"Between History and Narrative: Colloquium in Honor of Hayden White," University of Rochester, April 24-25, 2009.

I just came across this conference devoted to Hayden White last year which some might find interesting. Here is the description: This colloquium honors the work of Hayden White, one of the most influential thinkers in the humanities for over thirty years. Since the publication of his groundbreaking monograph Metahistory in 1973, Hayden White's theory of narrative and narrative representation has been crucial to disciplines in which the role of narrative and narratively produced discourse is of primary concern, principal among them: history, literary studies, anthropology, philosophy, art history, and media and film studies. White's contention that narrative form conveys a certain content, and that the process of "emplotment" (a term he coined) necessarily involves a fundamental fictionalization, has proved provocative, particularly in the more positivistic disciplines, such as history, which are concerned with the recounting of real events. The rapprochement White effects between literary or fictional storytelling and the historical or real-life narrative has thus made him a controversial figure in the humanities. Nevertheless, his books and articles are standard reading in courses on historiography and the theory of history; and in literary studies, he is considered a major thinker in the fields of narratology, semiotics, rhetoric, and discourse analysis. This colloquium brings together a large number of prominent humanists from around the world who have either been influenced by or are working in the same vein as Hayden White. The program will also feature UR faculty from various departments. Speakers include Frederic Jameson, Hans Kellner, F. R. Ankersmit, among others. Visit the conference website here: http://www.rochester.edu/College/humanities/projects/archive.php?haydenwhite.