Voter Registration in the UK

VOTER REGISTRATION IN THE UK

Don’t lose your Right to Vote!

Get on the Voters Registration by 1^st December 2015!

From 1st December 2015, in the UK, all household members must register individually or face being removed from the Voters Register.

Many could be disenfranchised – make sure you are not one of them!

Anyone who has not individually registered by 1 December 2015 will be removed from the register.

Originally, the deadline was December 2016 but the Tories have brought it forward by one year. This means that potentially over one million voters could lose the chance to vote in next May’s local elections.

Until 2009, one person in each household completed the registration for every resident eligible to vote, but now all that has changed. Each person who is eligible to vote now has to do this individually.

So, make sure you do not lose your right and opportunity to vote – something that has been fought so hard for by activists in history.

Also, see the film ‘Suffragette’ to emphasise the point for women!

So, get online and register to vote at: http://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

 

Peterloo Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre

Suffragette (film trailer, 2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=056FI2Pq9RY and Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUKjwIaTZ4Y

 

Further information:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34652008

http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/feb/05/missing-voters-individual-electoral-registration-disaster

Briefing: Electoral Registration – Order and Regulations, December 2013 [pdf]
Report: Missing Millions – Roundtable into Individual Electoral Registration[pdf]
Briefing: Electoral Registration and Administration Bill Committee stage briefing – day 2 [pdf] –

See more at: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voter-registration#sthash.abXAE3qj.dpuf

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

The Politics of Post-Soviet Cinema: Colloquium Featuring Jacques Ranciere

Jacques Ranciere

THE POLITICS OF POST-SOVIET CINEMA: COLLOQUIUM FEATURING JACQUES RANCIERE

The Department of Comparative Literature and the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University present “Béla Tarr: The Politics of Post-Soviet Cinema,” a colloquium on the work of the Hungarian filmmaker, featuring Jacques Rancière, András Bálint Kovács, and Eva Cermanová.

Date and Time: Thursday April 10, 2:00pm-6:30 pm
Location: Brown University, Pembroke Hall room 305, 172 Meeting Street, Providence, RI 02912

Discussions of Béla Tarr’s films typically divide his work into the pre-1989 cinema of a militant director, grappling with the problems of socialist Hungary, and the post-1989 work of a mature artist, characterized by disenchantment and contemplation. Jacques Rancière’s book Béla Tarr, The Time After strongly and compellingly rejects this narrative. “Béla Tarr: The Politics of Post-Soviet Cinema” will feature Rancière returning to this them e, along with András Bálint Kovács, acclaimed scholar of European cinema and one of the foremost interpreters of Tarr’s work, and Eva Cermanová, a graduate researcher on Béla Tarr.

Schedule:
2:00  Timothy Bewes, Introductory Remarks

2:15  Eva Cermanová, “The Time After Disaster: Intensity and Sequence in Béla Tarr”
András Bálint Kovács “Difference and Repetition: The Question of the Homogeneity of Béla Tarr’s Work”

4:15  Break

4:30  Jacques Rancière, “Béla Tarr: The Poetics and Politics of Fiction”

5:30  Roundtable – Jacques Rancière, András Bálint Kovács, Eva Cermanová

6:30  Reception

Organized by Timothy Bewes (Department of English), with help from Silvia Cernea Clark and the Department of Comparative Literature.

Co-sponsored by the Creative Arts Council, the Malcolm S. Forbes fund (Modern Culture and Media), Office of International Affairs, Department of Comparative Literature, Cogut Center for the Humanities, Department of English, Department of French, Pembroke Center, Department of History of Art and Architecture, and the Department of Visual Art.

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/bela-tarr-the-politics-of-post-soviet-cinema-colloquium-featuring-jacques-ranciere-brown-university-thursday-april-10

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academic.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskpoint.blogspot.com

Critical Theory, Film and Media: Where Is “Frankfurt” Now?

Eisenstein

CRITICAL THEORY, FILM AND MEDIA: WHERE IS “FRANKFURT” NOW?

Call for Papers: Permanent Seminar Conference 2014: Critical Theory, Film and Media: Where is “Frankfurt” Now?

Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, DE, Aug. 20-24, 2014

Deadline for Papers: February 28^th

This is an international conference at Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Germany, August 20 through 24, 2014, organized by the Institut für Sozialforschung and the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft in cooperation with the Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories.

