Alternative Culture

ALTERNATIVE CULTURE NOW: THE POLITICS OF CULTURE AT THE PRESENT CONJUNCTURE

Call for Proposals:

‘Alternative Culture Now: The Politics of Culture at the Present Conjuncture’
Conference and Event
Budapest, Hungary
April 8-10, 2010

Proposal Deadline: January 25, 2010

How do things stand with respect to the fate of the alternative? Branded and normativized, incorporated into a whole ensemble of mainstream discourses, and no longer the threat it once posed to capitalist and communist states alike, the political and social force of the alternative seems to have faded away. And yet the dream of the alternative continues to inspire political and social movements, artists, theorists, and all kinds of creative practices. How might we begin to situate and think alternativity as a global phenomenon at this precise conjuncture in world history? What is alternative about culture today? And what might or can it become?

The alternative, of course, has always been phraseable in the singular and the plural. On the one hand, it is a phenomenon locked into local configurations, a multi-polar and non-totalizable practice of myriad deviation. Here, its ambit can be that of a family drama or workplace, a national concatenation, or the homogenizing logic of a dominant cultural medium or genre. The dreams it holds in reserve are vitally minor: the fissuring of a regime with a joke or dissidence, the freedom mobilized in small, almost imperceptible defections or reversals. The production of the alternative is in this sense the aggregate, spontaneous effort of innumerable cultural agents to resist every species of stasis and capture, every grammar and vernacular, every gestural hierarchy and total system.

At the same time, this molecular vision of the alternative, of a plurality of fissions and margins, has always been accompanied by attempts to think what it is in the tendency of a moment which suppresses cultural possibilities on a global level. This is a dream of a communication or inter-mediation between margins, a system of deviances which comprehensively address the conditions which negatively hypostatize the life of the virtual. Global patriarchy, violent state expansionisms, the inhibiting logics of capital, and the globalization of the English language can be envisioned as transnational, systematized normativities that threaten cultural specificity or possibility in a way that is never exhausted by its expression on the register of the local. Is there, in this sense, only one alternative: an alternative to which there is no alternative? This notion of a single alternative-a universal difference necessary to shelter the future lives of difference–immediately sets into motion its own paradoxical dialectics of alternativity, itself appearing to erase the thing it promises. How do we escape this vortex, or at least make its impasses productive?

Is one alternative more important than another? Can alternatives be exhausted or rendered obsolete? What kind of method could we develop to test the valences of alternatives? Can or should alternative culture polemically charge the space of its own marginality, or would this degenerate into an infinite sectarianism?

We understand “alternative culture” to include diverse forms of cultural expression and activity, which are connected by their shared goal of creating just, humane, and equitable human relations by means of their opposition to existing cultural, social, and political forms.

This conference encourages contributions from scholars, educators, artists, cultural workers, policy makers, journalists, and others involved in alternative culture and international cultural policies. We are especially interested in contributions addressing alternative culture in Central/Eastern Europe and countries/regions of the former Soviet Union.

Areas of inquiry for submissions may include, but are not limited to, the following general topics in relation to the politics of alternative culture today:

Aesthetics – Collectivity – post-Communist Culture – Creativity – Cultural Studies – Eastern Europe – Geography -Globalization – Higher Education – Media – Memory/Nostalgia – Music – New Media – ex-Socialist History – ex-Soviet Urban Spaces – Visual Culture

The “Alternative Culture Now: The Politics of Culture at the Present Conjuncture” conference will take place at the OSA Archivum in Budapest, Hungary, April 8-10, 2010. It is organized and sponsored by the International Alternative Culture Center, with the support of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology (Central European University) and the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies (University of Alberta). The conference format will be diverse, including paper presentations, panels, round-table exchanges, artistic performances, and exhibitions. We encourage individual and collaborative paper and panel proposals from across the disciplines and from artists and community members.

Paper Submissions should include: (1) contact information; (2) a 300-500 word abstract; and (3) a one page curriculum vitae or a brief bio.

Panel Proposals should include: (1) a cover sheet with contact information for chair and each panelist; (2) a one-page rationale explaining the relevance of the panel to the theme of the conference; (3) a 300 word abstract for each proposed paper; and (4) a one page curriculum vitae for each presenter.

