Dissertation Workshop
Tri-University Dissertation Workshop
The dissertation workshop is a joint initiative by the Critical Theory Cluster at Northwestern, the Goethe University, Frankfurt and the École Normale Supérieure, Paris (ENS Paris) to create a forum in which original research engaging with the tradition of critical theory is presented and discussed. The annual three-day event rotates between Evanston, Frankfurt and Paris and offers graduate students and faculty the opportunity to come together and discuss their current research.
Developed from a long-standing collaboration among the three universities, the workshop provides an intense cooperative environment for graduate students to develop and publicize their dissertation projects in conjunction with faculty lectures that highlight new and emerging areas of interdisciplinary scholarship in critical theory.
Among the speakers at the 2017 workshop are Penelope Deutscher (philosophy, Northwestern) and Thomas Lemke (Goethe-University, Frankfurt).
Dissertation projects include papers on:
- The Judeo-Christian concept of ”anointing” in the context of olfactory practices and poetics.
- The spectacle of the human body in eighteenth-century experimental natural philosophy and literature.
- Exploration of the notion of the “underground” in nineteenth-century German and French literature.
- Human-animal ethics from visual and literary representations of hunting.
- The structure of global governance from Kant's idea of perpetual peace to contemporary planetary challenges.
- The concept of utility in Aristotle, Spinoza and Marx.
The 2017 workshop in Frankfurt is organized with financial support from the Graduate School's Mellon Cluster Catalyst grant.
To participate in the Tri-University Dissertation Workshop, visit the Critical Theory Cluster website.