Returns of the Right: A Pre-Election Conversation in Global South Humanities

Description

The newly launched Global South Humanities Initiative invites you to a conversation between Leah Feldman (U. of Chicago), Donald E. Pease (Dartmouth College), Paul Bové (U. of Pittsburgh) and Aamir Mufti (Johns Hopkins Dept. of English) about Trumpism and the rise of right-wing political ideologies across the globe.

There is an opportunity to attend this session both on the Homewood campus and at Johns Hopkins' Washington, D.C., location.

At the threshold of perhaps the most consequential presidential election in decades, this seminar will seek to put the rise of Trump and the "Make America Great Again," or MAGA, coalition in a global critical frame. It brings together leading humanities scholars who have been involved in thinking deeply about various aspects of the "returns" of political conservativism in different regions of the world and about the profound effects of these political developments on culture and society. Exposing some of the ways in which the everyday violence of neoliberal capitalism has been absorbed by our own institutions and profession—like the corporatized remaking of an entrepreneurial humanities—this seminar strives to offer a reminder of the need to revive criticism and insists on the possibilities of understanding the human through poetry, literature, and the arts. By drawing our collective attention to the globalization of a New Right political culture, it seeks to call us to a skeptical and worldly criticism and pedagogy against some of the most powerful tendencies in the profession as well as the wider world. The participants hope to draw attention to the contribution that the critical and aesthetic humanities can make to the broader social and political debates of our times.

Event will run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., with a reception to follow from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Johns Hopkins University is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit institution that does not endorse or oppose any candidate for public office.