We are pleased to invite you to our next SCFS Interdisciplinary Research Seminar.

Dr Asya Kudlenko will give a talk entitled

‘Governance of Security in the Complex World: the EU and Security Sector Reform (SSR) in the Western Balkans’

Room R2.41 Ramphal Building on Wednesday, 7 June 2023, 12:00-1:00 pm.

Please see more details and register for the event via this link:

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/schoolforcross-facultystudies/events_calendar/events/research_seminar_dr_asya_kudlenkoLink opens in a new window 

Abstract:

The presentation is based on the recently released monograph, which uses complexity thinking to trace the co-evolution of the Western Balkans as part of the EU/Europe security community and the European Union (EU) as a security actor. It aims to analyse the suitability and adaptability of EU security governance to a VUCA world, i.e. a world of increasing vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—the world of transformative change. It takes a detailed view on the transformation of regional and state security in the Western Balkans and the EU’s role in the process between 1991, the year that marked the flare-up of violence and large-scale conflict, and 2013, when the first state of the region joined the EU.

Speaker: Dr Asya Kudlenko, Research Fellow, Institute for Global Sustainable Development

Abstract: The presentation is based on the recently released monograph, which uses complexity thinking to trace the co-evolution of the Western Balkans as part of the EU/Europe security community and the European Union (EU) as a security actor. It aims to analyse the suitability and adaptability of EU security governance to a VUCA world, i.e. a world of increasing vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—the world of transformative change.

In the FAB and online in the DAHL Events Teams channel.Link opens in a new window

‘Augustus and his bimillennium in the soft power strategy of the Fascist regime’ [rescheduled from 30/11/2022]

Calling everyone in the Arts interested in how we approach capitalism and comprehend its changes over time!

American Studies Research Group welcomes you to a hybrid seminar with Leigh Claire La Berge and Thomas Travers.

When: Wednesday, 7^th June – 16.00-18.00 (BST)

Where: Online / Room 1.06, The Oculus, University of Warwick, CV4 7AL

La Berge's talk is titled, “There is ‘No More’ Commodification".

As La Berge describes: “In this talk, I will explore the relationship between perceived increases in the intensity of various capitalist processes and schemes of periodisation that literary and cultural scholars rely on in their critique of capitalism. I will pay particular attention to discussions of abstraction and commodification as they have been employed in critical and literary theory in the past twenty years, and I will question whether such processes really do increase and whether they provide a sure enough conceptual ground to situate the kind of temporal unity that periodisation requires.”

Travers' talk is titled, “Beamed in Ahead of Schedule: The Novel After Value”.

As Travers describes: ”Faced with protracted economic stagnation, expanding surplus populations, and ongoing ecological collapse, Marxist literary scholarship has moved away from theorising the capitalist world-system in terms of its sublime complexity, with critical attention now directed towards the production of non-production. Taking Don DeLillo as a guide through the signal and perhaps terminal crisis of US hegemony, this talk will consider how recent efforts to re-periodise the post-1960s era as being 'after-yet-within' or simply 'after' value might affect uHnderstandings of the novel.”

Leigh Claire La Berge is assistant professor of English at the City University of New York (BMMC). She is the author of Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s (Oxford, 2014), Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art (Duke, 2019), and the forthcoming Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary (Duke, 2023).

Thomas Travers is the author of Peripheralizing DeLillo (Bloomsbury, 2022). His work on the novel, critical theory, and imaginary labour has been published in Textual Practice and A Secret Plot.

To register, please state whether you will attend in-person or online by emailing will.berrington@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window 

Once registered, a Microsoft Teams invite will be emailed to you closer to the time.

For any questions, please email the same address.

Details here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/events?calendarItem=8a1785d8882e15cc018842d977e12258Link opens in a new window

American Studies Research Group at Warwick welcomes you to the hybrid seminar, "Periodising Capitalism Today," with talks from Leigh Claire La Berge and Thomas Travers. As constants like US hegemony and capitalism’s inexhaustible dynamism appear to be slowly unravelling, we face the question of how we comprehend these shifts and — perhaps more significantly — of what we now ground our analyses on. Taking note of this unravelling, La Berge and Travers question if certain periodising frameworks were ever fit for purpose and posit how we might periodise in relation to capitalism today. Beyond appealing to scholars within American Studies and the humanities, these talks should appeal to anyone concerned with how we approach capitalism and comprehend its changes over time. 

La Berge's talk is titled, “There is ‘No More’ Commodification".