Diaspora Disneys: Spectacular Homes and Homelands in the Global Age with Shelley Salamensky

The Bark Room (Orientation Room), Sheila C. Johnson Design Center

2 West 13th Street, Room M101, New York, NY 10011

In our increasingly mobile, global age, “home” may be something less grounded than acted out — yet no less real. Exploring bizarre theme-park-like phenomena, startling artworks, and innovative social strategies from Europe, Asia, the Mid-East, and the U.S. borderlands, author Shelley Salamensky traces pathways past contested spaces and unstable times to suggest new forms of “homing” atop the wreckage of postmodern civilization.

Shelley Salamensky’s books include Talk Talk Talk: The Cultural Life of Everyday Conversation, The Modern Art of Influence and the Spectacle of Oscar Wilde, and Diaspora Disneys (in progress under contract), from which this talk is drawn. Her writings have appeared in a wide variety of academic and popular publications, including The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and The Paris Review. She has taught at Williams College and The University of California, Los Angeles, and served as a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.

This event is sponsored by the Global Studies program at The New School and is co-sponsored by the Urban Studies program, the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, and the Memory Studies special program area at The New School for Social Research.