Please submit individual paper proposals or full panel proposals via e-mail attachment by January 25, 2010 to 
alternativeculturenow@gmail.com with the subject line “Alternative Culture Now.” Attachments should be in .doc or .rtf formats. Submissions should be one document (i.e. include all required information in one attached document).

Website: http://www.alternativeculture.org

Conference Organizing Team: Sarah Blacker (University of Alberta, Canada), Jessie Labov (Ohio State, USA), Andrew Pendakis (University of Bonn, Germany), Justin Sully (McMaster University, Canada), Imre Szeman (University of Alberta, Canada), Maria Whiteman (University of Alberta, Canada), and Olga Zaslavskaya (OSA, Hungary)

Sarah Blacker
Department of English and Film Studies
3-5 Humanities Centre
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
T6G 2E5

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Health

HEALTH, EMBODIMENT AND VISUAL CULTURE: ENGAGING PUBLICS AND PEDAGOGIES

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Conference: “Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture: Engaging Publics and Pedagogies”

November 19-20, 2010
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Conference Co-Chairs:
Sarah Brophy, Associate Professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
Janice Hladki, Associate Professor, School of the Arts, McMaster University

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: January 15, 2010

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore how visual cultural practices image and imagine unruly bodies and, in so doing, respond to Patricia Zimmermann’s call for “radical media democracies that animate contentious public spheres” (2000, p. xx). Our aim is to explore how health, disability, and the body are theorized, materialized, and politicized in forms of visual culture including photography, video art, graphic memoir, film, body art and performance, and digital media. Accordingly, we invite proposals for individual papers and roundtables that consider how contemporary visual culture makes bodies political in ways that matter for the future of democracy. Proposals may draw on fields such as: visual culture, critical theory, disability studies, health studies, science studies, autobiography studies, indigenous studies, feminisms, queer studies, and globalization/transnationalism.

CONFERENCE EVENTS:
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
*Rebecca Belmore,* internationally recognized Anishinabekwe artist, Vancouver (exhibitions of her performance, video, installation, and sculpture include: Venice Biennale, Sydney Biennale, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts);
*Lisa Cartwright,* Professor of Communication and Science Studies and Affiliated Faculty in Gender Studies, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego (/Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture/; /Moral Spectatorship: Technologies of Voice and Affect in Postwar Representations of the Child/)
*Robert McRuer,* Professor and Deputy Chair, Department of English, George Washington University, Washington, DC (/Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability/; /The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities/);
*Ato Quayson,* Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto (/Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation/; /Relocating Postcolonialism/).

The conference will also feature /Scrapes: Unruly Embodiments in Video Art,/ an exhibition curated by Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki, at the McMaster Museum of Art.

POSSIBLE THEMATICS:

1. Technologies
– medical technologies (e.g. medical imaging, drug therapies, prosthetics and other devices) and their implications for embodiment, subjectivity, community, kinship, and politics
– corporeality and the senses as sites/forms of knowledge-making
– biopolitics and surveillance
– the relationship between “old” and “new” technologies
– how technologies mediate social spaces of embodiment and interaction
– interrogations of the human and posthuman in medicine, science, and art

2. Cultural Production
– cultural pedagogy; the production of knowledge in sites of cultural production (e.g. galleries, festivals, classrooms, online, etc.)
– counter-publics (e.g. disability culture)
– indigenous modes of cultural production
– diasporic/transnational issues and practices
– new representational modes (e.g. digital arts, graphic memoir)
– documentary practices
– “doing politics in art” (Bennett)

3. Disability
– medical, scientific, and cultural discourses of disability
– performing and witnessing embodied difference
– interrogations of impairment
– genetics, reproduction, eugenics
– dis-ease and disorder
– “ability trouble” (McRuer)
– “radical crip images” (McRuer)

4. Affect
– explorations of “ugly feelings” (Ngai), “aesthetic nervousness” (Quayson), “moral spectatorship” (Cartwright), “empathic vision” (Bennett), and “seeing for” (Bal)
– relationships to medicalization, regulation, and surveillance
– affect as generative/productive in relation to concepts of ethical spectatorship and witnessing
– relationships between corporeality and theorizations of nature as dynamic and agentic (Barad, Grosz, Haraway)
– can we/should we move beyond the theories that posit /negative/ affect as a prime site for ethics?
– affect and global politics: representations of global mobilities, violence, war, terrorism

