Hofstra University LGBT Studies Program
and the
Hofstra Cultural Center

present

Hofstra's Sixth Annual LGBT Studies Conference

Michel Foucault 2014: Beyond Sexuality
March 27-28, 2014

Conference Co-Directors:
Ann Burlein, Associate Professor and Chair of Religion, Hofstra University
Steven D. Smith, Associate Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, Hofstra University

One of the more foremost and most widely read French philosophers of the 20th century, Michel Foucault is known especially for his three-volume History of Sexuality. This conference uses the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the publication of the final two volumes of that magnum opus as a jumping-off point for an evaluation of his work and the notion of a history of the present, with an eye toward the future: Where do we go from here, beyond Foucault, post-Foucault, without him?

Foucault died in the middle of a large project, the contours of which are only becoming visible to us now as his lectures are being published - a project that spun out between his critique of neoliberalism (and his own work on discipline) on the one hand and a turn to the ancient practices of the self and truth-telling on the other.

CALL FOR PAPERS

How does Foucault's project - unfinished, fragmented - look today?

• The conference organizers are especially interested in presentations on the following topics, though submissions on a range of other topics are welcome:

* Crisis in the academy - Foucault elaborated his notion of the "specific intellectual" in response to a crisis in the University of his day: What is the role of intellectuals today amid an academy arguably in crisis?

* The turn toward Greco-Roman classics - What was Foucault's "Greco-Roman journey" about? What has come of it - in classics, philosophy, cultural studies?

* Beyond Sexuality? Post-queer? Identity - subjectivity - an ethics of de-subjectivation: What frameworks seem most promising for thinking sexual practices now?

* Medicine as a way that we are governed - The history of medicine, biopolitics and the future of medicine in light of Foucault's impact.

* Telling truths and telling stories - What is the role of art and literature, new media and an aesthetics of existence in a politics of the future?

Please email inquires and proposals of no more than 500 words to Steven D. Smith at Steve.D.Smith@hofstra.edu by September 1, 2013. Decisions will be rendered by November 1, 2013, and participants should expect notification shortly thereafter.