Pictured on the first morning of the conference.
| Intellectuals and the Nation State | |
| A Conference at the William Jefferson Clinton Auditorium, UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin 30 Nov-1 Dec 2005 |
Intellectuals and The Nation-State Conference Report
Liam Kennedy
From 29th November to 1st December 2005, the UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies hosted its first international conference, devoted to discussion of 'Intellectuals and the Nation-State'. What role and effect do intellectuals have in the making and contesting of national identities and state policies? Ninety participants from more than twelve countries gathered to consider historical and current implications of this questions
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Pictured on the first morning of the conference. |
The event got off to a terrific start with a public lecture by Professor Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher who has developed a huge international readership. With a talk titled 'Ignorance of Chicken, or, The Limits of the Freedom of Thought', Professor Zizek did not disappoint a full lecture theatre of eager listeners, his talk inducing amusement and bemusement in about equal measure. There was a very lively Q&A and discussions continued into the reception held in Professor Zizek's honour. |
Following this the conference moved into an intensive two days of plenary and panel sessions. The plenary sessions were all invigorating and developed some of the key themes. Professor Terry Eagleton (University of Manchester) spoke on Irish intellectuals and the idea of a public sphere. Professor Donald Pease (Dartmouth College) assessed the impact of a post-9/11 American Exceptionalism on frameworks of intellectual inquiry. Professor Eric Lott (University of Virginia) spoke on the cultural politics of 'baby boomer' intellectuals in the US.
| Our closing plenary session, a roundtable discussion chaired by Professor Declan Kiberd (University College Dublin), with able support from Professor Donald Pease and Dr Conor McCarthy (Mater Dei Institute for Education), was an especially lively and thought-provoking session, as alsmost all conference participants pitched in their views and arguments. | 
Prof. Terry Eagleton in conversation with Prof. Liam Kennedy |
The panel sessions interacted productively with the plenary sessions and with each other as speakers warmed to the themes and spoke on topics such as: the intellectual formations of neoconservatism; race and intellectual constituencies, the role of critical thinking and the value of ideas in the increasingly global 'knowledge society'; the role of intellectuals in government and in the formation of state policy; the relation of intellectuals to the national imaginary (several papers examined Irish intelletuals and intellectual formations). We are grateful to all who contributed so fully in their sessions and beyond.
Prof. Donald Pease (Dartmouth College), Prof. Declan Kiberd (UCD) and
Dr. Conor McCarthy (Mater Dei Institute for Education) at the roundtable
discussion |
 Prof.
Luke Gibbons (Notre Dame), Prof. Donald Pease (Dartmouth College), Dr.
Hamilton Carroll (CIAS) & Prof. Eric Lott (Univeresity of Virginia |
Overall, this was a stimulating and productive event that is already receiving very positive feedback from participants. It has contributed to the development of our research networks and we look forward to building on this. We hope that the great intellectual energy of this conference will be a feature of future Clinton Institute events.
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Prof. Liam Kenndy |
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Prof. Slovaj Zizek
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And the after photos!
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Tuesday 29th November
VENUE Q015, Quinn School of Business, UCD
6.00pm - 7.00pm Registration
7.oopm Keynote Lecture:
Slavoj Zizek (Institute of Sociology, Ljubljana/Birkbeck Institute for
the Humanities, London)
The Ignorance of Chicken, or, the Limits of the Freedom of
Thought
8.30pm Reception
Wednesday 30th November
VENUE William Jefferson Clinton Auditorium, UCD
9.30am
Welcome
Liam Kennedy (UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies)
10.00am
Terry Eagleton (University of Manchester)
Irish Intellectuals and the Public Sphere
11.00am Tea/Coffee
11.15am - 12.45pm Panels A 1 - A 4
A1: Intellectuals and US Government
Amy E. Davis (UCLA), Intellectuals and Public Policy: Economists in the Kennedy Administration
David Milne (University of Nottingham), Walt Rostow, Stages of Economic Growth and the Vietnam War
A2: Intellectuals and the University
Bram Ieven (Leiden University), Passing through Thought: Politics of the University
Stephen Wallace (Bournemouth University), The Organisation of Ignorance
David Small (University of Canterbury), The Challenge of Being Critic and Conscience in a One-Size-Fits-All Society
A3: Europe
Bryan Ruppert (University of Birmingham), Advocating (Inter)National Identity: The Contribution of Post-War German Essayists to the Setting of New Objectives of State
Stefan Auer (UCD, DEI), Public Intellectuals, East and West: Jan Patocka and Václav Havel in Contention with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Slavoj Zizek
Nevena Dakovic (University of Arts, Belgrade), EU Integrations and Serbian Intellectuals
A4: Race and Intellectual's Affiliation
Richard Ellis (University of Birmingham), David Walker, Walker's Appeal, Intellectualism and the Race Issue in 1820s America
Harilaos Stecopoulas (University of Iowa), The Empire Rag
