The Department of Comparative Literature at King’s College London is pleased to announce its international conference, “Desire/Knowledge: Critical Perspectives”, which will take place May 18-20, 2017 in the Council Room on the Strand Campus. Framed as part of a research collaboration between King’s, the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, this conference will explore the conceptually paired notions of desire and knowledge across a series of interventions drawn from multiple disciplines. The conference also features as its keynotes Professor Vincent Descombes, one of France’s foremost contemporary philosophers, and Professor Anne Vila, who will be the Society for French Studies Visiting Fellow at King’s in May-June 2017.
Attendance is free but registration is required.
To register, please click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/international-conference-desireknowledge-tickets-32685868312
Conference Programme:
May 18, 2017
9:30: Welcome
10-11:15: Session 1:
Michael Randall: “Mon flaiollet ne vault plus rien: On Sex, Music and Poetry in Jean Molinet”
Marc Gotlieb: “Giotto’s Nakedness, the Dueling Angels, and Other Tales from the Scene of Instruction”
11:15-11:30: Break
11:30-1: Session 2:
Michael Winston: “Desire, Approximately: Cornelius de Pauw's New World Bodies”
Kathryn Hoffmann: “Pathways of Desire, Labyrinths of Knowledge: Theorizing in Lost Museums”
1-2: Lunch
2-3:15: Session 3:
Nanette LeCoat: “Allegory, Enlightenment Orientalism, and the Ruins of Palmyra”
Robert Tomlinson: “The Triumph of Love: Desire and Knowledge in the Gardens of Socrates and Marivaux’s Hermocrate”
3:15-3:30: Break
3:30-4:45: Session 4:
Malina Stefanovska: “Knowledge and Desire in an Enlightenment Life: The Case of Casanova”
Ronan Chalmin: “La main de Thérèse: désir et savoir dans Thérèse philosophe (1748)”
5-6:30 Keynote 1:
Anne Vila: “Tales of Wit and Woe: Esprit and gens d’esprit from Montesquieu to Balzac”
8-11: Conference Speakers’ Dinner:
Cooper’s Restaurant
49 Lincoln's Inn Fields
London WC2A 3PF
May 19, 2017
10-11:15 Session 5:
David Bell: “Balzac’s Théorie de la démarche: Embodied Movement”
Steve Schwartz : “Desire, Knowledge, and the Reader’s Role in Two Novels by Flaubert”
11:15-11:30: Break
11:30 -1: Session 6:
Daniel Desormeaux: “Savoir, désir et dévouement dans Thémistocle-Épaminondas Labasterre (1901) de Frédéric Marcelin”
Soraya Tlatli: “A Desire for Islam in Contemporary Psychoanalysis”
1-2: Lunch
2-3:15: Session 7:
Patrick Ffrench: “Reasons Not to Move: Arguments against Desire and Knowledge in Late Beckett”
Sacha Golob: “The Transfer of Non-Knowledge: Bataille on Testimony”
3:15-3:30: Break
3:30-4:45: Session 8:
Jane Elliott & Seb Franklin: “Desire, Interest, and Digitality: Spivak on Political Economy”
5-6:30: Keynote 2:
Vincent Descombes: “Being Personal”
May 20, 2017
10:30-12: Forum and Closing Remarks