On Monday evening, I’ll speaking at the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute on a topic that should interest students of New York’s literary, cultural, social, and political histories.

I’m part of a panel that includes the intellectual historian David Hollinger (UC Berkeley), whom I quoted in Wednesday’s opening Writing New York lecture, and the cultural critic Walter Benn Michaels (University of Illinois at Chicago). The panel is called “Cosmopolitanism or Multiculturalism” and its part of an ongoing series called “The Cosmopolitan Idea.”

David Hollinger is the author of Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, which has been important influence of my recent work on emergent U.S. literatures. His recent articles include:

“Money and Academic Freedom a Half-Century after McCarthyism, Universities Amid the Force Fields of Capital.” from Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity (Madison, 2006), 77-105, 202-204.
“Obama, the Instability of Color Lines, and the Promise of a Postethnic Future” Callaloo 31.4 (2008), 1033-1037.“Religious Ideas: Should They be Critically Engaged or Given a Pass?” Representations #101 (2008), 144-154.
“Separation Anxiety,” London Review of Books, January 24, 2008, 15-18. [Review of Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God].
“Rethinking Diversity,”California Magazine (July/August 2006), 47-49.
“From Identity to Solidarity,”Daedalus (Fall 2006), 23-31.

Walter Benn Michaels is the author of a book that was de rigueur when I was in graduate school,