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL:
We kindly invite submissions from scholars, artists, health professionals, community members, and activists in all areas and disciplines. Concurrent sessions will be 90 minutes in length. Proposals for the following formats will be considered:
1) Individual papers: 15 minutes in length
2) Roundtables: 4-5 participants, including a designated moderator and a plan for facilitated discussion of ideas
All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

Individual paper submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words
3) paper title and a 300-500 word abstract; the description of the paper’s content should be as specific as possible and indicate relevance to one or more of the conference thematics.
4) Details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VH S). Note that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

Roundtable submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information for each participant
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words for each participant
3) roundtable title and a 500 word proposal. The proposal should both indicate the relevance of the roundtable to one or more of the conference thematics and outline the organization of the proposed discussion.
4) details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VHS). Note that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

All submissions should be sent via email attachment to
viscult@mcmaster.ca <mailto:viscult@mcmaster.ca> by January 15, 2010.
Please use the subject line “Proposal for Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture.” Attachments should be in .doc or .rtf formats.

If electronic submission is not possible, please mail or fax proposals to arrive by January 15, 2010.
Address: Sarah Brophy & Janice Hladki: Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture Conference
c/o Department of English & Cultural Studies
Chester New Hall 321
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L9
Fax: 905-777-8316

ACCESSIBILITY:
Presenters are encouraged to explore ways to make physical, sensory, and intellectual access a fundamental part of their presentation. Suggestions include: large print (18 point font) copies of handouts, large-print copies of paper or panel outlines, and/or audio descriptions of any film or video clips and images. Presenters are also encouraged to consider open or closed captioning of films and video clips.

POST-CONFERENCE PUBLICATION PLANS:
Papers from the conference will be considered for a special issue of /The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies/.

CONFERENCE SPONSORSHIP:
Sponsored by the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (John Douglas Taylor Fund).

Sarah Brophy
Associate Professor
Department of English and Cultural Studies
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
L8S 4L9
brophys@mcmaster.ca

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Karl Marx

ROUNDTABLE ON MARX’S CAPITAL

Roundtable on Marx’s Capital

The SSPP is pleased to issue a CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS for a Roundtable on Marx’s Capital Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, February 24-27, 2011

Our second Roundtable will explore Volume One of Marx’s Capital (1867).  We chose this text because the resurgence in references to and mentions of Marx – provoked especially by the financial crisis, but presaged by the best-seller status of Hardt and Negri’s Empire and Marx’s surprising victory in the BBC’s “greatest philosopher” poll – has only served to highlight the fact that there have not been any new interpretive or theoretical approaches to this book since Althusser’s in the 1960s.

The question that faces us is this: Does the return of Marx mean that we have been thrust into the past, such that long “obsolete” approaches have a newfound currency, or does in mean, on the contrary, that Marx has something new to say to us, and that new approaches to his text are called for?

The guiding hypothesis of this Roundtable is that if new readings of Capital are called for, then it is new readers who will produce them.

Therefore, we are calling for applications from scholars interested in approaching Marx’s magnum opus with fresh eyes, willing to open it to the first page and read it through to the end without knowing what they might find. Applicants need not be experts in Marx or in Marxism.  Applicants must, however, specialize in some area of social or political philosophy.  Applicants must also be interested in teaching and learning from their fellows, and in nurturing wide-ranging and diverse inquiries into the history of political thought.

If selected for participation, applicants will deliver a written, roundtable-style presentation on a specific part or theme of the text.  Your approach to the text might be driven by historical or contemporary concerns, and it might issue from an interest in a theme or a figure (be it Aristotle or Foucault).  Whatever your approach, however, your presentation must centrally investigate some aspect of the text of Capital.  Spaces are very limited.

Applicants should send the following materials as email attachments (.doc/.rtf/.pdf) to papers@sspp.us  by September 15, 2010:

    • Curriculum Vitae
    • One page statement of interest in the Roundtable.  (Please include a discussion of the topics you would be willing to explore in a roundtable presentation.  Please also discuss the projected significance of participation for your research and/or teaching.)

