Performance Artist Karen Finley to Preview Her New Work on The Eliot Spitzer Confession and Apology
New York University will host the 6th Annual Meeting of the Cultural Studies Association (CSA) on its campus in New York City on May 22 - 24, 2008. The CSA conference will provide a forum for scholars of Cultural Studies, in all its diverse manifestations, to exchange their work and ideas across disciplinary lines and institutional locations.
The panels and presentations of the 6th Annual Meeting are open to the New York University community and the general public free of charge. Those interested can also join the organization. For detailed information, visit http://www.csaus.pitt.edu/frame_home.htm. The three-day conference has been made possible by funding and contributions from NYU’s Department of Art and Public Policy and Department of Performance Studies, both in the Tisch School of the Arts (TSOA); NYU’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis in the College of Arts and Science; the Gallatin School, the NYU Humanities Initiative and the University of Maryland Program in American Cultures.
This year will feature numerous panels, plenary sessions, roundtable discussions, salons, a workshop, and a special preview of a new work by well-known performance artist Karen Finley. The plenary session topics are on New York and Culture, Gender and Sexuality, Law and Minorities. Plenary speakers are:
- Arlene Dávila, NYU, author of Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos and the Neoliberal City, and Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People
- Rosemary J. Coombe, Law, Communications and Cultural Studies, York University, author of The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties
- Janet R. Jakobsen, Barnard College, Columbia University, author of Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics, and co-author of Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance
- Jasbir Puar, Women’s and Gender Studies and Geography, Rutgers University, author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times
- Neil Smith, CUNY Graduate Center, author of American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization, and The Endgame of Globalization
The salons will be hosted by major cultural studies journals such as: Theory & Event, South Atlantic Quarterly, Boundary 2, Callaloo (special issue on Katrina and New Orleans), Positions: East Asia, Cultural Critique, Rethinking Marxism, Women & Performance, Radical History Review, and Signs (special issue on race/gendered logics of war and terror).
Performance artist and TSOA arts professor Karen Finley will give a special preview performance of her new work Impulse to Suck: The performance of the apology and the separation between sex and state on May 22, at 8 p.m., at 19 W. Fourth Street, Room 101. Finley will examine former Governor Eliot Spitzer’s confession, his apology, the imagining of the sexual encounter, the travel of the escort, the compulsion, the immigrant father’s plan for his son to succeed, and the couples imagined therapy sessions. Space is limited and seating is on a first come-first serve basis. For additional questions, call 212.992.8248.
Editor’s Note: Media interested in covering any portion of CSA’s 6th Annual Meeting, please contact Richard Pierce in advance, at 212.998.6796.