In 2010, Alexander Kluge releases a DVD called “Wer sich traut, reißt die Kälte vom Pferd” (Those who dare tear the cold down from his horse), the third installment in a series that started with a ten-hour film based on Eisenstein’s project of filming Marx’ “Das Kapital”. Picking up on an unfinished project developed with Adorno in 1967 on the theme of coldness, the 2010 DVD presents a media mix of 31 different types of short films and 41 stories in an accompanying booklet. The project is a collaboration between 12 artists, scholars and experts from various disciplinary backgrounds, two of them being fictive characters.  Reading theory has become a collaborative effort, involving various disciplines on different platforms, and dealing with unfinished projects. About the project Kluge writes:

“The possibility of a revolution in Europe has disappeared, and with it the confidence in a historical process that can be directlyshaped by people’s consciousness. With this confidence, a certain unrest and urgency have disappeared. … As if in a quiet garden we can now study strange thoughts from [x] and weird projects from [y], because they are like messages from an ideological antiquity. … We do not have to announce anything new, we do not have to pass final judgments, can change little and do not have to imitate [x] or [y]. One can see this as a goodbye, or as a beginning.”

Kluge then goes on to make a statement about Marx that we could paraphrase for our purposes in the following way: “The analytical instruments of the Frankfurt school are not outdated. … Sifting through the rubble of history we find useful tools.”

With a combination of social philosophy, philosophical aesthetics, political economics and a particular focus on technology the Frankfurt school and its kindred spirits Benjamin and Kracauer have paved the way for film and media studies as a critical discipline.

Now, at a time, when the generational project of 1968, the march through the institutions under the assumption that a revolution in Europe is possible, has largely run its course, it is time to sift through the rubble of history, collect the tools, pick up on unfinished projects and think about new beginnings.

What, then are the analytical instruments that the Frankfurt school provided that will be useful going forward? How did the Frankfurt School of critical theory shape the course of film and media theory in the 20th century, and how will its tools continue to shape the study and critical analysis of media and culture?

„Critical Theory, Film and Media: Where is ‘Frankfurt’ now?“, an international conference organized by the Institut für Sozialforschung and the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft in cooperation with the Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories (filmtheories.org), proposes to address  these questions through a series of panels, keynote lectures and panel discussions.

Contributions are welcome on various aspects of critical theory, film and media, from the impact of critical theory on the history of film theory and media studies and film and media practice to debates about media and politics and the continuing relevance of critical theory to postcolonial, queer and other recent strands of cultural theory.

In particular, the conference proposes to address, but will not limit itself to, the following areas of study

From the critique of the culture industry to the “creative industries”: Without doubt the culture industry chapter of the “Dialectics of Enlightment” is among the most influential texts in the history of film and media theory. Together with Adorno’s notes on cinema in the “Minima moralia” this chapter constitutes a damning indictment of commercialized culture as exemplified most notably by Hollywood cinema. Among other things, with its strong focus on Hollywood, the “Culture industry” chapter laid the groundwork for the institutional histories of Hollywood proposed by the New Film History and continues to echo in current debates about creativity and the “creative industries”. One of the aims of this conference is to trace how the Frankfurt school critique of the culture industry has shaped the study of commercial and popular culture, but also to inquire into the possible continuing relevance of some of the basic tenets of Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique to digital network culture.

Essayism, Criticism and Critical Theory: In his famous essay on the “Essay as form” from 1958 Adorno argues for a kind of critical writing that strategically subverts and transgresses disciplinary boundaries. Going back even further, criticism constituted a crucial part of the project of critical theory since its beginnings, whether the film criticism of Kracauer or the music criticism of Adorno. One could argue that film studies emerged as a field in precisely the area carved out by Adorno – indebted to criticism, in a space in between disciplines, borrowing tools and approaches from neighboring field, avoiding for a long time the ossifications of disciplinary protocol. Emerging roughly a decade after film studies, “Medienwissenschaft” occupied a similar trans- or non-disciplinary space. Revisiting the Frankfurt legacy of criticism as theory and of disregarding disciplinary protocol this conference proposes to explore the power and potential of essaysism in the academic study of film and media culture today.

Philosophy of History and the History of Media: The Institut für Sozialforschung was created in response to a failed revolution, the German revolution of 1918. Combining Marx with Freud to explain why the revolution did not happen led the Frankfurt school to develop a theory of power and subjectivity of which Foucault later acknowledged that it would would have saved him a lot of trouble had he known about it earlier. The idea of history as process evolving around the possibility of a revolution remained central to later generations of critical theorists. From the outset, Kracauer and Benjamin in particular tied the question of historical process and historical consciousness to the question of media technology, in particular photography and film. In the wake of the emergence of digital network communications and the current transformation of moving image culture the positions the work of Benjamin and Kracauer have re-emerged as key reference in film and media theory. This conference proposes to explore why, even though the urgency that comes with a confidence in history as process has been lost, as Kluge argues, this work appears to be immediately relevant to the study of media and history in contemporary media culture.

