Expanded Dialogues: Molecular Selves, In/Organic Humanity

In the face of the uncertainties of our current moment, both locally and globally, who are we in relation to it - socially, spatially, and molecular?

A Virtual Symposium in Three Parts: April 20, May 13, and Jun 14, 2021

The Expanded Dialogues Symposium itself will take place over three days, from mid-April to mid-June, with one Dialogue event per month. The dialogues themselves will be both expanded and expanding: By ‘expanded’, they aim to be events which go beyond the usual disciplinary confines; by ‘expanding’, they will follow a model which progressively broadens itself, bringing more people into the discussion as the each event unfolds.

In order to replicate a more spontaneous exchange of ideas online than may usually occur during an online lecture or webinar, the format will take the form of an expanded and expanding round table discussion: a small number of core participants (four) invited from different faculties will hold a dialogue on one of the core themes mentioned above; after circa 20 minutes, the dialogue will be expanded to wider group of participants (selected from a call for participation, see below) for another 20 minutes; lastly, the dialogue will be expanded further and opened up to the audience.

Molecular Selves, In/Organic Humanity, part three of the symposium, will consider questions such as: does the advent of a ‘molecular’ vision of humanity threaten a disruption, a revision, or displacement of the way we know ourselves? And could a more generally accessible image of the molecular human avert future crises like the one we face now?

The symposium invites researchers - faculty, post-docs, and graduate students - from different disciplines across Concordia and audiences from beyond to participate in a discussion on the uncertainties of Space and Environment, Social and Communication, and Human and the Molecular. 

How can you participate? Register for the Zoom webinar.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

Organizers

Marlene Oeffinger is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Concordia University and a coordinator at the Center for Expanded Poetics, where her research focuses on the meditation between physical and metaphysical theories of subjectivity towards an allostatic idea of self. She also holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and her scientific research centers on the relationship of form and function in the plasticity of macromolecular complexes.

Fintan Neylan is a Research Intern at the Centre for Expanded Poetics at Concordia University and completing a PhD. in Philosophy at Memorial University, Newfoundland. His research focuses on Gilles Deleuze's the critique of representation.

This project is hosted by the Centre for Expanded Poetics, organized in collaboration with 4TH SPACE Concordia, and supported by the Concordia Faculty of Arts and Science.