Upcoming
July 4-6, 2024
Call for Papers
“Model Imaginaries: Literature, Economics, Abstraction”
International Conference at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, organized by James Dorson
Deadline for submission of proposals: February 15, 2024
Models shape the world we live in. As tools for reducing complexity, models are designed to reveal patterns of interaction that remain hidden to the naked eye. Abstracting, simplifying, condensing, or miniaturizing can be ways of making the world intelligible. But models also serve more than heuristic purposes. Models can be designs for something new, blueprints for building or redesigning the world around us. And when models are put to use, they enter into and may alter the world they model. Models are then not external to but part of what they seek to explain. They can become self-fulfilling prophecies, entering into feedback loops with the world, blurring the distinction between models of something and models for something.
This blurring of boundaries between model and world occurs not least in the discipline of economics, which exerts singular influence over policy decisions. From the normativization of John Stuart Mill’s pared-down model of “economic man” to the performativity of financial models as “engines, not cameras” in financial markets today, economic modeling has long exemplified the ambiguity of models as mediating mechanisms between the real and the ideal, description and prescription, showing and shaping. While the power of models to shape our world depends on their use by institutional actors, their widespread use depends on their aesthetic and cultural appeal. The “elegant simplicity” of models is a criterion for their success. Models of economic behavior are only performative when people conform to them, and for people to conform to them they need to be made attractive. The performativity of models is greatest when they take on a life of their own, when they circulate in cultural form independently from the methods and material interests that gave rise to them.
This conference inquires into the role that culture generally and literature more specifically play in mediating between models of and models for something. With a particular interest in economic modeling and model economies, we ask: How are model abstractions made accessible and circulated in cultural form to the public? How does literature embody or provide intimate experiences of models? What genres, modes, or styles engage in modeling practices and what models of knowledge do they generate? How are models narrativized or narratives modelized, and what happens in the space between model and narrative? How does literary remodeling or countermodeling provide alternative forms of—or challenge what counts as—economic knowledge? How does literature model models? And how do literary models reflect on or redress the biases and blind spots of economic modeling?
We invite proposals for presentations on any topic that engages with these questions or others on the intersection of culture and literature, economics, and modeling.
Please submit your abstract of around 300 words and a short bio by February 15 to James Dorson at dorson@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Past
November 2-3,
2023
“Digital Cultures and Economic Modeling”
Workshop at Düsseldorf University organized by Regina Schober and Caroline Kögler
The following talks will be held online and are open to the public:
Thursday, November 2, 5:00-7:00 pm (c.t.)
Orit Halpern: “Neural Models: Artificial Intelligence, Neo-Liberal Thought, and Finance”
Friday, November 3, 9:00-11:00 am (c.t.)
Yves Citton: “From the Attention Economy to Curiosity Finance: One Model or Two?”
For participation and the meeting link, please contact Regina Schober at schober@uni-duesseldorf.de.
April 20-21, 2023
“Economic Justice and Literary Knowledges”
Workshop at Osnabrück University organized by network members Julia Faisst and A. Elisabeth Reichel
The following talks are open to the public:
Thursday, April 20, 6:00-8:00 pm (c.t.)
Shirley Thompson: “Charles Chesnutt, Toni Morrison, and Black Political Economy”
The lecture will be held online. For participation and the Zoom link, please contact Elisabeth Reichel: elisabeth.reichel@uni-osnabrueck.de
Friday, April 21, 12:00-2:00 pm (c.t.)
Susan Fraiman: “Memory Work and Dirty Work: Writing the Labor of Eldercare”
The lecture takes place in Room 41/112, Building 41 of the University (Neuer Graben 40, 49074 Osnabrück)
October 28, 2022
“Models, Forms, Genres”
Part II of a workshop organized by Katharina Fackler and Simone Knewitz
Virtual meeting and discussion with Caroline Levine (Cornell University)
October 20-21, 2022
“Models, Forms, Genres”
Workshop at the University of Bonn organized by network members Katharina Fackler and Simone Knewitz
Keynote Speaker: Joshua Clover (University of California, Davis)
Thursday, Oct. 20
3:30–5:30 pm: Text Discussion with Joshua Clover (Room 2.015, 3rd floor)
6:00–8:00 pm:
Joshua Clover: “Cities, Books, Confusions” (Room A, 2nd floor)
Friday, Oct. 21
9:00–12:00 am: Project Presentations
James Dorson
“Embodied Abstraction and the Business Romance”
Elisabeth Reichel
“Markets, Models, Speculative Fiction, 1940-1980“
Fabian Eggers
“The Collaborative Model of ‘something else’ in Barbara Browning’s The Gift
Simone Knewitz
“Juliana Spahr’s Crowd Poetics in That Winter the Wolf Came”
Katharina Fackler
“Beyond the Extractive Paradigm? Re-Modeling Economics in the Face of Ecological Degradation”
Simon Schleusener
“Models of Temporality: Neoliberalism, Cinema, and Complex Television”
June 11, 2022
“Markets for the Masses: Popularization and Contestation of Economic Knowledge”
Workshop organized by network members Simone Knewitz and Elisabeth Reichel for the 68th German Association for American Studies (DGfA) Conference “Political Education and American Studies” at the University of Tübingen, June 9-11, 2022.
08:30-11:30 am (Brechtbau, Room 10)
Chairs
Simone Knewitz (Bonn)
Elisabeth Reichel (Osnabrück)
Talks
James Dorson (Berlin/München)
“The Business Romance as Business Model in the Progressive Era”
Sabrina Czelustek (Hannover)
“Seen through a Prism: Financial and Cultural Economy in Hannah Höch’s Photomontages”
A. Elisabeth Reichel (Osnabrück)
“Making Economic Liberalism New: Collectivist Morality and White Femininity in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged”
Torsten Kathke (Mainz)
“The Market as a Non-Capitalist Ideal: Educating for Neoliberalism in Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave”
Barbara Straumann (Zürich)
“‘It is all a fugazi’: Representing Economic Knowledge in Wall Street Films”
Damien B. Schlarb (Mainz)
“‘Don’t Look Too Close’: Big Tech and the Rhetoric of Economic Disruption in Films and Videogames”
May 13-14, 2022
“Economics, Models, Narrative”
Online Workshop with Jane Elliott (King’s College London) and Mary Morgan (LSE)
Mary Morgan (LSE) will be speaking on May 13 at 9am EST (2pm GMT/3pm CET) about “Narrative Practices with Models.”
Jane Elliott (King’s College London) will hold her talk, “Live Models and the Agony of Allocative Choice,” on May 14 at 8am EST (1pm GMT/2pm CET).
Both talks will be followed by a Q&A.
The lectures will be held on Zoom and all are welcome to attend. Please use this form to register for one or both events. You will receive a Zoom link closer to the date.
For questions or concerns, please email Carolin Benack at carolin.benack@duke.edu.
The event is co-sponsored by Duke’s Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory.
December 9-10, 2021
Opening workshop of the network (Streamed Live)
December 9, 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. (CET)
Matthias Erdbeer (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster): “Notes on Modelling: A Poetics of Conceptual Representation”
Friday, December 10, 11:00 – 12:30 p.m. (CET)
Leigh Claire La Berge (City University of New York) “Decommodified Labor: Work and Culture after the Wage”
Model Aesthetics 