemporary cultural theory. The program is especially designed to advance the portfolios and critical background of students who intend to pursue doctoral work in the humanities.
This program allows students to concentrate in the English Department, while also taking elective classes across all departments in humanities and social sciences, in accordance with each individual student's interests. The program allows students to design their own degrees, with special emphasis on interdisciplinary areas such as post-colonial studies, American Studies, critical social thought, human rights, globalization, feminist theory, and other areas of cultural studies. The program is especially designed to help ambitious foreign students prepare for further doctoral work. Our first class, admitted last year, included students from Taiwan, China, and Japan. The incoming class for fall 2014 includes students from Jordan, Iran, the United Kingdom and South Korea, and the program has already sent its graduates to funded positions in doctoral programs (including our own).
The program requires 30 credits, and has only two required courses-- (1) one graduate-level survey in any social science (such as History , Political Science, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, or Geography), and (2) one graduate level survey in a humanities department (such as English, Philosophy, Art History, Women's Studies). All students write an MA thesis (for 4 credits) on a topic of their own choosing, under the direction of two full-time faculty members. Courses are normally 4 credits each, so the program normally entails 7 courses plus a thesis. The program can also accept up to 8 credits of previous graduate-level work taken at other reputable institutions, provided the grades are good and the course material roughly approximates what departments here might cover. For students with previous graduate coursework, the program can therefore be finished more quickly.
Liberal Studies is an excellent choice for a diverse array of students interested in advanced graduate training as a step toward a doctoral degree, in a flexible environment that draws of the expertise of faculty in literature, political theory, philosophy, history, art history, and other humanistic areas. Our graduate seminars are taught exclusively by regular full-time professors, and are small, allowing students to work closely with faculty in a range of areas that link literary study to aesthetics, politics, history, philosophy, and contemporary cultural theory.
I would welcome the opportunity to speak with your students about this program, if it might be of interest to them for next fall. We are able to accept applications through July, and our Office of International Education will help to arrange visas for students who may need them.
If you would like to see further information, the program website is below, and also a link to our recent Liberal Studies spring conference, which included outstanding faculty members from Tufts University, Williams College, Skidmore College, Cornell University, Brown University, and other regional institutions with whom we collaborate.
http://www.albany.edu/graduatebulletin/liberal_studies_graduate_program_curriculum.htm
Affinities: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Politics - Home
The “Affinities” conference will explore the complex intersections among aesthetics, ethics and politics in contemporary cultural theory. The conference hosts an interdisciplinary discussion of...
Read more...
I would be very happy to answer any questions about the Liberal Studies Program, or indeed the English MA program, which I also direct.
best wishes,
Charles Shepherdson
Professor of English
Director, English MA Program
Director, Liberal Studies MA Program
Provost's Fellow 2013-14
SUNY Albany
cshepherdson@albany.edu
Nationalism Reading Group
成蹊大学文学部の客員研究員のカミラさんと日本のナショナリズムをテーマにした英語によるディスカッション・グループを立ち上げました。4月から開始予定です。スケジュールが決まり次第お知らせします。どうぞご参加ください。海外にいると英語で発表をし議論をするのに、日本では日本語という当たり前の日常にちょっとでも抵抗しようというような気持ちです。
第１回会合について：
The first meeting will take place on the 17th of April Thursday, 18:30~20:30.
Venue: Office 512 Building #10 Seikei University
Text: Raymond Williams Culture and Society: Intro. and Ch. 1, 2
Please contact me (endoATfh.seikei.ac.jp) if you wish to join it (AT=@). The PDF file of the above texts can be distributed to those who need it.
New Interdisciplinary Reading Group
Topic: Japanese Nationalism in Contexts: Culture, Politics and Literature.
Seikei University
The Department of EnglishUndeniably, nationalism and culture are inseparable. Historically viewed, nationalism is a cultural form which developed in response to the conditions of the modern industrial society. More specifically, political nationalism borrows from the repertoire of cultural heritage in order to reinvent and construct national histories, myths and symbols. Nationalism as a cultural phenomenon, inspired by philosophical and literary texts, will be the focus of this new seminar series. Initially, we will address several general questions about the relationship between nationalism, society and culture. In what sense was European nationalism a ‘modern(ist)’ project? Can we trace its (literary and philosophical) genealogies? How do the ‘high’ and popular cultures shape political attitudes? How did writers employ the binary of autonomous subjectivity versus political state in their pro-nationalist discourses? We will also study the nationalist rhetoric of selected British modernists. This will lead us to the examination of the nationalist tendencies in the literary and non-literary texts produced by Japanese modernists. In particular, we will focus on their use of (European) ideas and concepts in order to construct the narratives of ‘imagined community’: Japan. We will analyse how these ideas are transformed and adapted to serve political ambitions. We will also indentify and discuss the cases where such ideas are used by the representatives of the so-called Japanese ‘new nationalism’.
