Working Groups

(Re)Thinking the University will meet once a month to explore the role of the university in our contemporary moment, with an eye to the legacies and limits bequeathed by its history, as well as the promise of its possible futures. As we scope out the place of the university in these many moments, we will also work collectively to develop the practical skills necessary to succeed in the current institutional context and/or other (more) public-facing institutions. This will involve workshops that engage with the modes of university labor (pedagogy, research, administration), as well as the various genres of writing associated with institutional knowledge production (abstracts, grant statements, personal statements, etc.), honing in on the formal properties but also the ideological content of these genres that we will be expected to produce as a matter of routine in the coming years. The goal of this group is to provide a space for graduate students to develop a more reflexive and nuanced understanding of the current and future practice(s) of university labor, as well as to imagine and make manifest alternatives to knowledge production as we know it. Thus, students may put theoretical understanding into action while supporting one another in the development of vital critical skills for the professoriate and beyond.

Contact ajd682@nyu.edu and nrs365@nyu.edu

The NYU 18th and 19th Century Literature Working Group provides a venue for the promotion and advancement of the latest scholarship and research focusing on these two centuries and their continuing effects on the modern world. Students, faculty, and independent researchers from all disciplines interested in the years between 1650 and 1900 are invited to a series of lectures, seminars, and roundtable discussions that aim to celebrate, complicate, and interrogate this extraordinarily rich time period.

Anyone interested in more information regarding the group—including attending or presenting at one of our upcoming workshops—is welcome to be in touch.

Contact jcc684@nyu.edu and ibr277@nyu.edu.

The African American and African Diasporic Working Group will serve as an opportunity for graduate students and faculty to foster an intellectual network and collaborative community. We will discuss the most recent scholarship, including cross-disciplinary work (e.g. History, Psychology, French, and Comparative Literature), on (non)canonical African American and African Diasporic literatures and literary criticism. In our monthly sessions, we will seek to create an environment that generates new academic interests and provides an opportunity for graduate students to present their research ideas.

Contact ym1951@nyu.edu and jm7244@nyu.edu

The Creative Writing Working Group provides graduate students with a space to workshop their creative writing projects. The group will meet once every two weeks to read and provide feedback on members’ work. Work may be poetry or prose. The group aims to strengthen members’ abilities to write compellingly and to think innovatively. We also hope to create a close-knit community that can engage in conversations about literature not just as scholars, but also as artists.

Contact mm9944@nyu.edu and jyy338@nyu.edu

The Critical Theory and Medievalisms Forum (formerly Medieval Forum) is a graduate student working group in the Department of English at New York University. The mission of our group is to cultivate and promote cross-disciplinary scholarship, while engaging the relationships between contemporary theory (including Post-Colonial Theory and Queer Theory) and Medieval Studies. Our continued aim is to advocate for the study of all literature from the Middle Ages.

Contacvt kec511@nyu.edu and egm318@nyu.edu

Our Research Collaborative has two main objectives:

The first is to define the role of scholars in the humanities in pursuing a rigorous theoretical, historical, and ethical account of modern war cultures across various disciplines. The second goal is to reflect on cultural policy outcomes that might address the profound social, economic and psychic challenges confronting contemporary citizens entering post-war societies around the world. In particular, the Cultures of War group will explore questions of gender, technology and political economy.

The group aims to create dialogue between academia, veterans, the military, activists, and creative artists to contribute to debates about war culture and public policy in today’s challenging global climate.  The Cultures of War research collaborative was established with the support of NYU’s Center for the Humanities and is based in the department of English at NYU.

Cultures of War Website

Contact emf387@nyu.edu and adz235@nyu.edu

The Digital Culture/s Colloquium seeks to offer a space for faculty, graduate students, and other scholars and humanities practitioners to think critically and collaboratively about the study of culture in a digitally-saturated moment. By hosting conversations with intellectuals within and beyond the academy, we seek to explore how literary studies — and humanities work more broadly — engages with notions of the “digital” through driving concepts like digital pedagogy, cultural heritage and archives, digital communities and placemaking, interaction and user interface design, and digital activism. Among our events are guest lectures, offsite field trips, roundtable conversations, and a “digitizing culture” hackathon.

