Conference speakers: Arjun Appadurai, Christy Anderson, Christopher Breward, Wendy Chun, Didier Gondola, Jonathan Lamb, Lynn Meskell, Harvey Mototch, Rosalind Morris
The Lives of Things conference, organized by the Object Cultures Project and the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT), explores the ‘life’ of Appadurai’s Social Lives of Things on the 25th anniversary of its publication. Importantly, this conference will focus on how that volume has transformed and been transformed by the wide group of scholars who have taken it up in their research and writing. The Lives of Things, in other words, is an occasion to engage questions around the scholarly study of things: How has the concept of ‘things,’ ‘objects,’ ‘life’ and ‘materiality’ changed over time from one field/methodology to another? How can they (or why don’t they) enable conversations across diverse disciplinary and methodological commitments? What is the relation between the much touted ‘material turn’ and historical materialism? And, how might we understand the ‘politics of value’ in current object-oriented conversation?
To explore such questions—and in keeping with OCP’s commitment to experimental process—the conference has assembled a group of scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines: History, Art History, Modern Culture and Media, Anthropology, Literature, and Sociology. We hope that audience participation will both reflect and help to synthesize the efforts of this diverse collection of scholars. The growing enthusiasm for object-centered studies is the occasion of the reemergence of the Object Cultures Project, and this conference is intended to help mark and sustain that enthusiasm.
For more information, visit the conference microsite
FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2011
1:00-1:15pm — Opening Remarks
Bill Brown, Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture, English Language and Literature and Visual Arts, University of Chicago
Introduced by Amanda Davis, Jacob K. Javits Fellow in English Language and Literature, University of Chicago
1:15-3:15pm — Panel I: Object Circulation
Wendy Chun, Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University
“Soft Wares, Soft Things”
Rosalind Morris, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
“A Pound of Sugar, a Basket of Eggs, and the Spillage Of Milk: Worldly Itineraries of Domestic Commodities (or, Recipe for a Personal History of the World, circa 1986/7, with Reference to Henri Lefebvre and Gertrude Stein, via Karl Marx and Mao Zedong)”
Moderator: Patchen Markell, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
3:15-3:30pm — Coffee Break
3:30-5:30pm — Panel 2: Object Lives
Christy Anderson, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Toronto
“The Architectural Object: The Matter of Materials”
Harvey Molotch, Professor of Sociology and Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University
“Things of Public Trouble”
Moderator: Rebecca Zorach, Associate Professor of Art History and the College, University of Chicago
5:30-6:15pm — Reception
SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011
9:00-9:30am — Breakfast
9:30-10:45am — Keynote Address
Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
“The Social Things of Life”
Introduced by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College, University of Chicago
10:45-11:00am — Coffee Break
11:00am-1:00pm — Panel 3: Object Agency
Christopher Breward, Head of Research, Victoria and Albert Museum
“The Gritty Object—Things and Museum-based Research”
Didier Gondola, Professor of History, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
“The Life of Cloth: Fashion, Performativity, and Materiality in Contemporary Africa”
Moderator: Judith Farquhar, Max Palevsky Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences, University of Chicago
1:00-2:00pm — Lunch
2:00-4:00pm — Panel 4: Object Politics
Lynn Meskell, Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University
“Dirty, Pretty Things: On Archaeology and Prehistoric Materialities”
Jonathan Lamb, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Vanderbilt University
“Can Circulating Objects Also Be Things?”
Moderator: Bradin Cormack, Director of the Nicholson Center for British Studies, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature and the College, University of Chicago
4:00-4:15pm — Break
4:15-5:30pm — Closing Roundtable: Wine and Cheese Discussion Led by OCP Faculty
Leora Auslander, Professor of European Social History, University of Chicago
Shannon Lee Dawdy, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences in the College, University of Chicago
Christine Mehring, Associate Professor of Art History and the College, University of Chicago
Jane Taylor, Visiting Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Chicago
Sponsored by 3CT, the Franke Institute, the Department of Anthropology Lichtstern Conference Fund, the Division of the Humanities, the Division of the Social Sciences, the Department of English Language and Literature, the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture, the Smart Museum, and the Department of Art History.