The seminars will be conducted in English. Academic staff, doctoral students and ambitious undergraduate students are invited to attend and freely participate in the discussions. Everybody is welcome to propose additional/different texts related to the topic. In cases where extracts are indicated as the reading material, the organisers will distribute them to the participants as PDF files via e-mail, approximately two weeks in advance of the next meeting.
Tentative reading list
Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (1958)
David Aram Kaiser, Romanticism, Aesthetics, and Nationalism (extract; 1999)
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkeimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (extracts; 1947)
Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (extract; 1989)
Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia (short extracts; 1951)
Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (1946)
Anthony Smith, Nationalism (extract; 2001)
T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)
F. Jameson, Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist (extract; 1979)
P. Rabinov, The Foucault Reader (ext. ‘What is Enlightenment’ & ‘Truth and Power’; 1982)
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (extract; 2004)
Kojin Karatani, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (1993)
Naoki Sakai, Meaghan Morris, Translation and Subjectivity: On Japan and Cultural Nationalism (2007)
Naoki Sakai, Brett de Bary, Iyotani Toshio (Eds), Deconstructing Nationality (extracts; 2005)
The first meeting will take place from 6:30pm on the 17th April Thursday. The venue will soon be decided.
９月１４日の国際会議の宣伝
場所は成蹊大学５号館１階です。お問い合わせは、ENDOFUHITOアットマークGMAIL.COMまでお願いします。
Comparative Modernisms: Psychology, Literature, and Affect
―International Conference14 September 2013
Seikei University, Tokyo
Financially supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and in collaboration with The Centre for the History of Psychological Disciplines at University College London
The so-called ‘affective theory’ has made Anglo-American cultural studies philosophically sophisticated to the point of a theoretical saturation or rather inflation. We do not deny a set of insights it has provided us with (it is no exaggeration to say that ‘affect’ is today among the most popular and heated topics); at the same time, there is no doubt that―whilst inspired by it―we have to be more historically specific after such ‘affective turns’ in the humanities. Basically taking our cues from The Mind of Modernism (Stanford UP, 2004)―a seminal collection of articles on the psychologised/psychologising facets of European modernity―we attempt to re-historicise the affective aspects of modernist discourses, discussing not only European psychological and literary languages but also interwar Japanese psychiatry. Our purposes are: more detailed readings of the interconnections between literature and psychology; drawing more careful attentions to psychiatric practices; becoming less Freudocentric (a critical tendency which has obviously narrowed any possible viewpoint concerning our topics); and further re/interpretations of British modernist texts. These approaches will show more nuanced and suggestive comparisons of modernist languages―those literary, medical and psychological discourses characteristically fascinated and/or disgusted with modern psychologisations―thereby giving a series of fresh insights into the ‘mind of modernisms’.
The Programme of the Conference
10:30~12:10
Opening Address by Fuhito Endo (Seikei University)For/Against Psychologising Chair: Asako Nakai (Hitotsubashi University)
Fuhito Endo (Seikei University): Organicism Revitalised/Violated: The Unconscious of D. H. Lawrence and Its Dynamic and Affective Physiology
Kamilla Pawlikowska (Seikei University): Virginia Woolf's Kinesthetic Metaphors of Mental States
Kunio Shin (Tsuda College): Varieties of Modernist Anti-Psychologism: Eliot, Lewis, and Others
14:00~15:30
Other Than Freud Chair: Yoshiki Tajiri (University of Tokyo)Kohei Saito (Aoyama Gakuin University): William James and "Crank Literature"
Matei Iagher (University College London): The Novels of Mircea Eliade and His Views on Psychology and Literary Modernism
Sonu Shamdasani (University College London): The Reception of Jung in Britain and the Reading of his Work by Modernist Writers
16:00~17:30
Psychiatric Modernity Chair: Sonu Shamdasani (University College London)Sarah Marks (University College London): Psychoanalysis and Modernism in the Prague Surrealist Circle
Akinobu Takabayashi (Seisen University): Between Psychology and Religion: Spiritual Healing in Interwar Britain
Akihito Suzuki (Keio University): Modernist Culture and the Experience of Mental Illness in Tokyo 1925-1945
17:30~18:00
Closing Discussion
