University of Pittsburgh and London Consortium To Hold Research Forum Sept. 9-11 in London on Aftermath of 9/11 Attacks

Editors: The Research Forum is a by-invitation-only academic conference and not open to media coverage. However, Nancy Condee is available to speak to the media about the forum. She may be reached by phone (208/264-5517 before Aug. 26; and through her office, 412/624-7232, after that) and via e-mail at condee@pitt.edu.

August 9, 2002

Forum coordinated by Pitt's Graduate Program for Cultural Studies and the London Consortium, a graduate program of four London institutions: the Architectural Association, Birkbeck College, the Institute for Contemporary Arts, and the Tate Gallery

PITTSBURGH—The University of Pittsburgh and the London Consortium—

comprising the Architectural Association, Birkbeck College, the Institute for Contemporary Arts, and the Tate Gallery—will hold an international research forum in the U.K. titled "Innocence, Terror, Public Policy: The September 11th Anniversary" from Sept. 9 through 13 at Birkbeck College, University of London.

During the five-day seminar, organized jointly by Pitt's Graduate Program for Cultural Studies and the London Consortium's graduate program, Pitt faculty and graduate students will present papers and exchange views with academics and graduate students from U.K. universities on the impact of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon one year later.

In the months after the event, U.S. popular responses included a wealth of public mourning rituals, urban legends, hoaxes, displays of mass patriotism, and other cultural practices that have shaped public memory. According to Pitt associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures Nancy Condee, director of the Graduate Program for Cultural Studies, U.S. intellectuals and their colleagues abroad share little consensus in debates surrounding 9/11; nor, she says, can they agree on the role that they play as participants in the global discussion.

Workshop participants will address U.S. and international responses to 9/11, examining ways in which it redefined existing knowledge systems in many areas of public discourse. A selection of papers delivered during the seminar will be subject to review for publication in a special issue of Critical Quarterly (www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk).

Pitt participants, in addition to Condee, are Colin MacCabe, professor of English at Pitt and chairman of the London Consortium; Terry Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in History of Art and Architecture; Ronald A. T. Judy, professor of English; Eric O. Clarke, associate professor and director of graduate studies in English; Adam Lowenstein, assistant professor of English and film studies; Anustup Basu, Mellon Predoctoral Fellow in English; April Eisman, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History of Art and Architecture; and Richard Purcell, a Ph.D. candidate in English.

Participants from abroad are Anthony Barnett, political activist and journalist; Paul Hirst, academic director of the London Consortium; Denise Riley, reader, English literature, School of English and American Studies at the University of East Anglia; Jacqueline Rose, professor of English in the Department of English and Drama at London University's Queen Mary and Westfield College; Moustapha Safouan, a psychoanalyst; and Sami Zubaida, a reader in sociology in the Department of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College.

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