Ben Fowkes’ translation of Capital (Viking/Penguin, 1976) is the official translation for the Roundtable, and should be used for page citations. However, applicants are strongly encouraged to review either the German text of Capital (the 2nd edition of 1873 is the basis for most widely available texts) or the French translation (J. Roy, 1872-5), which was the last edition Marx himself oversaw to publication; both of these are widely available on-line.

All applicants will be notified of the outcome of the selection process via email on or before October 15, 2010.  Participants will be asked to send a draft or outline of their presentation to papers@sspp.us by January 15, 2011 so that we can finalize the program.

In order to participate in the Roundtable (but not to apply or to be selected), you must be a member of the Society in good standing. You can become a member of the Society by following the membership link at: http://www.sspp.us

William S. Lewis
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair,
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, USA
(518) 580 5402

Board Member and Treasurer
Society for Social and Political Philosophy

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Is Another Crisis!

BEYOND THE CRISIS

http://www.iippe.org

INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR PROMOTING POLITICAL ECONOMY (IIPPE)

and

GREEK SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY

RETHYMNON, CRETE, SEPTEMBER 10-12, 2010

“BEYOND THE CRISIS”

Pre-amble: Following its three previous highly successful international research workshops for students in Crete, Naples and Ankara, the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (IIPPE) is now holding its FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, co-organised with the Greek Scientific Association of Political Economy, and open to application from all engaged in political economy. Summaries of papers for consideration for inclusion (maximum 1000 words) should be submitted by 31st of March 2010 to iippe@soas.ac.uk with subject heading IIPPE CONFERENCE 2010. Full papers are required to be made available by 30 June 2010 for pre-circulation to Conference participants. It will be possible to attend the Conference without submitting a paper but numbers will be limited. There will be some funding available for those who are unable to rely upon institutional support for participation, with special provision for research students.

Themes: Following the global crisis, the prospects of, and need for, progressive political economy are stronger than for many decades. Orthodox economics is in disarray, but with only a smattering of its own practitioners accepting this, generally by demanding more realism and the incorporation of a few more or less arbitrary behavioural principles. After the collapse of the post-war boom, the recession and slowdown that followed gave birth to extreme forms of monetarism followed by a mild reaction in terms of reliance upon market and institutional imperfections and weakened Keynesianism. The prospects for a radical rethink within orthodoxy and of tolerance to heterodoxy remain bleak. But it is still crucial to sustain critical commentary on orthodoxy’s continuing principles and innovations as a new generation of students and researchers are caught between conforming to its reduced and flawed content and the economic realities of the world around them. Political economy has begun to prosper in the wake of the crisis, not least with the rising popularity of Minsky for example. It is imperative that the strengths and weaknesses of the diverse, often insightful, analyses of the nature, causes and consequences of the financial crisis be debated and fully engaged across competing paradigms and emphases. Nor is the crisis confined to economic effects and causes alone. Interdisciplinary approaches are essential to address the nature of, and prospects for, neo-liberalism, the shifting character of the “new world order”, US hegemony and the rise of China, and the economic and the social and cultural restructuring that have both preceded and will follow upon the crisis. This offers opportunities to engage with activists in understanding the impact and incidence of the crisis and in formulating alternatives and strategies in response to it.

The Conference welcomes proposals for papers that address one or more of these issues or any other issue within political economy. IIPPE working groups are entitled to organise a panel. But we also welcome proposals for panels independently of working groups on well-defined themes, with three or four contributions and contributors specified in advance. These must be submitted, ideally with paper summaries by March 31st, 2010, although earlier submissions have greater chance of acceptance as the Conference programme is filled out.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Discourse

DISCOURSE, POWER AND RESISTANCE CONFERENCE 2010

DISCOURSE, POWER, RESISTANCE Annual Conference
30 March – 1 April 2010
University of Greenwich, London

The 9th conference in the ‘Discourse, Power, Resistance’ (DPR) series has moved from Manchester Metropolitan University to its new host in the School of Education and Training at the University of Greenwich, and will be held at the University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom, between 30 March and 1 April, 2010.