Critical Theory, Feminist Film Theory and the Politics of Desire: One of the most important and powerful contributions of the Frankfurt School to the field of critical theory in the 20th century consisted in linking the critique of capitalism to sexual politics and the politics of desire. Drawing on the Frankfurt School’s signature combination of neo-marxist analysis with Freudian psychoanalysis, Herbert Marcuse discussed the capitalist system of production in terms of a sublimation of desire in his book 1955 “Eros and Civilization” that an important reference for the generation of 68. Feminist film theory, from Laura Mulvey onwards, emerged in the 1970s from a similar convergence of Freud and Marx (and from Althusser and Lacan), while later approaches to sexual politics and media, from gender studies to queer theory, owe a significant debt to Frankfurt school critical theory in their own ways, in particular to Kluge and Negt’s critique of Habermas’ concept of the public sphere, but also to Benjamin and Kracauer and their interest in the historically changes modes of mediated affect. One of the aims of this conference is to explore how the critique of capitalism and the analysis of sexual politics intersect and re-align in contemporary media culture and in the face of what has variously been called “information capitalism” or “digital capitalism”.

Critical Theory, Artistic Practice and the Category of the Art Work: Critical theory, from Benjamin’s works on the theater to his essay on the author as producer and the artwork essay to Kracauer’s film theory and Adorno’s sociology of music has left a significant imprint on film art and on media practice more broadly speaking. German experimental theater and radio in the 1920s, the television programs with avant-garde composes curated by Mauricio Kagel in the 1960s and 1970s and the new German cinema of Kluge and beyond all in varying degrees have use critical theory as a frame of reference. Jean-Luc Godard, a former critic who never ceased to be a critic, continues to acknowledge his debt to critical theory and to Benjamin and Adorno in particular in his work for cinema and television as does, of course, Kluge in his television work. Of particular interest in these examples is a critique of the category of “work” that can be traced back to Adorno but is probably now more relevant than ever. This conference proposes to trace the Frankfurt lineage of the critique of the category of art work across a variety of artistic and media practices.

Critical Theory and the Critique of Institutions: The Institut für Sozialforschung was created in the late 1920s as a research institution outside the university, even though it had ties with the University of Frankfurt, which itself had only been founded in 1914. Benjamin’s troubles with academic protocol are well known, and Kracauer consistently worked outside the university until very late in his life. Critical theory emerges outside of, or in tension with, the established institutions of academic life and carries the critique of institutions as its birthmark, so to speak. The Frankfurt school’s critique of institutions further extends to cultural institutions, from Benjamin’s critical analysis of Brecht and Brechtian theater to Adorno’s critique of the practices and institutions of classical music. One of the key legacies of the Frankfurt school is to keep the critique of institutions alive in film and media studies in areas where the focus tends to either be on representations of social and gender roles or on technologies regardless of their institutional dynamics.

Critical Theory and Gesture as Interruption: Few other concepts from early critical theory have developed a more virulent afterlife in the theory of theater, film and media than the concept of the “gesture”. Emerging from the theory of language and theater from his early essay on language an the book on the German “Trauerspiel” Benjamin defines “gesture” as a interruption of an action and as the “frozen dialectic” that later becomes a key to his theory of film and of the images, as well as to his readings of Kafka. Roland Barthes draws on Benjamin’s theory of gesture in his analysis of Eisenstein, as does Heiner Müller in his re-readings of Brecht, Jeff Wall in his tableaus or Godard in his “Histoire(s)”. This conference proposes to explore the prehistory and afterlife of this key concept of both critical theory and modern art theory.

Critical Theory and the History of Media Technology: Over the last few years a strain of Medienwissenschaft focused on the history technology and particularly computer technology has gained prominence in the Anglophone world under the label “German media theory”. Inspired mostly by the work of Friedrich Kittler and deriving from Heidegger rather than Adorno – or from Freiburg rather than Frankfurt –, this strain of media theory has proposed what we might call “Technohegelianism”, i.e. a philosophy of history as driven by technology and information technology in particular, as an alternative to a critical theory approach to media. This conference intends to explore the relative merits as well as the points of convergence and communication between “German media theory” and FrankfurtSchool critical theory, with a particular focus on the question of media technology.