Andreas Hess (University College Dublin), Strange Encounter of the Third Kind: W.E.B. DuBois and C.L.R James
12.45pm - 2.00pm Lunch
2.00pm - 3.30pm Panels B1 - B4
B1: Ireland I
Eugene O'Brien (University of Limerick), Was ist{die neue} Aufklarung?: Towards a Redefinition of the Critical Intellectual in Contemporary Ireland
Rosemarie Rowley (Poet & Independent Scholar), The Role of the Intelligentsia as Dissidents in the Modern Nation State
Elaine Moriarty (Trinity College Dublin), Conceptualisations, Appropriations and Implications: A Critical Consideration of the Role of Intellectuals in Promoting 'In-Between' Discourses in the Quest to RE-imagine Irishness
B2: Philosophy and the State
Stefan Vogt (Duitsland-Instituut, University of Amsterdam), The "Socialist Decision": Paul Tillich's Search for an Alliance with Nationalism Against National Socialism
Toru Yamamori (University of Cambridge), Can Liberalism Go Beyond the Nation-States? Amartya Sen on Identity
B3: Global Intellectuals
Daniel Geary (University of Nottingham), "Becoming International Again": C. Wright Mills and the Global New Left
Ioana Luca (University of Bucharest), Speaking the Truth to Power: Edward Said's Memoir
Neil McLaughlin (McMaster University), Global Public Intellectuals and Academic Professions
B4: Intellectuals and Policy
Marshall DeRosa (Florida Atlantic University), Ideas Have Consequences: The Emerging Influence of European and World Jurisprudence on American Case Law
Richard Devine (Clark University), Political Opinion Influence Roles: Intellectuals and the State
Kelly L. Staples (University of Manchester), The Cosmopolitan Intellectual in Action: Onora O'Neill
3.30pm Tea/Coffee
4pm
Donald Pease (Dartmouth University)
American Studies After US Exceptionalism: The Responsibility of the
Intellectual
Thursday 1st December
9.30am - 10.30am
Eric Lott (University of Virginia)
Waving the Flag: 9/11, Patriotism, and the Nation-State
10.30am Tea/Coffee
11.00am -12.30pm Panels C1 - C4
C1: Ireland II
John Edwards (St Francis Xavier University), The Intellectual Presence in Nationalist Revival Efforts
Diarmuid Whelan (University College Cork), "The Kimmage Junta": The New Left Wing of the Irish Nation in Post-War Ireland
Bryan Fanning (University College Dublin), "Thinking for Ireland": The Bell and The Crane Bag as National Intellectual Projects
C2: Neoconservatism
Richard King (University of Nottingham), Why Are Straussians Conservatives - Or Art They?
Thomas Kane (University of Hull), The New New Rome? Machiavellianism in 21st Century American Foreign Policy
Maria Ryan (University of Birmingham), Neoconservatives and the State: The Dilemmas of Strategy and Ideology
C3: Action and Inaction
Alan Sandry (University of Wales Institute Cardiff), The Intellectuals' Conundrum: Neutralisty and the Nation-State
David Dwan (Queen's University Belfast), Metaphysically True, Politically False: The Intellectual in Politics
Gerardine Meeney (University College Dublin), Real Politics: Changing Realities and Imaging Death
C4: Other Americas
Joy Porter (University of Wales), The Dilemma of the Indigenous Intellectual in Relation to the Nation-State/Market State
Padraig Kirwan (The University of Dublin, Trinity College), The Sioux Writer and the Sioux Nation: Nationalism as Image in the Work of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
Hamilton Carroll (University College Dublin ), Globalization, the Nation-State, and the Field Imaginaries of Contemporary American Studies
12.30pm Lunch
1.45pm - 3.15pm Panels D1 - D4
D1: Transatlantic Perspectives
Holly J. Hutton (The New School, New York), French Intellectuals Reading America
Skaidra Trilupaityte (Culture, Philosophy and Art Research Institute, Vilnius), Intellectuals and Post-Cold War Transatlantic Rhetoric
Liam Kennedy (University College Dublin), European Intellectuals and American Empire
D2: Writing the Nation
Tom Keegan (University of Iowa), Saint Roger: The Ghost of Roger Casement in Irish Literature
Hanita Brand (Bar Ilan University), Three Egyptian Intellectual Writers
D3: New Formations
Paola Zaccaria (University of Bari), Black on White: Narration and Photography in the (Counter) Public Sphere
Aislinn O'Donnell (University College Dublin), Enlarging Our Mentality Beyond the Nation-State
Ulrike Auga (Humboldt University to Berlin), Intellectuals and the Gender Question at the Dawn of Transnational Constellations
3.15pm - 3.45pm Tea/Coffee
3.45pm - 5.15pm Panels E1 - E4
E1: Political Intellectuals
Anne Kornhauser (Princeton University), Who is an American Intellectual? The Case of the German Emigires to the United States
Scott Lucas (University of Birmingham), Neither Right Nor Left: Intellectuals, Intervention, and the US State
Pierre Guerlain (Université Paris X Nanterre), Robert Kagan and Noam Chomsky: Two Ways of Being a Political Intellectual
E2: Postcolonial Conditions
Rosetta Sirico-Codling (Bircham International University), A Modest Proposal: Decolonising the Mind from Nervous Conditions
Paula Murphy (Mary Immaculate College), "What is Your Nation?": Psychoanalysis, Post-Colonialism and Multiracial Ireland
E3: Race and Intellectual Constituencies
Kristina Morris Baumli (University of Pennsylvania), A Southerner of a Different Stripe: Robert Penn Warren and Government Creation of Liberal Opposition to Martin Luther King Jr.
Markha Valenta (Free University, Amsterdam), Do We Dare Go Hungry?: Of Intellectuals and Their Constituencies in the Face of War-Or-Risking Islamism
5.15pm Tea/Coffee
5.45pm
Round Table Discussion
Declan Kiberd (University College Dublin)
Conor McCarthy (Mater Dei Institute of Education)
Helen Meaney (Arts Council)