The venue is part of a world heritage site laid out in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries by Sir Christopher Wren and his successors. The conference will use the King William Building and the Stephen Lawrence Building, named in honour of Stephen Lawrence, killed some four miles away from Greenwich by racists in 1993 and now a symbol in the campaign for racial and social justice.

The title of the conference is simple: Trust. The conference will look at issues of trust in the academy and beyond – in management, teaching, learning and research. The six streams of the conference are:

- Trust and Leadership in the Academy
- Trust and Panic in Education
- Research Ethics
- Trust in the Community: critical race theory
- Faith, Belief and Truth
- The Individual in a Mistrustful World

DPR 9 will look at the troubled relationships within and beyond the academy, in the UK and world-wide, where questions of trust are crucial: who can we trust, how can we know what is true, what happens when trust breaks down in the academy, in the community and internationally? What research methodology brings us an understanding deep enough to trust, and why is this methodology so often still suspected and dismissed by managers and policy-makers at all levels?

For further information and Call for Papers please contact:
Jerome Satterthwaite (jnsatterthwaite@gmail.com)

DPR journal: Power and Education : http://www.wwwords.co.uk/power/
Travel Information
Greenwich Tourist Information
Suggested hotels: 
De Vere Devonport House | Ibis Hotel London Greenwich

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

May Day - London

A CENTURY+ OF MAY DAYS: LABOR AND SOCIAL STRUGGLES

A Century+ of May Days: Labor and Social Struggles
International Conference

In Chicago during May Day weekend 2010, there will be a conference to discuss, debate and analyze labor and social struggles, both past and present.

Call for Papers, workshop and panel proposals (by December 15^th).

We hope to cover an array of important historical and political topics. In addition to purely academic pursuits, conference participants will have the opportunity to participate in the May Day rally organized by the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Illinois Labor History Society.  If there is sufficient interest, we will set up a Chicago labor history tour.

Initial list of participants and endorsers: Illinois Labor History Society; James Thindwa, In These Times; Suzie Weissman, Saint Mary’s College of California; Bryan Palmer, Labour/Le Travail (Canada); Ronald van Raak, M.P. (The Netherlands); Kim Bobo, Interfaith Worker Justice; Michael McIntyre, DePaul University; Peter Hudis, Loyola University; Sungur Savran, Author (Turkey); Lea Haro, University of Glasgow (Scotland); George Gonos, SUNY-Potsdam; Janine Hatman, University of Cincinnati; Lauren Langman, Loyola University; Alexander Pantsov, Capital University; Francis King, Secretary–Socialist History Society (London); Mark Lause, University of Cincinnati; Eric A. Schuster, Truman College; Knud Jensen, DPU Aarhus University (Copenhagen); Axel Fair-Schulz, SUNY- Potsdam; JP Page, CGT (France); Dianne Feeley, Against the Current; Kevin Anderson, UC – Santa Barbara; Fritz Weber (Vienna); Jerry Harris, DeVry University; Joe Berry, University of Illinois; Theo Bergmann, (Stuttgart); Dan LaBotz, Author (Cincinnati); Sobhanlal Datta Gupta,. Surendra Nath Banerjee Professor, Calcutta University. (India); Spectre Magazine (Belgium); Steven McGiffen, American Graduate School of International Relations (Paris); Len Kaufmann (Wisconsin); William A. Pelz, Institute of Working Class History (Chicago)

Further details: mayday1890.2010@gmail.com <mailto:mayday1890.2010@gmail.com>  or write: Institute of Working Class History, 2335 W. Altgeld Street Chicago, IL. 60647-2001 U.S.A.A

Web site: http://www.mayday2010.info/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Marxism and Psychology

MARXISM AND PSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE

Call For Papers

Marxism and Psychology Conference, The University of Prince Edward Island, August 5-7, 2010

Website: http://vre.upei.ca/mprg/

Contact: marfken@upei.ca

Submission Deadline: January 15, 2010

In the history of social thought, it is difficult to find a more divisive figure than Karl Marx. For many, the mere mention of his name conjures up images of totalitarian regimes dominating nearly every aspect of an individual’s existence. Yet for others, Marx’s critique of the capitalist mode of production draws attention to the fact that our beliefs, thoughts, and desires inevitably emerge against the background of specific cultural, historical, and social practices.

