26.1.12

GRADUATE SEMINAR on GILLES DELEUZE and CULTURAL STUDIES - Utrecht, NL, 2011-2012



Academic year 2011-2012, Tuesday afternoons, 14.00-17.00, Location: Stijlkamer van Ravensteijn, Kromme Nieuwe Gracht 80, Utrecht University.
Organised by the OSL (Onderzoekschool Literatuurwetenschap) with the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University
Chaired by Professor
Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University) and Professor Anneke Smelik (Radboud University Nijmegen)
The seminar consists of six sessions in English which will run throughout the academic year 2011-12 in Utrecht. Research masters and PhD students, as well as staff members, are welcome to participate. Students can get credits for their participation by attending regularly and writing a final paper. Each session of the three-hour seminar will consist of an in-depth reading of a text by Gilles Deleuze (with or without Felix Guattari), sometimes alongside secondary texts by other theorists or philosophers. This year the theme will be Deleuze’s ‘aesthetics’ from the angle of cultural studies. A Thousand Plateaus will be the guideline reference text throughout the seminar.
Participants are expected to acquire the literature themselves, but wherever possible we will make pdf files available.
PROGRAMME27 September, 2011: IntroductionRosi Braidotti: “Approaching Deleuze’s texts: methodological insights”.
Please note: this is an introductory class for new participants; people who have attended the seminar in the past few years may want to skip this session, or come prepared to make their own contribution.
Reading material:
G. Deleuze, Negotiations (New York, Columbia University Press, 1995):
Section on : “On A Thousand Plateaus” pp. 25-34;
Extracts from C.V. Boundas (ed) The Deleuze Reader (New York, Columbia University Press, 1993): “Rhizome versus Tree” pp. 27-38 ; “A Theory of the Other”, pp. 59-68 ; “Language; Major and Minor”, pp. 145-151; “Minor Literature; Kafka”, pp. 152-164; “Nomad art” pp 165-172.
11 October, 2011: TBAGuest seminar with Prof. Gregg Lambert (Syracuse University,USA)
Reading material:
G. Deleuze, Proust and Signs, chapter on “The Image of Thought”
G. Deleuze & F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. The first chapter, “Rhizome”.
Gregg Lambert is the Director of the Centre for the Humanities at Syracuse University and the author of Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? (New York and London: Continuum Books, January 2007); The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture (New York and London: Continuum Books, January 2005); The Non-Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (New York and London, Continuum Books, 2002).
29 November, 2011: Performance StudiesGuest seminar with Prof. Maaike Bleeker (Utrecht University)
Reading material: (to be announced)
7 February, 2012: Fashion StudiesAnneke Smelik will discuss the possibilities of using deleuzian concepts for the study of fashion.
Reading material: Texts from The FoldATP and the Cinema Books.
13 March, 2012: TBAGuest seminar with dr Birgit Kaiser (UtrechtUniversity)
Reading material: (to be announced).
24 April, 2012: On MusicRosi Braidotti will discuss the notion of the ‘ritournelle’( the refrain)
Readingmaterial: ATP
OTHER RELEVANT EVENTS
Public Lecture by Prof. Michael Hardt (Duke University, USA)
Thursday 26 January, 10:30 – 12:00
Title: “What to Do in a Crisis”.

Place: Utrecht University, Drift 21: room 0.05/Sweelinckzaal
Abstract: The lecture will take as point of departure some of the forms of resistance that have emerged in the current economic crisis, such as the defense of labor union rights inWisconsin and the occupations ofMadrid’s Puerta del sol and Athen’sSyntagma Square in Spring 2011. The ultimate goal is to recognize some of the ways that it is changing what it means to be ‘the Left’.
This lecture is part of the Intensive Programme of the Utrecht School of Critical Theory on “Risk Societies and Cosmopolitanism.Michael Hardt is a political philosopher and literary theorist currently based at Duke University, North Carolina. His most famous works were written in collaboration with Antonio NegriEmpire (2000); Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004) and Commonwealth. Michael Hardt is also the author of Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy (1993) and The Jameson Reader (with Kathi Weeks, 2000).
National Symposium on Deleuze Scholarship:
“Lines of Flight in the Lowlands” 

May 15, 2012. Conveners: Rosi Braidotti and Rick Dolphijn

The purpose of this study day is to assess the state of current Deleuze scholarship in our region, with strong emphasis on new directions of study and new generations of scholars. One session will be dedicated to the topic of ‘geo-philosophy and globalisation’; another session will be open and subject to a call for papers. Short papers will be presented with ample space reserved for discussion.
Invited speaker: to be announced.