The
Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies (CCTTS) undertakes
explorations into the impact of transnationalization on contemporary
societies, intellectual life, and cultural practices. These explorations
seek to bring together work in the humanities and social sciences,
different disciplinary approaches to the question and different
area perspectives. The main activities of the center consist of:
- An
annual conference on a theme decided by the advisory board
- An
invited lecture series
-
A faculty-graduate student workshop for the presentation and
discussion of ongoing scholarship in the university.
CCTTS
cooperates in its activities with the Center
for Asian Pacific Studies (CAPS), but these activities are
by no means restricted to the Asian and Pacific regions. CCTTS
also seeks to coordinate activities with other centers in the
university; most importantly, the Oregon
Humanities Center, Center
for the Study of Women in Society, the Center for Indigenous
Cultural Survival, and the Comparative
Literature Program.
The
Center explores the practical consequences and theoretical implications
of reconceptualizations of the world in recent decades. These
reconceptualizations are evident in the diffusion of such terms
as "globalization," "transnationalism" and
"postcolonialism" in the languages of politics, culture
and academic disciplines. The emergence of these terms expresses
the conceptual needs of a new world situation. But the terms
also represent discursive efforts to comprehend and shape the
world in certain ways; they are not just expressive of new realities,
in other words, but also produce new realities through informing
agency. Too often, only the first part of this relationship
is emphasized, which leads to an uncritical deployment of these
concepts. We also need to stress the second part, agency and
ideology in the deployment of these terms, which is crucial
to a critical understanding of this new conceptual language.
Such critical understanding in turn requires both a historical
placement of the new conceptualizations of the world, and their
context among alternative intellectual and political responses
to the contemporary world situation.
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