Cornell's Society for the Humanities will host a 40th anniversary conference, "Postmodern Problematics," April 13 and 14 in the A.D. White House.

Cornell faculty and visiting scholars will consider the postmodern in the arts and literature and in related scholarship in the disciplines with panels, invitational lectures and a performance.

"This celebratory conference emphasizes this year's research paradigm, 'Historicizing the Global Postmodern,' and foregrounds the activities of the society, per se," said Timothy Murray, acting director of the Society for the Humanities.

"We'll have the participation of key Cornell faculty who have had strong interaction with the society, [including] former director of the society Jonathan Culler, former society fellow Naoki Sakai, who is in Asian studies and comparative literature, and Bruno Bosteels of romance studies," he said.

The conference also highlights research supported by the society, which invites four to six faculty fellows and two graduate fellows to participate each year.

"This has been a very fruitful and interesting year because our group of fellows comes from a wide range of disciplinary practices, from history and anthropology and science and technology studies to literature, comparative literature and music," Murray said.

Events April 13 include a musical performance by society fellow Gaby Vargas-Cetina, presentations on "Rethinking Postmodern Icons" (with topics including postcolonialism in the work of Cornell alumnus Thomas Pynchon) and "Post-War/Postmodern," a lecture by former society fellow Tom Conley of Harvard University.

On April 14, the schedule includes a panel discussion, "Dehistoricizing the Global Postmodern"; a talk on "Queer Marxism in Taiwan" by society fellow Petrus Liu, Cornell professor of comparative literature; and a lecture on Chinese cinema by Brown University's Rey Chow, a past faculty member of the School of Criticism and Theory based at Cornell. Eleanor Kaufman of the University of California-Los Angeles will lecture on "Badiou and the Thought of the Twentieth Century," and Murray will moderate a concluding roundtable.

"During the past four decades, the society has worked wonders in fostering interdisciplinary and cutting-edge scholarship at Cornell," said Michael Kammen, Cornell professor of history and director of the society from 1977 to 1980. "It has been a great stimulus to the life of the mind here and elsewhere, because our visiting fellows have taken the Cornell experience back to their home institutions. Many comparable programs created at other campuses have looked to ours as a model."

For more information, see http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/html/index.html.