{"id":784,"date":"2009-02-24T15:58:47","date_gmt":"2009-02-24T23:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=784"},"modified":"2009-02-24T15:58:47","modified_gmt":"2009-02-24T23:58:47","slug":"rhetorics-of-the-plague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/rhetorics-of-the-plague\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhetorics of the Plague"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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The University at Albany\u2019s<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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Department of English
\nAnd
\nCollege of Arts and Sciences<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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Presents<\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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Rhetorics of Plague:
\n<\/span><\/h2>\n

Early \/ Modern Trajectories of Biohazard <\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n

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February 26-27, 2009<\/strong>University at Albany<\/strong>
\nThe Standish Room, Science Library Building<\/a><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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<\/td>\nfor details, time-table of events & locations click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Keynote Speakers:<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Kathleen Biddick<\/strong>, Temple University<\/p>\n

Graham Hammill<\/strong>, University at Buffalo<\/p>\n

John Kelly<\/strong>, Visiting Writer<\/p>\n

Robert Markley<\/strong>, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

on Friday from<\/strong> 12:30-1:30 p.m. there will be <\/strong><\/h3>\n

reading\/performance<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

in the Standish Room:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n\n

\u201cContaminations\u201d\u2014A Performance Piece<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/td>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n\n

With Pierre Joris, Tom\u00e1s Urayo\u00e1n Noel, Michael Peters, Chris Rizzo, Jackie Roberts<\/h3>\n

\"flea\"<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The threat of biological catastrophe\u2014including that by AIDS, ebola, avian influenza, and species extinction\u2014may seem the specific and daunting provenance of late 20th- and early 21st \u2013century life, but it has in fact been a crucial part of history since ancient times.\u00a0 It is important to remember, for instance, that starting in the 14th century and extending well into the 18th, the bubonic plague (as the Black Death) ultimately took the lives of at least 35% of the entire population in Europe, as well as nearly that much in central Asia, killing an estimated total of 75 million people.\u00a0 Given these numbers, it could be argued that premodern and early modern cultures had even more at stake in articulating the role of plague\u2014not to mention the related phenomena of cholera, syphilis, small pox, the so-called English Sweating Sickness, or extensive urban infestations, which are only a few of the shockwaves that preceded our own anxiety about spectacular biological disaster.\u00a0 This symposium therefore proposes rethinking the connections among recent models, representations, or biocultures of biological threat and their counterparts in the pre- and early modern eras.<\/p>\n

A focus on the \u201crhetorics\u201d of plague highlights the ways in which biological danger becomes conceptually organized, ethically ordered, or socio-politically oriented by the discourses that represent it.\u00a0 It also underscores the crossing or hybridization of discourses, such as the ways in which early views of medical pandemic, in the absence of a theory of germ contagion, could be linked to models of ecological or environmental dysfunction, or the manner in which disease of the body natural could metaphorize the maladies of the body politic. \u00a0Furthermore, in addition to accounting for the interrelated scientific, literary, or philosophical conventions invoked by such discourses, it is important to acknowledge that, like the biological volatility they describe, discourses about plague can undergo their own kind of exponential proliferation, producing a potential plague of rhetorics.\u00a0 While such discourses may have predominantly originated in the metropolitan centers of Europe, there is also the need to account for their transformation or mutation when applied in non-Western or colonial contexts, as well as for the emergence of counter-discourses from non-European sources\u2014such as China or the Middle East\u2014that may have challenged European models of pandemic explanation, particularly as they have undergirded imperial ambitions.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The University at Albany\u2019s Department of English And College of Arts and Sciences Presents Rhetorics of Plague: Early \/ Modern Trajectories of Biohazard February 26-27, 2009University at Albany The Standish Room, Science Library Building...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1731,633,739],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-performance","tag-rhetorics-of-thre-plague","tag-university-at-albany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}