The conference will be held at the Campus Westend, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.

Proposals for papers and panels should be submitted to before February 28, 2014.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out before March 15, 2014.

Scientific committee:

Dr. Sidonia Blättler, Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Eva Geulen, professor of German literature, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Vinzenz Hediger, professor of cinema studies, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Axel Honneth, director of the Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Rembert Hüser, professor of media studies, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, professor of theater studies, Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Juliane Rebentisch, professor of philosophy and aesthetics, HFG Offenbach
Prof. Dr. Marc Ries, professor of media sociology, HFG Offenbach
Prof. Dr. Martin Seel, professor of philosophy, Frankfurt
Dr. Marc Siegel, assistant professor of cinema studies, Frankfurt

Information and Contact: info contact: frankfurtconference@filmtheories.org

See website: http://filmtheories.org/permanent-seminar-conference-2014-where-is-frankfurt-now/

 

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Cinematicity: City and Cinema After Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze

CINEMATICITY: CITY AND CINEMA AFTER DELEUZE

Call for Papers: Cinematicity: City and Cinema after Deleuze

Organizers: David B. Clarke, Marcus A. Doel, Richard G. Smith

This session of the Royal Society of Geographers & Institute of British Geographers Annual International Conference 2014, focuses on the ‘co-production’ of filmic and urban space. That term, as it features in the conference theme, relates to knowledge – proposing that ‘new encounters are disrupting conceptions of where knowledge resides.’ Engaging Deleuze’s discussions of cinema, this session questions the framing of co-production in terms of dwelling. The reciprocal presupposition of cinema and city would seem, rather, to embody a sense of becoming. Thus, Deleuze’s conceptions of the cinemas of the movement-image and time-image recall Lewis Mumford’s claim that, ‘In the city, time becomes visible.’ How does cinema think the city, and vice-versa, to generate new, transformative senses of cinematicity? Contributions exploring the connections between cinematic and urban space are invited, potentially including work on early cinema and living pictures; considerations of specific cities, films or genres; conceptions of city and cinema as spiritual automata; and a multiplicity of other creative conceptualizations of cinematicity.

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words by 14th February to: d.b.clarke@swansea.ac.uk

Annual International Conference 2014: http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+international+conference.htm

Contact:
David B. Clarke
Centre for Urban Theory
Department of Geography
Swansea University
Swansea SA2 8PP, UK
Tel. +44(0)1792 602317
E-mail: d.b.clarke@swansea.ac.uk

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium

Knowledge

20th and 21st CENTURY FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE STUDIES INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM

 

20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium

New York City: March 6-8 2014

Co-organized and hosted by

NYU, CUNY Graduate Center and Columbia University

 

Call for Papers/ Appel à communications

Money / L’Argent

 

This conference, to be held in New York City on March 6, 7 and 8 2014, will focus on the role that money, economics, dépense, financial crises and equitable or unjust economic distribution have played in 20th and 21st century French and Francophone literatures, visual cultures, theatre, history, theory, translation studies and gender and ethnic studies. Since the financial crises of 2008, there has been an ever widening debate about the role that financial gain plays in the production of culture and the functioning of institutions of higher education throughout the world. At the same time, the crises have energized communities that put into question the culture of capital and the ties between capitalism and culture, all of which has created particularly dynamic, ideological, moral and cultural power struggles. This conference will serve as an open discussion on the way money has worked in stories, aesthetic forms, translations, methodologies, curricula and our own institutions from 1900 to the present.

 

Possible topics include:

Economics and the Cultural Field

National or Global Culture?

Financial Crises and the Avant-garde

Gender and Economic Disparities

Fetishism and the Taboo of Money

Writers and their Institutions

Cinematic Production and Globalization

Copyright and Royalties in the Digital Age

Cultural and Economic Centers and Peripheries

Culture and the Welfare State

Anti-capitalism

“Occupy Wall Street” and “le Comité invisible”

The Great Depression and Art

Money/Colonialism/Postcolonialism

Money/Migration/Art

Poetry and/versus Money

Cognitive Capitalism and the Study of Literature and Film

Esthetic Practices and the Working Class

 

Proposals for individual presentations and for complete panels can be submitted in French or English by August 31, 2013. Please send them to ffsmoney2014@gmail.com. The proposal should be from 200-250 words for each presentation and should include the affiliation, the name and the email address of each participant.

