NYU Steinhardt's Department of Media, Culture, and Communication presents the 2012 Neil Postman Graduate Conference with philosopher Simon Critchley as keynote speaker

In the past year we have been confronted with many sites of present and impending collapse: the collapse of oppressive regimes in the Arab world, a global economy pushed to its limits, our own political system in paralysis, the teetering of the fourth estate, continuing environmental collapse and so on. In each of these sites, visions of apocalypse exist alongside those of renewal, inviting the imagination of new forms of organization and sustainability. In the academy, they are prompting new interdisciplinary assessments of the conditions – historical, social, political, economic, cultural, technological – that have brought us to these limits, and are forcing the question: where might we go from here?

In light of the above, the 2012 Neil Postman Graduate Conference takes Thinking Through Collapse as its theme.

10:00       Doors open | Coffee  

10:20       Welcome
                Marita Sturken, Chair, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication

10:30       “Speculative Realism and Catastrophe,” Aaron Pedinotti
               “Up Against the Wall/Motherfucker’s Politics of Immediacy,” Nadja Millner-Larsen

11:30       Producing Environments of Crisis: Economies, Histories and Politics
               “Delimiting Catastrophe and its Objects,” Max Liboiron
               "Feeding New York from the Bronx: A Journey into Hunts Point Produce Market, the
                Grand Central Station of Broccoli,” Jonathan Zalman
               “Depleting Legitimacy: North Korean Propaganda and the Great Famine,” Stephanie Llamas

12:45       Lunch

1:30        Panel: Europe in Crisis
              “Politics of Fiction in Antoine Volodine’s Work,” Claire Richard
              "Out of the rubble comes glorious noise: Artistic Responses to Collapse in Ireland,”
               Yvonne Garrett
              “Youth in the Not-Good-Enough Society: Postwar Balkans & Youth Politics,”
               Adnan Selimovic

2:45        Break

3:00        Keynote
              “Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit,” Simon Critchley, The New School for Social Research

3:30        Keynote Discussion

4:00        Roundtable: Art, Politics, and Critical Engagement Today
              Kouross Esmaeli, Jessica Feldman, Carlin Wing

5:15        Closing Remarks

5:30        Reception