2002-2003 Center Theme

War

Within the context of its long-standing mission, the Center's research focus in 2002-03, war, offers us the opportunity to contribute scholarly and critical insights to debate on issues of pressing public moment. Construing both "war" and "politics," its binary in Carl von Clausewitz's familiar dictum, as broadly as possible enables an attitude of engaged yet critical reflection encompassing any relationship in which the terminology of armed conflict has played a crucial interpretive role. We are particularly interested in illuminating the ways in which "war" and related terms play off each other to produce meaning and construct subjects. Topics for discussion this year will include the legal, ethical, social, political, and religious dimensions of war, war's cultural and aesthetic manifestations and the engagement of the arts and media both in and against war, the gendering of conflict in various discursive formations, linguistic aspects of war, and the role of military expressions in shaping other concepts, endeavors, and fields of inquiry.

Center for 21st Century Studies

Daniel J. Sherman, Director