The 6th annual meeting of the Association for Adorno Studies was held last weekend at Duke University (March 24-25, 2017). As cherry blossoms were bursting in color on Duke’s gorgeous campus, speakers and participants were gathered in the Fredric Jameson Gallery.
The meeting was opened by remarks from Henry Pickford, Joseph Winters, and Pierre-François Noppen. Unfortunately, the Association’s vice-president, Roger Foster, couldn’t attend this year’s meeting due to the restrictions imposed by CUNY on travels to North Carolina in protest against the sex discrimination laws that the North Carolina State legislature has introduced. The meeting was attended by speakers and participants from the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Germany, and Austria. The high-caliber papers led to very engaging discussions throughout the meeting. This year’s author-meet-critics panel was devoted to Peter Gordon’s new book, Adorno and Existence (Harvard UP, 2016), which addresses an important weakness in the scholarship, namely Adorno’s repeated confrontation with Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger. It made for a very stimulating exchange between the author and his three respondents, Espen Hammer, Gordon Finlayson and Iain Macdonald. The first day ended with a reception to celebrate the publication of the first volume of Adorno Studies: an interdisciplinary journal. It was also the Association’s way of thanking the editors, Martin Shuster and Kathy Kiloh, for their outstanding work on developing this unique platform.
As is our custom, all were invited to discuss questions relative to the journal and the development of the Association in our annual business meeting (day one, at lunch time). Plans were discussed for next year’s meeting (a number of options are being explored). The location of the meeting will be announced on our website at the end of summer. Once again, we held an informal roundtable discussion on the second day (at lunch time), which focused on the shifts and disruptions in the contemporary political landscape.
On behalf of all the members of the Association, we would like to extend our gratitude to Henry Pickford, and to Thomas Manganaro, who assisted Henry in organizing this most productive and successful event.
Here are a few snapshots of the event.