 

Organizers:

Peter Consenstein (CUNY)

Ludovic Cortade (NYU)

Madeleine Dobie (Columbia)

Philip Watts (Columbia)

 

20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium

New York City: March 6-8 2014

Co-organized and hosted by

NYU, CUNY Graduate Center and Columbia University

 

Call for Papers/ Appel à communications

Money / L’Argent

 

Ce colloque, qui aura lieu à New York le 6, 7 et 8 mars 2014, met l’accent sur les rôles que jouent l’argent, l’économie, la dépense, les crises financières et la répartition économique—juste ou injuste—dans la littérature, les cultures visuelles, le théâtre, l’histoire, la théorie, la traduction et l’étude de la sexualité et de l’ethnicité au sein des études françaises et francophones des 20e et 21e siècles. Les crises financières de 2008 ont lancé un débat de plus en plus étendu sur l’importance du gain financier dans la production culturelle et dans les systèmes universitaires dans le monde. Ces crises remettent en cause les rapports entre le capitalisme et la culture. Ainsi s’ouvrent des luttes de pouvoirs idéologique, culturelle et morale. Ce colloque se veut un lieu de discussion au sujet du rôle de l’argent dans la littérature, les formes esthétiques, les traductions, les méthodologies et même les programmes d’étude de nos propres universités du début du 20e siècle jusqu’à nos jours.

 

Pistes de réflexion (liste non exhaustive):

L’économie et les champs culturels

Culture nationale ou mondiale?

Les crises financières et les avant-gardes

Genre, sexualité et inégalités économiques

Fétichisme et tabou de l’argent

Les écrivains et les institutions

Le cinéma et la mondialisation

Les droits d’auteur à l’ère numérique

Centres et périphéries culturelles et économiques

La production culturelle et l’État-providence

L’Anticapitalisme

« Occupy Wall Street » et le « Comité invisible »

La crise économique des années 30 et l’art

Argent/Colonialisme/Post-colonialisme

Argent/Migration/Art

La poésie et/versus l’argent

Le capitalisme cognitif et l’étude de la littérature et du cinéma

Les pratiques esthétiques de la classe ouvrière

 

Les propositions de communication individuelles et de panels complets pourront être soumises en français ou en anglais jusqu’au 31 août 2013 à cette adresse email : ffsmoney2014@gmail.com. Veuillez joindre un résumé de 200-250 mots pour chaque communication ainsi que le nom, l’affiliation et le courriel de chaque participant.

Organisateurs :

Peter Consenstein (CUNY)

Ludovic Cortade (NYU)

Madeleine Dobie (Columbia)

Philip Watts (Columbia)

 

First published in: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/cfp-20th-21st-century-french-and-francophone-studies-colloquium-money-largent-nyc-6-8-march-2014

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Mobilizing for Eco-logical/nomic Transformation

Globalisation

MOBILIZING FOR ECO-LOGICAL/NOMIC TRANSFORMATION

Special Saturday Evening Event at Left Forum

with Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Donna Murch on the Untold History of the United States

 

Saturday, June 8th, 7:30 pm

Pace University’s Schimmel Auditorium

1 Pace Plaza, New York City, NY

 

Writing in a recent issue of Counterpunch Michael D. Yates says, “Oliver Stone’s Showtime series, Untold History of the United States, is the most radical mainstream television I have ever watched.” 

Join Oliver Stone, co-writer Peter Kuznick, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Donna Murch in a discussion of the 10-episode series and the political challenges it raises today. 

 

Oliver Stone (Director) has won Oscars for directing “Born on the Fourth Of July” and “Platoon,” and for writing “Midnight Express.” He was nominated for director (“JFK”) and co-writer (“Nixon”). Stone has directed four documentaries — “Looking for Fidel” (’04), “Comandante” (’03), “Persona Non Grata” (’03), and “South of the Border” (’09). In the fall of 2012, Showtime debuted a 10-episode Documentary series entitled “Untold History of the United States,” which Stone created, narrates and executive produced. Simon & Schuster released the book component with the same title, which was co-written with history professor Peter Kuznick. Prior to his film career, Stone worked as a school teacher in Vietnam, a Merchant Marine sailor, taxi driver, messenger, production assistant and sales representative. He served in the U.S. Army Infantry in Vietnam in 1967-68. He was wounded twice and decorated with the Bronze Star for Valor. After returning from Vietnam he completed his undergraduate studies at New York University Film School in 1971. 

