Conference: Jews and the Ends of Theory

This international conference will seek to explore a series of questions about the relationship between Jews, Jewishness and critical theory at the present. The conference will explore questions of the figure of "the Jew(s)," and whether or not this figure should continue to occupy a privileged place in theory. It will also explore the role of Jewish intellectuals, and consider how the notion "the end of theory" might be significant to the changing or disappearing figure of the Jewish intellectual, or of Jewishness in theory.These questions will be explored in light of "the resistance to theory" within and around the disciplines that variously serve as homes for scholars in the academic field known as "Jewish Studies." Scholars will also consider how the linguistic turn of 20th century theory is related to its Jewishness, whether outrage against the language of theory might have some relation, and what language (if any), is suitable then for such a set of inquiries. This conference is open to the public.This conference is made possible by the generous support of the Duke Center for Jewish Studies, the Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Chair of Modern Jewish Thought at UNC, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, Duke Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities, the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, and the Department of Religious Studies at UNC