The purpose of this conference is to bring students, scholars, and activists together to discuss exciting issues at the intersection of Marxism and Psychology. While it is clear that a number of organizations are making important contributions to this area of study, we believe that the time is right to open up a space for students, scholars, and activists from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to reflect on the role that Marxism can play in psychological theory, research, and practice.

In bringing together scholars at the forefront of research in Marxism and Psychology, we also hope to give new students and activists an opportunity to interact with individuals who have made significant contributions within this area. By organizing an impressive collection of plenary participants, we hope to foster an environment where students, activists, and scholars can identify potential graduate advisors, research assistants, and participatory investigators.

This year, confirmed plenary participants include: John Cromby, Raquel Guzzo, Lois Holzman, Gordana Jovanovic, Joel Kovel, Athanasios Marvakis, Morten Nissen, Ian Parker, Carl Ratner, Hans Skott-Myhre, Thomas Teo

Biographical information for the plenary participants can be found on the conference website.

We welcome submissions for individual papers and panel sessions. For individual papers, please submit an abstract (150-200 words) no later than January 15, 2010. For panel submissions, please include an abstract (150-200 words) for each paper as well as a brief description of the panel (150-200 words). Please submit all materials to marfken@upei.ca. Abstracts should either be in the body of the email or sent as an attachment (DOC or PDF format).

While the conference poster is available at the conference website, we also have color posters that need to be distributed widely. If you are interested in receiving some posters, please send us an email (marfken@upei.ca) with your mailing address.

For further information, please visit the conference website: http://vre.upei.ca/mprg/

Sincerely,

Michael Arfken, PhD. Director, Marxism & Psychology Research Group (MPRG), Department of Psychology, University of Prince Edward Island, marfken@upei.ca, http://sites.google.com/site/marfken/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Left Forum

LEFT FORUM CONFERENCE 2010

A message from Seth Adler

Dear past Left Forum panel organizers, speakers, and friends,

I am pleased to be getting back in touch with you after you helped make last year’s conference the best attended Left Forum yet.

We would like you to consider proposing a panel for the upcoming Left Forum conference at Pace University in New York City March 19-21, 2010, and we look forward to working with you in the panel and conference organizing process.  Consider starting this process right away by proposing a panel in any of the following ways: go to our website (http://www.leftforum.org) and follow the panel submission instructions (by clicking call for panels or panel instructions), email us at panels@leftforum.org, or call our office (212 817-2003).

The last conference marked one of the most diverse and engaged left dialogue experiences to date. This year, with “recovery” of capitalist crisis meaning bailouts for the banks and continued suffering for working people, a new stridency in right wing voices, and a conservative tilt in Washington politics as a backdrop, we offer the following conference theme as one point of collaborative reference. The theme is “The Center Cannot Hold: Rekindling the Radical Imagination” (for the 2010 thematic statement click here).

This year we have an easier and more accessible online panel submission process that you will find on our website by clicking this link: call for panels. I am also happy to say that we will include bios and other panel information online and in the program, to ensure maximum turnout and awareness of the content of your panel. Also, among many panel options, one that often draws large audiences is when panel organizers secure speakers with respectfully different perspectives on the same topic or politics; such dialogues also inspire spirited audience participation.

Your participation is vital if we are to continue to strengthen the Left Forum space for critical political dialogue.

Feel free to call me or other conference organizers in the office if you have any questions.  Please note the panel submission deadline is December 1st and you must have a panel description proposed by then. We urge you to get started now. It takes a while to get ideas and people together for a strong proposal.

In Solidarity,
Seth Adler
Conference coordinator
212 817-2003

Left Forum: http://www.leftforum.org/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Incident

THEORIZING THE DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL PROCESSES

CALL FOR PAPERS
Theorizing the Dynamics of Social Processes
Current Perspectives in Social Theory (Volume 27)
Edited by Harry F. Dahms and Lawrence Hazelrigg

Current Perspectives in Social Theory invites the submission of papers dedicated to theorizing the dynamics of specific social, cultural, political, and/or economic processes. Papers addressing the nature and importance of ‘‘process’’ in studying modern (industrialized, post-industrial, capitalist, postmodern, globalizing, etc.) societies are welcome – at macro, meso, or micro-scale (or, better yet, at cross or inter-scale). Submissions can have a formally, socially, or critically theoretical orientation. Preference will be given to papers that accomplish one (or more) of  the following:

