Pitt Sponsors International Conference March 18-19 on the Work of Philosopher Jacques Rancière

PITTSBURGH—Jacques Rancière, professor emeritus of aesthetics at the University of Paris VIII, and a group of North American and European scholars will discuss Rancière's theory of aesthetics and politics during a March 18 and 19 conference in 2500 Posvar Hall, 230 S. Bouquet St., Oakland. The free public conference, titled Jacques Rancière: Aesthetics and Politics, is sponsored by Pitt's Arts & Sciences Faculty Research and Scholarship Program, Center for West European Studies, University Center for International Studies, Department of English, French and Italian Graduate Student Organization, University Honors College, and Program for Cultural Studies.

Rancière's work has gained increased recognition in the last few years, in particular his claims that modern society is best understood as an aesthetic configuration. According to Rancière, society distributes identities and decides who is heard and who is not, who can speak and who cannot, who is visible and who remains unseen. Through detailed readings of literature, art, and movies, Rancière investigates the way aesthetics since the French revolution and German Romanticism have challenged society's divisions and hierarchies.

According to Philip Watts, associate professor of French and chair of Pitt's Department of French and Italian Languages and Literatures, "Rancière's work is important because he asks us to rethink the relation between politics and art. Politics, in this sense, relies upon aesthetics, upon sense perception. … Art, for it's part, is political, not because of its message or because of the commitments of an author, but because the work of art reconfigures the rules and hierarchies of today's democratic societies."

In addition to Pitt scholars, the conference includes presentations by faculty members from Clemson University, Cornell University, Emory University, Kenyon College, Rutgers University, the University of Connecticut, Université de Grenoble, the University of London, the University of Middlesex, and Université de Montréal. It concludes at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, March 19, with a keynote address by Rancière.

For a detailed schedule of events, call Pitt's Department of French and Italian Languages and Literatures at 412-624-5220 or visit www.pitt.edu/~frit.

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