­­Imre Szeman is Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies and Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. Those interested in the role of culture within and against the unfolding debates on globalization will testify to Szeman’s influential and innovative work on this topic in the areas of social and cultural theory, film and visual culture, postcolonialism and nationalism, and Canadian studies. He is the recipient of the John Polanyi Prize in Literature (2000), the Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award (2003), the Scotiabank-AUCC Award for Excellence in Internationalization (2004), an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (2005-7), and the President’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision at McMaster University (2008), among other awards. He is the founder of the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies and a founding member of the US Cultural Studies Association. Szeman is co-editor of Reviews in Cultural Theory and a member of the editorial collective of the journal Mediations and was a commissioning editor from 2003-10 for Cultural Spaces, a monograph series that explores the rapidly changing temporal, spatial, and theoretical boundaries of contemporary cultural studies.

Professor Szeman’s prolific body of research is characterized by bold and innovative approaches toward the claims of cultural and political registrations of the global. His work is underpinned by a politically committed critical analysis of the theories and problematics of globalization (actual and imagined) and its various avatars such as cosmopolitanism and internationalism. The analysis is always salient, presenting challenging perspectives and assessments. The recent After Globalization (2011) thus heralds the death of the ‘fiction’ of globalization, arguing in its précis that despite ‘ending’ after the crisis of 2008, ‘there has not been a serious confrontation with what comes after globalization because globalization rested on a more fundamental ideological project, one unrecognized at the time of its constitution.’ This contemporary perspective is not without a broad purview, typified by his current work in the cultural registrations of hydrocarbonised modernity, an area that will engage researchers across the University, from Literature and Film to Philosophy, Politics and Economics – even the Centre for Automotive Research and the Warwick Low Carbon Initiative. Professor Szeman will offer a public lecture on this topic, which intends to reach an audience across and beyond the University.

Szeman’s work characteristically engages with new trends and directions in contemporary cultural studies, whether it is examining and rethinking old and new theories of national, local and global literatures (a feature that will enhance the work of a wide constituency in English and Modern Languages) or the possibilities offered by new visual and social media (an area of research in sociology, theatre, film and several other departments). The scope of his various research topics is unified by a consistent and close attention to the permutations of globalised capitalism in its impact on culture. His interests, therefore, dovetail across faculties and will register with a wide constituency across the university. He has, for example, written on the role of the University and the public intellectual in 21^st century culture, questioning careworn assumptions regarding ‘public’ and ‘impact’ informing governmental initiatives on education and cultural policy. Elsewhere he connects the recent reconfiguration of world literary studies to crises over global energy resources. His work on the political aesthetics of art and photography is complemented by other work on the role of the documentary film in political activism. Szeman’s current projects include an introductory text on cultural theory that adds to his other edited volumes in this area, and a book on the culture of oil-driven modernity. Szeman’s experience in implementing and nurturing new research spaces will also offer valuable perspectives to the entire Warwick research community, from postgraduates to senior academics and administrators.

Events planned during Professor Szeman's visit will be posted on the IAS Calendar and will include:

Screening and Research Seminar: 'Crude Aesthetics: The Politics of Contemporary Documentary'. With the aim of better understanding the political efficacy and social impact of documentary film today, this talk attempts to make certain interventions into the politics of contemporary documentary filmmaking. The past twenty years – the era that has come to be known as globalization – has witnessed an explosion both in the number of documentaries being made (from short form to feature-length) and the number of festivals at which they are shown. The rise in the number of documentaries has been made possible in part by new digital technologies that have allowed high-quality films to be created relatively inexpensively. Perhaps more significantly, filmmakers are responding to a perceived need to bear witness to all manner of crimes against individuals, groups and the environment that rarely appear as part of regular print or broadcast news. The vast majority of documentaries today understand themselves as offering complex narratives and pointed interventions into a media and political landscape characterized by stasis and a lack of real alternative or positive visions of the future, at a moment when precisely such alternatives are required. A number of these pointedly political documentaries have reached large audiences and have become part of broader debates about the many challenges we collectively face today. The talk will draw on examples of these films. Chair/Respondent: Professor Stephen Shapiro.

 4. Roundtable Event: After Globalization? Sponsored by the Social Theory Centre (Director Gurminder Bhambra). A roundtable session advertised across the University, using Professor Szeman’s recent book After Globalization, published in the Blackwell Manifestos series, as a platform for a discussion to be led by him. The participants will come from departments and centres across the University to discuss the issues involved in declaring the ‘end’ of globalization. This will be podcast to the Warwick Community.