Friday, April 13, 2018 at 2:00pm
Saturday. April 14, 2018 at 10:00am
A.D. White House, Guerlac Room 27 East Ave, Ithaca 14853
Via the hypernym of the Lateral (lateralis, “of or belonging to the side, flanking,” from latus, “the side or flank”), this international graduate conference aims to investigate those figurations of side-switching, adjacency, and horizontality that oppose and problematize vertical and binary orders of knowledge. Which historical paradigms for the ordering of knowledge, hitherto marginalized or concealed, prove compatible with the Lateral? Does such an approach risk to fundamentally undermine intuitions about factuality and its impact on social trust? Could we, then, productively assume the paradigm of the Lateral for the formulation of apposite responses to the volatile epistemological situation we face today?
By means of transdisciplinary perspectives on German Studies, we intend to approach figurations of the Lateral and their literary, poetical and communicative techniques of side-switching, adjacency, bonding, and turning, bringing forward their productive potential, while also examining their hazardous inclinations. We are looking for critical tools and modes of reasoning, reading and “thinking outside the box” which address, perhaps even dissolve, the binds our knowledge systems now encounter.
Co-sponsors: German Studies, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Studies,Philosophy, English, History of Art and Visual Studies,Department of Performing and Media Arts, Romance Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Comparative Literature, Society for the Humanities, Cornell Institute for European Studies, Institute for German Cultural Studies, Media Studies