Next meeting: Ursula K. Heise's "Lost Dogs, Last Birds, and Listed Species: Cultures of Extinction"

At last week's meeting, the group decided to look at some terms and think about how we might frame or ground our discussions of "worlds." We read Jacques Derrida's "Globalization, Peace, Cosmopolitanism", in which he attempts to define "mondialisation" against what he reads as the more Eurocentric term "globalization," in conversation with Victor Li (U.Toronto)'s rejoinder, "Elliptical Interruptions: Why Derrida Prefers Mondialisation to Globalization." We read affirmatively and suspiciously, using a deconstructive reading mode to agree on the limits of theoretical debates about worlding in addition to the problems they allow us to identify. Thanks for a great discussion! Feel free to comment if you are interested in receiving copies of these readings.

Our next session will be on Wednesday, Dec. 4th at 4:30 in CNH 317. We will be discussing a piece by Ursula K. Heise, whose work at the intersection of contemporary environmental culture, literature and art in the Americas, Western Europe and Japan, theories of globalization, literature and science, and the digital humanities will allow us to take up worlding from yet another lens. The article, selected by Matt Zantingh, is titled "Lost Dogs, Last Birds, and Listed Species: Cultures of Extinction"; please send us an e-mail if you would like further information or a copy of the .pdf.