Peter Kuznick, Professor of History at American University, was active in the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements and remains active in antiwar and nuclear abolition efforts. He is co-author of the The Untold History of the United States and is a co-writer of the 10 part documentary film series with the same title.  Kuznick is author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America (University of Chicago Press), co-author with Akira Kimura of  Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives (Horitsu Bunkasha, 2010), co-author with Yuki Tanaka of Genpatsu to hiroshima – genshiryoku heiwa riyo no shinso (Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: The Truth Behind the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power (Iwanami, 2011), and co-editor with James Gilbert of Rethinking Cold War Culture (Smithsonian Institution Press). 

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a longtime labor, racial justice and international activist. He is an Editorial Board member and columnist for BlackCommentator.com, a Senior Scholar for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC and a founder of the Black Radical Congress.

 Fletcher is the co-author (with Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided, The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice (University of California Press). He is the author of They’re Bankrupting US – And Twenty Other Myths about Unions (Beacon Press, 2012). Fletcher will interview Stone and Kuznick.

Donna Murch is associate professor of history Rutgers University, director Black Atlantic (2008-present), and co-director of the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis from 2010-2012. Her teaching and research specializations are postwar U.S. history, modern African American history, twentieth-century urban studies, and the political economy of drugs.  She received her Ph.D. from the Department of History at U.C. Berkeley and has won numerous fellowships and awards, including a Teaching Effectiveness Award and a Woodrow Wilson postdoctoral fellowship.  Professor Murch has published several scholarly articles and has recently completed a book entitled Living for the City: Migration, Education and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), which won the Phillis Wheatley Award in December 2011. She is a member of the Board of Left Forum and will be the Master of Ceremonies of the event.

 

Left Forum Conference 2013:

June 7-9

Pace University

1, Pace Plaza

New York, NY.

 

Further details: http://leftforum.org|leftforum@leftforum.org

Discounts are available for a limited time (e.g., students $10)                 

Register here!

Help out before the conference.

Email: volunteer@leftforum.org.

 

**END**

 

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Haymarket Books February Newsletter

Spyros Themelis

HAYMARKET BOOKS FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER

New: Lucy Parsons: An American Revolutionary 

by Carolyn Ashbaugh
(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Lucy-Parsons)
Described by the Chicago Police as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters,” Lucy Parsons remains one of the most fascinating figures in US history.  As a mixed-race woman in Texas, likely born enslaved, Parsons became one of the most militant leaders in the radical labor movement at the turn of the century. 

“LUCY PARSON’S LIFE expressed the anger of the unemployed workers, women, and minorities against oppression and is exemplary of radicals’ efforts to organize the working class for social change”
—From the Preface
 

More New Releases: 
 
(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Voices-of-the-Future)
“Etan Thomas is breaking it down for our young minds on how to be a vital part of this challenging world we all live in. Let’s give it up for Etan.” 
––Spike Lee

(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-Mexican-Revolution-1910-1920)

“[The Mexican Revolution] is a erudite and theoretically sophisticated, yet broadly accessible and completely jargon free, this study combines qualities not usually found in a single volume. . . . an important contribution to the study of revolutions. A must read!”—Samuel Farber

(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-John-Carlos-Story-paperback)

“John Carlos is an American hero. And finally he has written a memoir to tell us his story—and a powerful story it is. I couldn’t put this book down.”
—Michael Moore
 
40% Off Kids and Parents Bundle! Coupon Code: PT40
 
(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Oranges-in-No-Mans-Land)

“Packing an enormous emotional punch, Elizabeth Laird brings us a topical book about Lebanon that will do more for a child’s understanding of war than a news report ever could, yet it is neither frightening nor distressing. Smart, punchy writing and full empathy for the child’s perspective. Highly recommended.
—Jill Murphy, The Bookbag
 
(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Red-Sky-in-the-Morning)

“It is, quite simply, a wonderfully moving story about the power of love.” 
—Times Educational Supplement
 
(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/A-Little-Piece-of-Ground)
”A Little Piece of Ground shows what life is like for Palestinians who see their homes destroyed by Israeli bulldozers or face road blocks, military check points, and embarrassing strip searches, simply while trying to get to work or school.”
—Lucine Kasbarian, IndyKids
 
40% Enviroment and Science Bundle! Coupon Code: ENV40
 
(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Ecology-and-Socialism)

“Chris Williams’ scientific knowledge shines through and it is obvious that he has put an immense amount of work into this excellent book….This is a very informative and interesting book that should be read by all greens and socialists.”—Green Left Weekly
 
