Our Keynote Speakers for the 2018 Words That Kill Conference represent an international and innovativescholarshipexaminingthe questionsof hate, the production of otherness, violence and images, language, media and narratives from diverse vantage points.
Gérald Bronner is Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris-Diderot, member of the Academy of Techonology (Académie des technologies) and member of the National Academy of Medicine (l’Académie nationale de médecine). He works on collective belief systems and errors in reasoning and their consequences. He has published several manuscripts on these questions such as The Empire of Beliefs (L'empire des croyances; Puf, Paris, 2003), awarded a prize from the Academy of the Moral Sciences and Politics (l'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques), The Democracy of the Believers (La démocratie des crédules), awarded a number of prizes (Prix de la revue des deux Mondes, Prix Sophie Barluet CNL, Prix de l’Union rationaliste, Prix des Lumières). His book, Extremist Thought: How Ordinary Men Become Fanatics (La pensée extrême – Comment des hommes ordinaires deviennent des fanatiques; Puf, Paris, 2016) received the prestigious European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences. His most recent book, co-written with Etienne Géhin, The Danger of Sociology (Le danger sociologique; Puf, 2017) led to many debates insides and outside the discipline. Bronner has published a number of articles in scientific journals and is an editorialist at Point, chronicler for Pour la Science, and for 28 Minutes on Arte.
Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He has also been a Professor at the University of Michigan (2000-4) and Cornell University (1995-2000). His PhD was earned in 1995 at the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT (Robert Stalnaker, chair), and he received his BA from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1990.
Professor Stanley has two forthcoming books. The first is(Random House, summer 2018). The second isThe Politics of Language, co-authored with(Princeton University Press, 2019).
Professor Stanley has four previously published books. His first book waspublished in 2005 by Oxford University Press. It was thewinner of the 2007 American Philosophical Association book prize. Professor Stanley’s second book,, also OUP, was published in 2007. Thisis a collection of his papers in semantics published between 2000 and 2007 on the topic of linguistic communication and context. His third book,, was published in 2011, also with OUP. Professor Stanley’s fourth book,, was published by Princeton University Press in May, 2015. It was the winner of the 2016 PROSE award for the subject area of philosophy.
Sarah Banet-Weiser is Professor and Director at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, and in Fall 2018 will be joining the faculty in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics as Professor and Head of Department. She is the author of several books, including The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity; Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship; Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture; and the forthcoming Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. She is the co-editor of Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting; Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times; and the forthcoming Race Post-Race: Culture, Critique and the Color Line. She is currently the co-editor of the journal Communication, Culture & Critique.
Susan Benesch founded and directs the , to study speech that can inspire violence - and to find ways to prevent this, without infringing on freedom of expression. To that end, she conducts research on methods to diminish harmful speech online, or the harm itself. She is also Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Trained as a human rights lawyer at Yale, Susan has worked for NGOs including Amnesty International and Human Rights First. She teaches at American University.
Jayson Harsin (PhD Northwestern University), Associate Professor of Global Communication and International/Comparative Politics, has published on questions of truth, rumor, belief, trust, attention at the intersection of politics and digital communication since 2006. He has coined several new terms that encapsulate many of the qualities and conditions of post-truth politics and society, including rumor bombs (2006), regimes of post-truth (2015), and emo-truth (2018). His work has appeared in many book collections and journals such as the International Journal of Communication; Communication, Culture & Critique; Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; French Politics, Culture & Society, andPouvoirs. He is currently completing a two-part volume on post-truth politics and society. Harsin is vice-chair of the Philosophy, Theory & Critique division of the International Communication Association.