* invent, develop, and/or demonstrate a theory (or theories) of a specific process (or interrelated processes), with sufficient clarity and scope to serve as an exemplar of such theorizing;
* identify, illustrate by example, and analyze specific problems, including problems of conceptualization and measurement, associated with theorizing the dynamics of social, cultural, political, and/or economic processes;
* connect theorizations of process across different disciplines of inquiry, including physical, chemical, and biological sciences insofar as the connections are shown to be relevant to and involve specific processes in social, cultural, political, and/or economic arenas (e.g. diffusion processes, hysteretic processes, aggregation processes).

Use of formal modelling techniques is acceptable (conditional on effective didactic quality in presentation), and should be addressed to more than the cognoscenti few. Priority will be given to intellectual integrity (rather than ideological orientation). We are eager to support venturesome projects of creative impulse, imagination, and insight – projects that show promise of being fruitfully wrong if not impeccably right.

If you are interested in this call, we urge you to contact either or both of us at the earliest convenience, with a general description of the paper you have in mind. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2010.

Harry F. Dahms, Editor (hdahms@utk.edu)
Lawrence Hazelrigg, Associate Editor (lhazelri@fsu.edu)

Harry F. Dahms, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, and Associate Head, Department of Sociology University of Tennessee; and Editor, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 901 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0490. email hdahms@utk.edu, phone (865) 974-7028, fax (865) 974-7013, http://web.utk.edu/~hdahms/

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Ivan Illich

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ILLICH STUDIES

A message from Clayton Pierce

Greetings colleagues!

It is with great pleasure that I announce the inaugural publication of The International Journal of Illich Studies (ISSN 1948-4666 / DOI 10.4198), which is freely available online at: http://ivan-illich.org/journal <goog_1257009656050>.  The first issue’s Table of Contents is enclosed below for your convenience.

The International Journal of Illich Studies is a non-profit, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed publication dedicated to engaging and extending the thought and writing of Ivan Illich and his circle. We will publish twice yearly, and are currently accepting submissions for April, 2010.

Articles are invited on any subject that intersects with the wide range of IIlich’s ideas, or that represent a version of the social critique for which he became famous on matters such as modern developmentalism, industrialized “progress,” institutional bureaucratization, the heuristic role played by historical consciousness, the privatization / publicization of the lay commons, and the necessity of making moral responses in the face of our worldly crisis.

We are also interested in critical essay reviews of potentially relevant literature and media, as well as personal reflections and stories that document the living tradition associated with Illich and his circle.

Each issue will additionally bring forth rare or previously unavailable archival materials of scholarly and intellectual interest.

Please take a moment to investigate our new journal. I welcome your feedback and look forward to your possible submissions.

Clayton Pierce, Ph.D. (clayton.pierce@utah.edu)
Editor

—————————————————————————-

International Journal of Illich Studies Vol.1, No.1 (2009)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Introduction to Volume 1, Number 1
Clayton Pierce – pp. 1-3

Articles

Illich’s Table
Daniel Grego – pp. 4-13
Three Invitations
Dana Stuchul – pp. 14-20
Myth Maker, Story Weaver Ivan Illich: On the Rebirth of Epimetheus
Madhu Suri Prakash – pp. 21-27
Understanding the Logic of Educational Encampment: From Illich to Agamben
Tyson Edward Lewis – pp. 28-36
Critical Pedagogy Taking the Illich Turn
Richard Kahn – pp. 37-49

Book Reviews

Review of Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader, Edited by Matt Hern
Kirsten Olson – pp. 50-52
Review of The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge, Edited by Bill Vitek and Wes Jackson
Jason Lukasik – pp. 53-57
Review of Place-Based Education in the Global Age: Local Diversity, Edited by David Gruenewald and Gregory Smith
J. William Hug – pp. 58-61
Review of Escaping Education: Living as Learning in Grassroots Cultures (2nd Edition), By Madhu Suri Prakash and Gustavo Esteva
T. Francene Watson – pp. 62-66

Documents, Letters, and Other Materials

FOIA Request: Declassified FBI Files of Ivan Illich – End Matter

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski