GLOBALIZATION: THE STAKES OF GLOBAL STUDIES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21-22, 2001
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK COLLEGE AT FREDONIA, FREDONIA NY, USA

"Globalization: The Stakes of Global Studies in the Twenty-First Century" takes as its point of departure the subject of "Global Studies"--a field of intellectual inquiry in the university system that ostensibly speaks directly to international relations and corporate control in the past and present. It is a series of roundtables designed to spark conversations across the disciplines about the phenomenon of globalization. The conference is planned in such a way as to resist the traditional format of an academic conference. There will only be one roundtable panel per time slot. Presenters have been asked to frame a question, a problem, or an argument briefly, at which time the focus will then turn to a dialogue among the presenters, and with the audience. The conference will thus be a two-day long conversation on the subject of globalization and global studies.

Roundtable presenters include:

• Eric Clarke (University of Pittsburgh, advisory editor for boundary 2, author of
• Lennard J. Davis (University of Illinois, Chicago, author of Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body, coeditor of Left Politics and the Literary Profession).
• Richard Eaton (University of Arizona, author of The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760; Islamic History as Global History).
• Ranjana Khanna (Duke University, author of Dark Continents: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Postcolonial Condition).
• Peter Linebaugh (University of Toledo, author of The Many-Headed Hydra).
• Deborah Rosenfelt (University of Maryland, Director of Women's Studies, Area, and International Studies Project entitled "Women and Gender in an Era of Global Change: Internationalizing and 'Engendering' the Curriculum," author of Sex, Class, and Race in Literature and Culture).
• William Spanos (Binghamton University, founding editor of boundary 2, author of America's Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire; The Errant Art of Moby-Dick: The Canon, the Cold War, and the Struggle for American Studies).
• Rinaldo Walcott (York University, author of Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada).

Fields of inquiry such as "Global Studies," "Transcultural Studies," "International Studies," and others have come to transform the disciplines of Anthropology, Economics, English, Geography, History, Political Science, and Sociology, but in a manner different from that of "Cultural Studies," or even "Postcolonial Studies." Though widely acknowledged, global studies has not been adequately thought, especially in relation to the stakes of intellectual inquiry in the contemporary occasion of the economic, political, and cultural circulation of knowledge on a planetary level. One concern of the conference is to consider the stakes of developing a global studies curriculum in academia--at both the undergraduate and graduate levels--and to hazard for question the rationale for any such curriculum. Participants will be concentrating on the relation between epistemology, pedagogy, citizenship, and power in a global order.

These are some of the questions that guided us in the planning of the conference: What do the different disciplines mean by "Global Studies"? What role might a global studies program play? What would be the intellectual responsibility of the University in this new capacity? What are the ontological shifts involved in the development of a global order, and the consequences of those changes? How do questions of ethnicity, gender, race and class change in relation to a global order? What would be the structure of a "global politics of gender," for instance? What are the consequences in shifting concepts such as "global sisterhood" and "transnational feminism"? Moreover, what kind of human subjectivity is made available in this order? What are the potentials for forming coalitions with labor union locally and globally when it comes to dealing with the effects of globalization? In the wake of organic, national identities and filiations, what is to become of "citizenry"? How does the Global change the status of the Local, and the nature of "local resistance"? In general, what positions are made available for subjects and communities in a global order, and what are the potentials for alterity and freedom?

This event is sponsored in part by a grant from the Carnahan-Jackson Humanities Fund of the SUNY Fredonia College Foundation.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Robert P. Marzec
Assistant Professor
English Department
SUNY Fredonia
Fredonia NY 14063
marzec@fredonia.edu
(716) 673-3847

or members of the conference planning committee:
Claudia Sadowski-Smith, American Studies Program
Jan McVicker, Bruce Simon, English Department
Jacky Swansinger, Michael Brescia, Markus Vink, History Department
Elizabeth Dwyer, Latino Studies Program
Jon Kraus, David Rankin, Political Science Department
Adrienne McCormick, Women's Studies Program