present

"MARGINS OF VITALITY"

Organized by UCLA Mellon Fellows:

• Daniel Brownstein
• Andreas Killen
• Jennifer Mason
• Sean Quinlan

Wherein does the vital lie? The unstable borders between life, death, animality, and machines are fraught with powerful social and cultural associations that make them pressing objects of critical inquiry. Our conference interrogates these vital "margins" that divide the human from the non-human and blur negotiations between species, race, gender, and machines. Taking a broad chronological and interdisciplinary perspective, the speakers raise questions about the nature of active and inactive matter, reproduction and sex difference, bodies and machines, kinship and post-humanity - as well as related social practices of breeding, training, education, domestication, and representation.

Schedule

Friday, June 1
314 Royce Hall

1:00
Welcome, Vincent Pecora, UCLA

1:15
Carla Freccero
Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz
"Queer Nation: Sovereignty, Autogenesis, and Incest in the Early Modern
French State."

2:15
Mary Terrall
History, University of California, Los Angeles
"Generation, Materialism and Cross-Species Breeding in the Enlightenment"

3:30
Elizabeth A. Williams
History, Oklahoma State University
"Boundaries of the Living and Non-Living in French Enlightenment
Medicine."

4:30
Cary Wolfe
English, SUNY Albany
"Aficionados and Friend-Killers: Rearticulating Race and Gender via
Species in Hemingway."

Saturday, June 2
362 Royce Hall

1:00
Matt Price
Max-Planck Institute Berlin
"Prosthetics of Information: The Boston Arm and the Rise of the
Cybernetic Body, 1954-1970."

2:00
Tim Lenoir
Program in History and Philosophy of Science, Stanford University
"Semiotic Flesh: Coding the Posthuman Body"

3:00 ­ 3:30 Break

3:30
Keynote Address
Donna Haraway
History of Consciousness Program, University of California, Santa Cruz
"From Cyborgs to Companion Species: Kinship in Technoscience."

There is no admission fee for the events, limited seating available. Parking is $6 in Lot 5 of the UCLA campus. For further information, please contact Corie Goodloe at cgoodloe@humnet.ucla.edu.