Working Groups

The Program in Critical Theory is pleased to announce its 2020 working group for the spring semester, Theories of the Global South. The co-conveners for the bi-weekly meetings are Donna Honarpisheh (Comparative Literature) and Devin Choudhury (Rhetoric). The Working Group is co-sponsored by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, and The Program in Critical Theory.

The Theories of the Global South working group aims to promote interdisciplinary inquiry into works of literature and film, critical theory, critical race studies, science and technology studies, and history produced in and with the Global South, with particular interest in texts that further understandings of decolonial methodologies and postcolonial ways of knowing. Each semester, the group will take on a series of pressing global questions—ethical, political, and aesthetic—and in doing so will draw from sources across disciplines, languages and regions. The group will examine the history of postcolonial theory, considering its root concerns of the limits of representation and knowledge production, critiques of the nation-state, and the transformation of life forms under colonial and postcolonial modernity. In this pursuit, we will also consider how the methods and questions of postcolonial theory have transformed in contemporary works, namely, how works of the Global South continue to grapple with the problems of state violence, global inequality, and environmental crises. In our method as well as our critical inquiries, we will reflect on varied imaginings of the world and the contemporary critiques and coalitions that emerge from these epistemological frameworks. In doing so, we will entangle ourselves in contemporary theory to explore and move towards a multi-epistemic world and a cosmo-political universe of co-existence and critical possibility.

The spring meetings will take place on the following dates:

January 30, February 12, February 27, March 12, April 2, and April 16.