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social theory

Global Asias - Third Speaker

Please join the Committee on Social Theory for the third speaker in our Spring 2024 Speaker Series on the theme of Global Asias happening on Friday, April 19 at 2 pm ET in the UK AA Alumni Auditorium at the William T. Young Library with Dr. Tansen Sen! 

This series will be featuring guest speakers engaging with interdisciplinary approaches across the humanities and social sciences to address the intensified contestation about Asia in light of the shifting geopolitical dynamics in the Asia-Pacific area and globally. The framing seminar which incorporates these guest speakers, ST 690/ MCL 525/ GWS 595: Global Asias, is co-taught by Dr. Liang Luo and Charlie Yi Zhang.

Date:
Location:
UK AA Alumni Auditorium, William T. Young Library
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In the Mood for Texture: The Revival of Bangkok as a Chinese City

Please join the Committee on Social Theory for the second speaker in our Spring 2024 Speaker Series on the theme of Global Asias happening on Friday, March 1 at 2 pm ET in B&E Room 191 in the Gatton Business School with Dr. Arnika Fuhrmann

This series will be featuring guest speakers engaging with interdisciplinary approaches across the humanities and social sciences to address the intensified contestation about Asia in light of the shifting geopolitical dynamics in the Asia-Pacific area and globally. The framing seminar which incorporates these guest speakers, ST 690/ MCL 525/ GWS 595: Global Asias, is co-taught by Dr. Liang Luo and Charlie Yi Zhang. 

Lecture Abstract

What does it mean to imagine “Asia” beyond the reductive visions of contemporary policy? This
talk explores the contemporary visual culture of Chinese pasts and colonial modernities, revived
in the cinemas, new media, hospitality venues, and other material sites of Bangkok. Examining
the doubling of Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Shanghai across these sites, it investigates how a
transregional Chinese modernity that emerged under but always exceeded conditions of colonial
and national governance informs the present. As film directors such as Wong Kar-wai and hotels,
bars, and clubs revive 1930s Shanghai and 1960s Hong Kong modernities—and exploit the
Chinese past of Bangkok’s old European trading quarters—this redeployment of (semi-)colonial
histories and Chinese urban pasts is emerging as a primary signifier of the good life and
understandings of Asia in the present. The deployment of this twentieth century translocal
modernity points to enduring regional imaginaries that diverge from global notions of “China
Rising,” the People’s Republic’s own Belt and Road Initiative, or the policies of the Association
for Southeast Asian Nations. Bangkok—as a Chinese city—stands at the center of these
prominent, transregional revivals in which media and urban design projects speak of radically
different desires than those of current policy.

Date:
Location:
B&E Room 191 (Gatton Business School)
Tags/Keywords:

"Pharmakonic Tobacco: A History of Masculinity & Biopolitics from the mid-Atlantic to Mao's China"

Please join the Committee on Social Theory for the first speaker in our Spring 2024 Speaker Series on the theme of Global Asias happening on Friday, February 16 at 2 pm ET in the UK AA Alumni Auditorium at the William T. Young Library with Dr. Matthew Kohrman

This series will be featuring guest speakers engaging with interdisciplinary approaches across the humanities and social sciences to address the intensified contestation about Asia in light of the shifting geopolitical dynamics in the Asia-Pacific area and globally. The framing seminar which incorporates these guest speakers, ST 690/ MCL 525/ GWS 595: Global Asias, is co-taught by Dr. Liang Luo and Charlie Yi Zhang. 

Lecture Abstract

Michel Foucault died in 1984 at age 57. Since his untimely demise, an array of scholars have developed his notions regarding the cross pollination of sovereignty and biopower, with a new wave of publications triggered by Covid-19 (Murray 2022, Rouse 2021). Amidst this vibrant theory building, large blind spots have remained, including two perennials of human experience: patriarchy and easily cultivated psychoactive drugs. In this talk, I chronicle that a specific psychoactive botanical, native to the Americas, has had an oversized role in sovereignty’s shapeshifting amidst biopower. I trace how, from the Columbian Exchange onset, tobacco came to be regularly coded a prerogative of male dominance, placing it ‘in the room’ at the birth of sovereignty-biopower synergies. And I track how such synergies, from North America to China, have regularly piggybacked on a distinctive doubling inherent to tobacco, it being something which people have long characterized as life ending and life enhancing, even medicinal. I dub this pharmakonism: processes wherein regimes, notably patriarchal, accrue power by reconciling and leveraging a commonplace thing's shifting attributes, good and bad, tonic and toxin. I develop this concept vis-a-vis tobacco with the hope it'll aid more than abstract biopolitical musing. May it also help clarify why – despite much condemnation over the last century, despite ouster from many quarters of polite society – tobacco is smoked by more people today worldwide than ever before, it remains the number cause of preventable human death, and why, if you wish, you can lawfully purchase cigarettes in nearly every country you visit. 

Date:
Location:
UK AA Alumni Auditorium, William T. Young Library
Tags/Keywords:

Work-in-Progress Workshop with Dr. Lauren Cagle November 17, 2023

Please join the Committee on Social Theory as we hear from Dr. Lauren Cagle as she discusses a draft chapter of her upcoming book manuscript, Slide Charts: Paper Computers in the Modern Age.

Dr. Cagle will present on the chapter before Dr. Fátima Espinoza Vásquez (University of Kentucky) and Dr. Guy McHendry (Creighton University) discuss and provide critical responses. 

This event will be held at the Bingham Davis House on Friday, November 17 from 3-4 pm. 

New Affiliates Presentations November 3, 2023

Please join the Committee on Social Theory as we hear from new Social Theory affiliates as they introduce themselves and their work. 

There will be presentations from Austin Lillywhite (WRD), Emily Mokros (History), Geronimo Sarmiento Cruz (English), Karrieann Soto Vega (WRD), Lydia Pelot-Hobbs (Geography) and Martin Luther Chan (MCLLC). 

This event will be held at the Bingham Davis House on Friday, November 3, 2023 from 3-4:15 pm. 

New Affiliates Presentations November 3, 2023

Please join the Committee on Social Theory as we hear from new Social Theory affiliates as they introduce themselves and their work. 

There will be presentations from Austin Lillywhite (WRD), Emily Mokros (History), Geronimo Sarmiento Cruz (English), Karrieann Soto Vega (WRD), Lydia Pelot-Hobbs (Geography) and Martin Luther Chan (MCLLC). 

This event will be held at the Bingham Davis House on Friday, November 3, 2023 from 3-4:15 pm. 

Works-in-Progress Interest Form

The Committee on Social Theory (ST) is hosting work-in-progress workshops this upcoming academic year for faculty and grad students to share and receive friendly and productive feedback. We welcome scholarship--journal articles, book chapters, conference papers, proceedings--that is fully or mostly drafted. Each workshop will begin with a short presentation from the author, followed by discussions from the respondents.

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