How Do Identities Matter?

The Future of Minority Studies at Michigan (FMS) and the Department of Comparative Literature announce the resumption of the faculty-graduate student workshop How Do Identities Matter?, beginning Friday, October 5, 2007. The FMS national initiative has inspired similar projects at Cornell, Stanford, and Syracuse universities over the past few years.   The workshop is committed to conversations and work across the disciplines. Its members will meet six times during the fall semester and will address issues related to the theory and praxis of social, political, and cultural identities both in the US and globally.

How Do Identities Matter? reconceives the study of minority literature and culture in the context of social diversity.  Discussions will move beyond conventional notions of the constructedness of identity and knowledge in order to render detailed accounts of the materiality of constructed identities as they are lived, felt, and related to social processes. The workshop also seeks to interrogate the epistemological transformations our theoretical conceptualizations of identity must undergo in order to remain relevant in a globalized, post-modern, neo-liberal world.

This year the workshop features visiting speakers Joseph Jordan, Director of the Stone Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago. The workshop will also be focusing on the questions and research of members in an intense way. Please see the link to Events for more information.

If you are interested in being part of the workshop, please contact Tobin Siebers (tobin@umich.edu).

The workshop is generously sponsored by the Office of the Provost in connection with the National Center on Institutional Diversity.