Ian Dennis, Chief Organizer of the third annual Generative Anthropology Summer Conference to be held in Ottawa from June 19-21, 2009, reports that preparations are going well. There was a heartening response to the first release of the Call for Papers. The organizers are awaiting news about some funding decisions. The conference programme will be finalized after the March 1st (2009) deadline. Meanwhile, a promotional poster is being distributed (watch your mailbox). The GASC 2009 (Ottawa) homepage is http://www.gasc2009.uottawa.ca/
We look forward to seeing you there!
As part of the run-up to the Conference, Ian Dennis and Amir Kahn will be hosting the second GA Q&A on Friday, March 6th, at 4:00 pm at the Royal Oak in Ottawa. Rather than aiming to reintroduce the parameters of the theory itself, Ian and Amir hope to demonstrate one way in which GA can be used as a heuristic to analyze texts. The informal discussion will centre on Hamlet. The prince's delay can be viewed in terms of "resentment"--a GA reading of the play might put Hamlet on the "periphery" of Claudius' "central" court. Graduate students at the University of Ottawa and interested Ottawa people are warmly invited to attend.
In November and December, Eric Gans delivered lectures and held seminars in Australia (University of Sidney, University of Western Sidney) and at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. Thanks to Diego Bubbio and Chris Fleming (Australia) and Roman Katsman (Israel) for organizing these visits.
Thanks to Matthew Schneider for organizing and hosting the Second Annual GA Conference at Chapman University, Orange on June 26-27. The general subject was Esthetic History and the Knowledge of the Human. Participants enjoyed an illuminating and spirited series of presentations and post-presentation discussions. The exchanges were energetic, open-minded, and candid.
The final program consisted of six sessions spread over the two days. On Thursday 26 June, we heard from [session 1] Ian Dennis (University of Ottawa) on George Crabbe and the figure of Peter Grimes; Martin Fashbaugh (Purdue University) on Shelley's Epipsychidion; [session 2] Ben Matthews (University of Newcastle, Australia) on Iser, Gans, and contemporary critical theory; Andrew Bartlett (Kwantlen Polytechnic University) on GA and the doctrine of the incarnation; [session 3] Eric Gans (UCLA) on "esthetics and transcendence."
On Friday 27 June, the work continued with [session 4] Peter Goldman (Westminster College) on film theory, the logic of realism, and Blow-Up; and Adam Katz (Quinnipiac University) on originary grammar and the esthetics of the sentence. Next came [session 5] Richard van Oort (University of Victoria) on Kenneth Burke's Shakespearean anthropology and Amir Khan (University of Ottawa) on "The Burden of Romantic Expression." For session 6, a lively discussion on "The Persistence of Romanticism" in relation to GA concluded the official programme.
We were glad for the presence and contributions of non-presenting participants Stacey Meeker, Bob Hudson, John Maguire, and Britt Johnston.
The organizers wish to thank Dean Roberta Lessor of the Wilkinson College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Chapman University; and Shanna Halverson, Administrative Assistant to the Associate Deans of Wilkinson College, for their assistance and support of the event.
Congratulations to Matthew Schneider on the publication of his study The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles (Palgrave Macmillan, June 2008). The publisher's webpage offers this preview: "The story of the Beatles begins not with the rock-'n’-roll revolution of the 1950s, but in the Romantic revolution of the 1790s, when age-old notions about literature, politics, education, and social relations changed forever. Tracing the Beatles to their late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century poetic, musical, and philosophic roots, The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles weaves literary criticism and cultural analysis together to show how the Fab Four—in their songs, personalities, and relations with each other—mirror the themes and history of Anglo-American Romanticism." For more, follow this link: http://us.macmillan.com/thelongandwindingroadfromblaketothebeatles .
Congratulations to Dr. Schneider also for his continent-wide move from Chapman University (California) to High Point University in North Carolina, where he has accepted the post of Professor and Chair of English. Given that the completion of these two achievements temporally coincided with the successful organizing of GASC in late June, Matthew is to be congratulated for a genuine feat of multitasker professional juggling!
Amir Khan has published a review of The Originary Hypothesis: A Minimal Proposal for Humanistic Inquiry, edited by Adam Katz (Davies Group Publishers, 2007) in Interculture: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5/2 (June 2008). Follow this link: http://dih.fsu.edu/interculture/volume5_2/khan_the_originary_hypothesis.pdf .
Raoul Eshelman, a frequent contributor to Anthropoetics, has just published Performatism, or the End of Postmodernism (Aurora, Colo.: Davies Group). It is now available on Amazon.com for $27.
Introduction:
Adam Katz, The Consequences
of the Originary Hypothesis.
1: Eric Gans, Originary Thinking in the New
Millennium.
2: Raoul Eshelman, Originary Aesthetics and
the End of Postmodernism.
3: Christopher Morrissey, Immaterial
Intellect and the Originary Scene.
4: Adam Katz, The Question of Originary
Method: The Generative Thought Experiment.
5:
Eric Gans, The Anthropology of Bronx
Romanticism.
6: Richard van Oort, Hamlet's Theater
of Resentment.
7: Peter Goldman, Shakespeare's
Iconoclasm: Public vs. Private Scenes in Measure for Measure.
8:
Thomas Bertonneau, From Epicurus to
Marx: The Horizon of Materialist Anthropology in light of the
Minimal Scene.
9:
Matthew Schneider, Romanticism and the
Evolution of Popular Culture.
10:
Chris Fleming and John O'Carroll, What is the Human? Generative Anthropology and
the Humanities.
11: Andrew Bartlett, Accusations of "Playing God" and the Anthropological Idea of God.
Eric Gans's latest book, The Scenic Imagination: Originary Thinking from Hobbes to the Present Day, is available at Stanford University Press.
GA in Croatia
Anthropoetics is pleased to
announce HUGA (Hrvatska Udruga za Generativnu Antropologiju),
the Croatian Association for Generative Anthropology). HUGA was founded on July
30, 2006 in Zagreb, Croatia. Its mission is to explore and develop GA and
mimetic theory. HUGA's board members include Antun Pavešković
(president), Tatjana Pavešković
(vice-president), Silva Mežnarić, and Joško Božanić.
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