The Neil Postman Graduate Conference

NYU Steinhardt's Department of Media, Culture, and Communication presents the 2012 Neil Postman Graduate Conference with philosopher Simon Critchley as keynote speaker
In the past year we have been confronted with many sites of present and impending collapse: the collapse of oppressive regimes in the Arab world, a global economy pushed to its limits, our own political system in paralysis, the teetering of the fourth estate, continuing environmental collapse and so on. In each of these sites, visions of apocalypse exist alongside those of renewal, inviting the imagination of new forms of organization and sustainability. In the academy, they are prompting new interdisciplinary assessments of the conditions – historical, social, political, economic, cultural, technological – that have brought us to these limits, and are forcing the question: where might we go from here? In light of the above, the 2012 Neil Postman Graduate Conference takes Thinking Through Collapse as its theme. The conference will consist of several panels of academic paper presentations, with an afternoon roundtable discussion on the limits of art, especially as a tool to attempt empathy and political change, and the problems arising from the representation of others through these attempts. The afternoon session will also address institutional limits, and an overall need to "collapse" those walls, as well as the boundaries between the artist and subject, and art and reality.