Upcoming Events:

Mark your calendars: On May 30-31, 2008, the University of Chicago and a group of former students will host a Conference in Honor of William H. Sewell, Jr. , 3CT Faculty Fellow and Frank P. Hixon Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History. In addition to former students, conference participants will include Geoff Eley, Lynn Hunt, William Reddy, and Joan Scott. For a complete schedule, click here. The conference, to be held in Iday Noyes Hall, is open to the public and Chicago faculty and students are encouraged to attend; a registration form will be posted shortly. For additional information, please email sewell.conference@gmail.com.

Upcoming Theorizing the Present lectures:

3CT Faculty Fellow Danilyn Rutherford on “The Enchantments of Secular Belief,” May 15, 2008, 4:30 PM, Harper 130.

Recent Events:

Past Theorizing the Present lectures:

Elizabeth Povinelli (Columbia) on "Recognition, Camouflage, Espionage: Maneuvers of Power in Late Liberalism," April 24, 2008, 4:30 PM, Harper 130.

Michael Warner (Yale) on “Sex and Secularity,” Thursday, February 28, 2008, 4:30-6:00, Harper 130.

Neil Brenner (New York University) on "Epistemologies of Comparison in the Study of Globalized Urbanization," Thursday, October 25th, 2007.

Other Events:

3CT is pleased to have been a sponsor of the symposium, Conditions of Settler Colonialism, held at Wilder House April 25-26, 2008.

Helgard Kramer (Free University, Berlin) on "The Epistemological Fate of the Authoritarian Character Theory of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research," presented by the University of Chicago Society of Fellows and co-sponsored by 3CT, Tuesday, January 29th, 4:30 p.m. in Harper 130.

3CT Faculty Fellow Dipesh Chakrabarty gave the January 17 Nicholson Center lecture, "Empire, Ethics, and the Calling of History," 4:30 p.m. in Classics 110

Council on Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Workshops

The Center hosts several of the University of Chicago’s Council on Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and Humanities graduate student workshops, including the African Studies Workshop, the new Religion and the Social Workshop, the Social Theory Workshop (not meeting again until 2008-09), the Comparing Colonialisms Workshop, and the Political Communication and Society Workshop.

Jennifer Cole, Jean Comaroff, John Comaroff, and Kesha Fikes serve as faculty sponsors for the African Studies workshop, which provides an interdisciplinary forum for innovative work on the peoples of Africa and its diaspora. The workshop will meet at 3CT most Tuesdays at 6:00 p.m.

Moishe Postone and William Sewell serve as sponsors of the Social Theory Workshop, in which students and visitors present and discuss work in progress on topics including the relationship between social and cultural transformations; questions of the public sphere, civil society, and democracy; the relations between modernist and postmodernist forms of social theory; as well as conceptual issues posed by globalization. The workshop will resume in Autumn 2008.

3CT faculty fellow Danilyn Rutherford along with fellow anthropology faculty Hussein Agrama and Robin  Shoaps are launching a new Religion and the Social Workshop in the fall of 2007.  The workshop brings together students and faculty with an interest in the study of religion, both as a domain of social life and a source of ways of thinking about the social.  The workshop seeks to further conversation nor simply on the place of religious practice, belief, and institutions in the contemporary  world, but also on the role of religious traditions in shaping the visions of the social held by scholars and those they study alike.  The workshop meets at 3CT on alternate Friday afternoons at 3:30 p.m.

Orit Bashkin and John Kelly sponsor the Comparing Colonialisms Workshop, a multi-disciplinary forum for discussing colonial research. Founded in 2004, CCW aims to broaden conversations about colonial studies beyond the paradigmatic confines of discipline, region, and period. To do so, it encourages innovative and cross-discliplinary discussions of research into colonialism by faculty and students in a range of fields. Workshop participants come from diverse humanities and social science fields, including art history, anthropology, English, comparative literature, history, and political science and include 3CT faculty fellows Dipesh Chakrabarty, Jean Comaroff, and John Comaroff. The workshop meets at 3CT on alternate Thursdays at 5:00 p.m.

Faculty Fellow Lisa Wedeen, Faculty Associate Andreas Glaeser, Michael Silverstein, and Susan Gal sponsor the Political Communication and Society Workshop, which ties together diverse strands of research on the political aspects and social roles of communicative practices. With faculty sponsors and student coordinators drawn from several disciplines in the social sciences, the workshop provides participants with an opportunity to approach the issue of communication from a variety of perspectives and with a variety of focal points. Our conversation over the last few years has been a wide-ranging exploration of topics like the social efficacy of political rhetoric and symbolism, the role of language in the construction of reality, the transformation of concepts through the media, and the relations between sociohistorical processes and systems of signification. The workshop meets at 3CT on alternate Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m.