Dear all,
 
Here are the subjects of the Midwest Faculty Seminars, sponsored by the
University of Chicago.  Please let Dee Wood-Lane (
[log in to unmask]) know if you're interested in attending
one of them.  If there's interest, we try to send one or two to each
seminar, so you need to let us know now if you wish to particpate. (A
total of 7 faculty members can participate).
 
The dates of the first Seminar, American Empire and the Exportation of
Democracy have changed.  They are October 30-November 1.  The deadline for
registration for that seminar is September 26.  Please see the attachments
for details on the registration process and for the registration form.  
Susan 
 

 

MFS Topics 2008-2009

 

American Empire and the Exportation of Democracy - October 30-November1,
2008

Advocates of the so-called American Empire insist that the United States
has a moral obligation and a pragmatic need to promote freedom and
democracy across the globe; critics claim that this practice violates our
national ideals and increases global instability and violence. Military
struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the looming possibility of expanded
engagement in the Middle East, do little to resolve questions about
America's global role. Instead, they underscore how important it is to
approach this thorny issue with thoughtful discussion and analysis. Is the
American model of democracy a universalizable one? What counts as a
democratic system, and what conditions are required for effective
democracy? Can we resolve the tensions between a democratic electoral
system and the exercise of imperial power? 

 


The Dialectic of Englightenment - January 15-17. 2009


In 1944 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer published a book that was to
become a foundation of the Frankfurt School of theory, and a cornerstone
of aesthetic and political criticism for generations of scholars. They
recast the enlightenment as a movement that devastated humans' ability to
engage with the irrational and non-individual aspects of life, and
postulated a "culture industry" that, stupefying the masses with simple
pleasures, shores up the hegemony of capitalism and quashes the potential
of the fine arts. This text-based seminar explores what we can learn from
this influential work today. How do contemporary technology, art,
politics, and economics reflect or challenge the conditions described by
Adorno and Horkheimer? What political and economic work is achieved by
today's mass culture? 

 


Troubled Waters - March 5-7, 2009


While the scarcity of oil and other energy sources dominate news and
politics, the attention of concerned scholars is increasingly focused on
water, a diminishing natural resource that is still more central to
everyday life. Many commentators agree that water scarcity is taking over
as the likeliest cause of conflict, in the Middle East and elsewhere, as
fresh water is increasingly diminished by agriculture and industry or
rendered unusable by pollution. Meanwhile, global warming threatens
hard-to-predict changes to oceans and ice caps; molecular chemistry delves
deeper into the unique properties of water's structure; and new evidence
from Mars offers hitherto fantastical possibilities for understanding the
history and future of our own planet. This seminar will invite reflections
from political scientists, economists, historians, and geographers, as
well as from scholars in public policy, environmental, international, and
area studies. 

 


Religion and Morality - April 16-18, 2007


Ivan Karamazov famously concluded that if there is no God, all is
permitted. Much of the academic community today, however, tends to
discount the possibility that religion is essential to morality, or to
argue the opposite: that the removal of God is the necessary condition for
moral discourse and action. This seminar will examine debates about the
relation between morality and religion, considering how this relationship
has been figured and refigured in different societies and at different
moments in history. How can teachers maintain appropriate distance from
dogma without shutting down possibilities for understanding other
cultures? What are the opportunities of and constraints on an intersection
between religion and morality, particularly in and between modern,
pluralist societies? What role can, should, and do particular religions
play in an era of global moral problems like climate change and terrorism?


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