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UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies

Intellectuals and the Nation-State Conference

Call for Papers

30 November - 1 December 2005

Keynote Speakers include:

• Terry Eagleton (University of Manchester)
• Declan Kiberd (University College Dublin)
• Eric Lott (University of Virginia)
• Slavoj Zizek (Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana/Birkbeck College, University of London)

What role and effect do intellectuals have in the making and contesting of national identities and state policies? This conference will consider historical and current implications of this question.

The critical voice of the intellectual has long been considered important to the evolution of modern Western cultures.

• How and why was this voice so often tied to the development of national identity?
• How have ideals of intellectual autonomy and dissent been formulated within and across nation-states?
• What forms of intellectual production have states acknowledged and supported?
• What remains of the Enlightenmnet origins of the idea of the intellectual?

We will focus on current issues of intellectual identity and activity in the context of global challenges to the power and authority of the nation-state. Today, as new transnational networks of cultural interaction emerge and new public spheres take shape

• what is happening to the intellectual's affective relation to the nation-state?
• What is the role of critical thinking and the value of ideas in the increasingly global 'knowledge society'?
• What is the role of intellectuals in the making of a new world order and in shaping responses to international crises and conflicts?
• What is the role of think tanks and advocacy intellectuals in the formation of state policy?
• How have new media redefined intellectual activity and identity?

We invite single paper and panel proposals for this conference.

Please send a one-page proposal with a brief CV by 31st August 2005 to:

Catherine Carey
Clinton Institute for American Studies
William Jefferson Clinton Auditorium
University College Dublin
Belfield
Dublin 4
Ireland

Tel: +353 1 7161560
Fax: +353 1 7161562
Email Catherine.Carey@ucd.ie