(New York, NY – April 1, 2005) New School University announced that it has established the Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professorship at the University’s Graduate Faculty. The named professorship honors Willy Brandt’s remarkable political career and achievements – serving as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and winning the Nobel Prize in 1971 for his work toward reconciliation between West Germany and the Soviet bloc – as well as for his outstanding commitment to dialogue between countries, equitable peace, and social justice.
New School University trustee, Henry H. Arnhold, and his wife Clarisse, have committed the gift to endow the professorship.
Anthropologist Ann Stoler, Chair of Anthropology and Historical Studies at the University’s Graduate Faculty, has been named the Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor. She will give the inaugural lecture on "Degree of Imperial Sovereignty" on Wednesday, April 6, 2005 from 6:00 – 7:00 p.m., at the University’s Lang Center, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd Floor, NYC. New School University President Bob Kerrey, Dr. Brigitte Seebacher, a journalist and Willy Brandt’s widow, German officials, and other special guests will be in attendance.
The talk focuses on the spaces that a critical colonial studies has opened in rethinking its subject over the last fifteen years --and the blindspots about U.S. empire that inform it now. Being "in" or "out of focus" does not distinguish "real" empires from those that are not; on the contrary, imperial formations are not now (and never were) "steady states," but structures of dominance that conferred varied degrees of sovereignty on rulers and ruled, and whose designated borders at any one time were not necessarily the force fields in which they operated or the limits of them. Imperial formations are macropolitics whose technologies of rule thrive on the production of exceptions and their uneven and changing proliferation.
About Ann Stoler
Professor Stoler is an expert in colonial cultures, critical race theory, gender studies, political economy, historical methodologies, and Southeast Asia. Her current research is on the politics of comparison on North American empires and postcolonial studies; bourgeois Europe and colonial exiles. Among Professor Stoler’s many awards are two Fulbright grants, a Mellon/International Institute grant, and an N.E.H. fellowship in the humanities. Professor Stoler received her Ph.D. in anthropology in 1982 from Columbia University, began her career as a specialist in Dutch colonialism in the East Indies, but has broadened her scope. Her publications include: Along the Archival Grain: Colonial Cultures and Their Affective States (forthcoming); Tense and Tender Ties: Race and Empire in North American History (forthcoming); Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (2002); Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (1997); Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (1995); Capitalism and Confrontation in Sumatra’s Plantation Belt, 1870-1979 (1985).
About New School University
New School University, with 8,000 matriculated students and 15,000 continuing education students, is a New York City university committed to critical scholarship, artistic integrity, and ethical responsibility in the social sciences, humanities, the arts and design. It is comprised of a liberal arts foundation of three schools: The New School, Eugene Lang College and the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, and five professional schools: Parsons School of Design, Mannes College of Music, Actors Studio Drama School, Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, and New School University Jazz. New School Online University offers one of the largest selections of online courses in the nation. For further information on New School University, call (212) 229-5600 or visit the Web site at www.newschool.edu.