Re-Thinking Literature brings together philosophers, writers, critics and theoreticians of literature and art, to examine what, in the 21st Century, is understood when we speak about "literature." We still ask familiar questions such as “What is the situation of the writer today? What does literature mean today?” but ask them today undetermined by preexisting “isms,” past the dogmas of recent years, post-Post, as it were. Re-Thinking Literature seeks new, multiple perspectives for the meaning and significance of the cultural construct “literature” today—and examines how a younger generation of literary thinkers and practitioners deals with it.

10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. 

Stathis Gourgouris, Columbia, critic

Heiner Müller's Lyric Loneliness

Camille de Toledo, writer
Empowering Literature in the XXI Century. A Glossary

Wayne Koestenbaum, CUNY, poet, cultural critic
Corpse Pose

2:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. 

Shelley Jackson, writer, artist

The Shelley Jackson School for Ghost Speakers and Hearing-Mouth Children

Ben Lerner, poet, novelist
Virtual Ekphrasis: Fiction as Criticism and Curation

Jean-Philippe Toussaint, novelist, filmmaker
Writing Today

Joshua Cohen, novelist, critic
WIKI, What I Know Is

Camille Laurens, novelist, essayist
Re-Thinking / Re-Feeling

7:00 p.m.

Hélène Cixous, Paris VIII, novelist, essayist, philosopher

Keynote address: Ay Yay: The Shout of Literature

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