Don't forget to mark your calendars for the 2010 GW English Distinguished Lecture in Literary and Cultural Studies on Friday, Nov. 5 at 4 pm in 1957 E Street, room B12. This year's lecture will be delivered by Prof. Sara Ahmed, Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmith's College, University of London.Here is a brief description of Prof. Ahmed's talk:
A willfulness archive is what we assemble when we “follow willfulness around,” tracking where willfulness goes, and “in what” or “in whom” it is found. We can learn from these archives how willfulness is deposited in certain places, which allows the willful subject to appear as a figure,See you Friday!
one who has certain qualities and attributes. Willfulness has been defined as "asserting or disposed to assert one's own will against persuasion, instruction, or command; governed by will without regard to reason; determined to take one's own way; obstinately self-willed or perverse." Willfulness offers a moral diagnosis of character. Willfulness has also been thought of as a relation of part to whole: the willful part is the one who does not will the preservation of the whole. The paper suggests that a willfulness archive is an archive of rebellion, one created by parts who wander waywardly.