We would like to invite you to the first of a series of events:
This Wednesday, September 18, Erin Graff Zivin will present her text “Misunderstanding Literature” at 4pm in room 222 at 19 University Place.
And the next day, we will have an open discussion regarding the politics of theory:
OPEN DISCUSSION: Thursday, September 19
6-8:30pm, room 229 (19 University Place, NYU)
This talk will initiate our first series of conferences and discussion meetings regarding the Politics of Theory and Latin America, where we intend to discuss the relations among political theory, literature and philosophy in the field of Latin American studies, but also inquire about the recent history of this discipline, about the methodological debates that shape the current state of affairs in academia and outside, and its political and ethical stands. Our guests include Jon Beasley-Murray, Alberto Moreiras and Erin Graff Zivin, among others. Please join us for the debate!
Here you will find the recommended readings to prepare for Thursday:
The Politics of Theory and Latin America series is co-organized with the Department of Comparative Literature and co-sponsored by the Spanish and Portuguese Department at NYU.
Erin Graff Zivin (PhD, NYU, 2004; MA, Comparative Literature and Latin American Studies, UC Berkeley, 1998) has been on the faculty at USC since 2008. Prof. Graff Zivin’s research and teaching interests focus on constructions of Jewishness and marranismo in the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic, aesthetic representations of torture and interrogation, the relationship between ethics, politics, and aesthetics (particularly in the context of Latin American literary and cultural studies), and the intersection of philosophy and critical theory more broadly. She is the author of The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary (Duke University Press, 2008) and editor of The Ethics of Latin American Literary Criticism: Reading Otherwise (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and has articles published or forthcoming in Modern Language Notes (MLN), SubStance, CR: The New Centennial Review,Politica Comun: A Journal of Thought, the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Variaciones Borges, the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Chasqui, the Journal of Jewish Identities, and Modern Jewish Studies. Her latest book, Figurative Inquisitions: Conversion, Torture, and Truth in the Luso-Hispanic Atlantic, is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press, and she is beginning work on a new book-length project tentatively entitled “Misunderstanding Literature.”