Contact gam351@nyu.edu and nrs365@nyu.edu

The Nonhumanism(s) Working Group is committed to a transhistorical, interdisciplinary approach to questions of the nonhuman. We understand the term “nonhuman” broadly and will thus seek to encompass a variety of discourses, methods, and approaches — including posthumanism, ecocriticism, animal studies, media studies, science and technology studies, cybernetics, and materialisms, among other related fields. The group will meet once a month to cover theoretical readings in the field, share ideas and projects to support one another’s thinking and research, and help to arrange a major event in the form of a symposium and notable speaker. We hope to facilitate an active community willing to share and explore cutting edge scholarship that considers the nonhuman in relation to the discourse and category of the human. As such, the direction of the group will be determined by participants on a semester-by-semester basis. 

Contact ibr277@nyu.edu and nrs365@nyu.edu

The Organism for Poetic Research (OPR) is an experimental critical-poetic platform and a vehicle for the performance of research in poetics and poetic research. The OPR takes shape from its many members and contributors operating in diverse locations with current centralization in cities such as Brooklyn, NY; Providence, RI; Vancouver, B.C.; and Portland, Oregon. Propelled by poiesis (making) as its investigative method, the OPR initiates events that open a field of relations between the natural sciences, artistic practices, and research in the humanities. OPR projects take a number of forms. In addition to hosting readings and seminars throughout the year, the OPR appropriates and refashions diverse modes and objects of inquiry as instruments in a series of specific provocations that produce the print and web-based magazine, Pelt: the Organism’s epidermal organ. The OPR also produces “occasional” publications and projects called “OPR Editions” and hosts web residents whose projects actively investigate and re-describe the boundaries of disciplinary formations of knowledge. 

OPR website

Contact zk421@nyu.edu and ad4549@nyu.edu

The PhD Writing Group is a student-led working group open to PhD students at every level of the program. The group provides a weekly space (either in-person or virtual in accordance with the schedule) for students to work on conference papers, articles, dissertations, abstracts, grants, and applications. The group schedule includes days when we will only have timed writing sessions and days when we will respond to student work. Additionally, students are welcome to receive peer feedback for mock talks or article submissions, as requested. The primary aim of the group is for its members to develop one or more conference papers, articles, or applications for submission per year. The group is also for dissertation stage students to participate in some group timed writing sessions throughout the year. While continued commitment to the group is appreciated, we also warmly welcome drop-in writers on any of the timed writing days. Feel free to stop in online or in person.

Contact kec511@nyu.edu and amp989@nyu.edu

The Politics of Empowerment meets every three weeks in order to discuss works that broadly fall under the fields of Women of Color Feminisms and Queer of Color Theory. We invite at least one guest speaker every semester to deliver a lecture at the university or to participate in a seminar with the group. The Politics of Empowerment also aims to foster conversations not only with other NYU groups but also with the larger NYC community–in the past we have attended events organized by The Postcolonial, Race, and Diaspora Studies Colloquium at NYU and by The Brooklyn Museum, for example. Lastly, the group seeks to provide a supportive environment in which students interested in sharing their work and receiving feedback may do so during workshops.

anr362@nyu.edu and gij203@nyu.edu

The Postcolonial, Race and Diaspora Studies Colloquium (PRDS) aims to bring together faculty and graduate students across the New York City area for intellectual exchange in the field of postcolonial studies, American transnational studies and minority literatures, critical race studies and other related fields. The colloquium strives to provide a forum for interested students from across English, SCA, Comparative Literature, French and other departments to present their work, interact with a range of peers and scholars, and foster conversations.

Contact anr362@nyu.edu and sb5749@nyu.edu and rs5607@nyu.edu