Department of English

• Wednesday, July 17, 2019 - 2:00pm to 4:00pm

Fisher-Bennett Hall Faculty Lounge  

From Plato’s Republic to Shelley’s unacknowledged legislators to CIA cultural diplomacy to Rankine’s Citizen, the connections between literature and the state have been a recurrent problematic in literary study and literary production. How does the institution of literature contribute to the theory of the state? How does literature mediate the state? Is the state a form or a content? Why have humanists so often understood their work as anti-institution and anti-state? What are the major differences and continuities in the scope and functioning of the British state from the C19 to the C21? Why is it important to theorize the state distinctly from the nation? 

Readings:

Friedrich Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (excerpt) 
Zarena Aslami, The Dream Life of Citizens (intro)
Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism (excerpt)