Date/Time
Friday - Saturday
4 May - 5 May 2012
Location
470 Stephens Hall
Event Type
Conference
The social sciences and humanities have long been engaged in the study of matter, materiality and materialisms. So what to make of recent announcements of the arrival of a variety of “new materialisms”? This conference brings together scholars from across the university and country to discuss a multiplicity of orientations and critical approaches to the use—and in some cases misuse—of the term and conceptual apparatus of “new materialisms” in their own work. Intentionally named as a question, What’s New About New Materialisms? is intended as an exploration of the benefits and limitations to “new” modes of thinking about and through the material. The four questions that guide contributors’ presentation are: What is new about matter? What is a method adequate to a new matter? Do “new materialisms” mark the limit of discourse? How might we attend to materiality as a property of the digital? The first day of the conference will feature faculty presentations, including two keynote addresses, and the second day will feature papers by graduate students.
Friday
Location: Tan Oak Room in the MLK Student Union
| 8:45am | :: | Registration | |
| 9:00am | :: | Welcome | |
| 9:15am | :: | Keynote | Karen Barad, UC Santa Cruz |
| 10:00am | :: | Paper | Jenna Burrell, UC Berkeley Materiality of Rumor |
| 10:30am | :: | Break | |
| 11:00am | :: | Panel Conversation | Kim TallBear, Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, UC Berkeley Benedikte Zitouni, Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, UC Berkeley Mel Chen, Gender & Women’s Studies, UC Berkeley |
| 12:15pm | :: | Lunch | |
| 1:30pm | :: | Paper | Jean-François Blanchette, Information Studies, UCLA A Material History of Bits |
| 2:00pm | :: | Coffee Break | |
| 2:30pm | :: | Panel Conversation | Donna Jones, English, UC Berkeley Jenny Reardon, Sociology, UC Santa Cruz Tim Choy, Science & Technology Studies, UC Davis Ruth Tringham, Anthropology, UC Berkeley |
| 3:45pm | :: | Keynote | John Borneman, Anthropology, Princeton |
| 4:45pm | :: | Closing Remarks |
Saturday
Location: 470 Stephens Hall
| 9:00am | :: | Welcome | |
| 9:15am | :: | One: things | Peter Ekman, UC Berkeley Thinking New Ruins: Materialisms and the Afterlives of Built Space Nicholas D’Avella, UC Davis Architectural Design Practices and the Matter of Care Cynthia Schairer, UC San Diego Prosthesis as Actant: Accounting for the Materialism of Artificial and Organic Body Parts Michael D’Arcy, UC Berkeley Pharmaceutical Poiesis: Psychosis, Radical Materiality, and the Practice of the Gap |
| 10:30am | :: | Two: concepts | Jordan Kraemer, UC Irvine On tactics and infrastructure: the virtual materiality of digital and social media Ashwin Mathew, UC Berkeley My Feet on the Ground, My Head in the Clouds: On the Production of Networked Virtual Spaces from Material Physical Infrastructures Mather George, UC Berkeley Agential Matters: Running with the Pack through Its Deployment as Concept in Sociology, Philosophy and Ethology Elizabeth Goodman, UC Berkeley Let’s (mis)behave: Enacting digital materialities |
| 11:45am | :: | Lunch | |
| 12:30pm | :: | Three: signs | Maria Cristina Visperas, UC San Diego Material Life and Social Death: Countenancing Black Objec-hood through Politics of Matter? Mara Green, UC Berkeley Alcohol Drinking and Alcohol Drinkers: Corporeal Practice & Semiotic Typification in Nepali Local Sign Liz Kelley, UC Berkeley The “G” in “Gihad”: Political Discourse and the Materiality of Language in English Translations of Arabic Novels Shannon Meyer, UC Santa Barbara Literary Materialism and the Agency of the Text |
| 2:00pm | :: | Closing |
Graduate Student Organizers: Eric Plemons, Daniela Rosner, Michael D’Arcy
Questions: newmaterialisms@gmail.com
Additional sponsorship comes from: Berkeley Program in Science and Technology Studies • Department of Anthropology • School of Information