Formalism and Its Discontents
An Interdisciplinary Conference

Conference Schedule

Thursday, February 23

1:00-1:30pm | Coffee

1:30-3:00pm | Panel, The Politics of Forms and the Forms of Politics

Geetha Ramanathan, "Enchantment of (Modernist) Forms"
Daniel Hazard, “Frantz Fanon and the Antinomies of Form”
Jason Bartles, "The Mandrake Syndrome: Somers and the Enigma"

3:00-3:15pm | Coffee Break

3:15-4:45pm | Panel, Theorizing Form

Wendy Xin, “The Melancholy of Form”
Robert Machado, "The Micro-events + Micro-stories of Color vs. Line/Form"
Elias Kleinbock, "Informe and Atheology: In Search of Creaturely Love"

4:45-5:00pm | Coffee Break

5:00-6:30pm | Keynote
Caroline Levine, "Formalism for a Change: New Models for Collective Life"

6:30-7:00pm | Reception


Friday, February 24

9:30-10:00am | Coffee and Breakfast

10:00-11:30am | Panel, Form and Materiality

Noga Bernstein, "John Dewey and the Question of Decoration"
George Adams, "'Because They Didn't Know How to Listen': On the Formal Analysis of Conceptual Music"
Anna-Maria C. Bartsch, "The Rise and Fall of 'Formal Aesthetics' in 19th-century Germany"

11:30-11:45am | Coffee Break

11:45am-1:15pm | Panel, Modes of Formalist Reading

Morgan Thomas, "Form/Matter: Greenberg, Kafka, Rothko"
Caleb Agnew, "Don't Touch Me: Finding Form in Twentieth-Century American Poetry"
Daniel Braun, "I. A. Richards’ Formal Experiments"

1:15-2:30pm | Lunch (provided)

2:30-4:00pm | Roundtable

4:00-4:15pm | Coffee Break

4:15-5:45pm | Keynote
Seth Brodsky, "The Silence of Forms, the Music of Discontent”

5:45-6:15pm | Reception