(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Kivalina)

“This story is a tragedy, and not just because of what’s happening to the people of Kivalina. It’s a tragedy because it’s unnecessary, the product, as the author shows, of calculation, deception, manipulation, and greed in some of the biggest and richest companies on earth.”
—Bill McKibben, author Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
 
(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Too-Many-People)
“This excellent book is steadfast in its refutations of the flabby, misogynist and sometimes racist thinking that population growth catastrophists use to peddle their claims. It’s just the thing to send populationists scurrying back to their bunkers.”
—Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved
 
News and Events

Santa Fe, NM (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/3593)
Omar Barghouti & Amy Goodman
Feb. 1 2013

San Diego, CA (http://palestinefreedom.org/news/omar-barghouti-tour-2013)
Omar Barghouti
Feb. 2 2013

Philedelphia, PA (https://www.facebook.com/events/524930384194698)
Omar Barghouti
Feb. 5 2013

Chicago, IL (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/3668)  
Lois Weiner
Feb. 8 2013

Tacoma, WA (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/3682)
Aaron Dixon
Feb. 15 2013

Online

 

Lois Weiner interview (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/chalkface/2013/01/27/at-the-chalk-face-progressive-edreform-talk) on At the Chalk Face

Oxford, OH (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/3667)
Lois Weiner
Feb. 1 2013

New York, NY (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/3675)
Victor Serge Panel
Feb. 2 & 9 2013

New Haven, CT (http://palestinefreedom.org/news/omar-barghouti-tour-2013)
Omar Barghouti
Feb. 6 2013

Richmond, IN (http://palestinefreedom.org/news/omar-barghouti-tour-2013)
Omar Barghouti
Feb. 8 2013

Corpus Christi, TX (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/3658)
Brian Jones
Feb. 16 2013

Chicago, IL (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/3681)
Oliver Stone
Feb. 1 2013

Irvine, CA (https://www.facebook.com/events/148531135298456)
Omar Barghouti
Feb. 4 2013

Brooklyn, NY (https://www.facebook.com/events/131804680316706/)
Omar Barghouti
Feb. 7 2013

New York, NY (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/3677)
Dao Tran & Michele Bollinger
Feb. 9 2013

New York, NY (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/3669)
Lois Weiner
Feb. 23 2013
 
Send Free Books to Prisoners and Community Organizers
Help Haymarket author, Jordan Flaherty send free copies of his book, FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance From Katrina to the Jena Six, to prisoners and community organizers. The book tells the story of community organizing in New Orleans in the years after Hurricane Katrina, and offers lessons for anyone involved in struggles around housing, education, health care, the prison industrial complex, and more.
Click for More Details! (http://bit.ly/WVwlEK)
(http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Floodlines-Community-and-Resistance-from-Katrina-to-the-Jena-Six)

(http://www.facebook.com/haymarketbooks?refts&frefts)

(https://twitter.com/haymarketbooks)

(http://www.haymarketbooks.org)

(http://ethreemail.com/e3ds/u.php?f»d90a2c)
 
Haymarket Books • PO Box 160185 • Chicago, IL 60618 • 773-583-2844 • info@haymarketbooks.org

First published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/haymarket-books-february-newsletter

Books

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Journeys Across Media

The Black Rock

JOURNEYS ACROSS MEDIA

Journeys Across Media (JAM)

The Body and The Digital

Friday 19th April 2013, University of Reading

2013 will mark the 11th anniversary of the annual Journeys Across Media (JAM) Conference for postgraduate students, organised by postgraduates working in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading. JAM 2013 seeks to focus on and foster current research relating to the Body and the Digital, as today they are interactive and interdependent facets in the media of film, theatre and television; and more widely, in the areas of performance and art. It is a relationship which continues to develop and redefine cinematic, televisual and theatrical practices.

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty once stated: “The body is our general medium for having a world.” Today, the world of live and screened performance are perceived and received differently, due to the body’s relationship with the digital. Approaches and practices of phenomenology, embodiment, the haptic and the experiential are being re-examined as they continue to encounter digital culture in new ways. Representations and experiences of embodiment are often integral dynamics of theatre, television, film and television, and are preoccupations that can be explored through diverse media or digital influences.

This is a call for postgraduates engaging in contemporary discourses and practices relating to the Body and the Digital, to submit papers or practice-based research for the JAM 2013 Conference. Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

-Interactivity between Digital languages and the Body

-Sonic Representations of the Body in Digital Performance

-The Digitized Body in Performance

-The Role of the Body in Digital Games and Virtual Performance

-Post-Colonial Bodies in the Contemporary Moment

-Preparing the Body for Performance

-Notions of Embodiment (i.e. Violent, Disabled, Explicit)

-Traditions of Corporeally focused Film, Theatre and Television

-Embodied Spectatorship or Audiences, and Physicality

-Phenomenology of the Lived, Performed and Screened Body

-The Haunted Body

-Politics of the Body

-Unconventional and Other Bodies

The body, its presence, perceptions and experience, are becoming increasingly underpinned and influenced by the digital age. JAM 2013 will endeavour to open a dialogue about the relationship between the body and digital in contemporary scholarship and practice, posing many questions including: How does the body encounter digital media and how do digital media frames position the body – both in mainstream iterations, social media contexts and in art/installation/performance contexts? Furthermore, it will also be worth considering how digital technology has affected the way that humans approach unfamiliar body movement traditions, beyond regional and national borders?  

JAM 2013 will provide a discussion forum for current and developing research in film, theatre, television and new media. Previous delegates have welcomed this opportunity to gain experience of presenting their work at different stages of their development, while having the opportunity to meet and form contacts with fellow postgraduate students. Furthermore, participants at JAM 2013 have the possibility of being published in the Journal of Media Practice.

Non-Presenting delegates are also very welcome to attend this conference.

CALL FOR PAPERS deadline: 1st February 2013

Please send a 250-word abstract for a fifteen minute paper and a 50-word biographical note to Johnmichael Rossi, Gary Cassidy, Edina Husanovic, Shelly Quirk, Matthew McFrederick at jam2013@pgr.reading.ac.uk .

 

CALL FOR PRACTICE-BASED WORK deadline: 1st February 2013

Continuing from the success of last year’s JAM 2012 Conference: Time Tells, which experimented with conference structure to include live performances, film screenings and installations taking place throughout the day, we invite artists working in various mediums to propose presentations of their work, relevant to the conference theme.

Please send a 250-word outline describing the piece you are proposing to present, as well as duration and any specific technical/space requirements, and a 50-word biographical note. Relevant images and links to your work would also be helpful. As outlined above please e-mail the Conference organisers at jam2013@pgr.reading.ac.uk.

 

We would appreciate the distribution of this call for papers and wider promotion of this conference through your networks. Journeys Across Media is supported by the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at Reading and the Standing Conference of University Drama Departments.

 

**END**

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

 

Centre for the Study of Education and Work: Update 11th November 2012

No Future

CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AND WORK: UPDATE 11th NOVEMBER 2012

EVENTS

PUBLIC LECTURE: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE WELFARE STATE

Thursday, November 15, 2012
6:30pm
Ryerson University, Room 508
285 Victoria Street, Toronto
       
In an age of government imposed austerity, and after 30 years of neoliberal restructuring, the future of the welfare state looks increasingly uncertain. Asbjørn Wahl offers an accessible analysis of the situation across Europe, identifies the most important challenges and presents practical proposals for combating the assault on welfare.

Wahl argues that the welfare state should be seen as the result of a class compromise forged in the 20th century, which means that it cannot easily be exported internationally. He considers the enormous shifts in power relations and the profound internal changes to the welfare state which have occurred during the neoliberal era, pointing to the paradigm shift that the welfare state is going through. This is illustrated by the shift from welfare to workfare and increased top-down control.

Asbjørn Wahl is an adviser to the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees and director of the Campaign for the Welfare State in Norway. He serves as Vice President of the Road Transport Workers’ Section of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and Chair of the ITF Working Group on Climate Change. He is also a member of the coordinating committee of the European Social Forum. He has published a number of articles on politics, social and labor both in Norway and internationally.

His most recent publication is The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State (Pluto Press, London, November 2011 – http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745331409).

Sponsored by MA Program in Public Policy and Administration at Ryerson, Centre for Social Justice, Socialist Project. Contact: Bryan Evans, b1evans@politics.ryerson.ca or phone 416 979-5000 ext 4199.

+++++

THE ART OF POLITICS AND THE PERSONAL: LOOKING AT THE PAINTINGS OF FRIDA KAHLO AND DIEGO RIVERA

Sunday, November 18, 2012
4:00pm – 6:00pm
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto,
Room 7192
252 Bloor St. West (at St. George subway)

Introduced by Brian Donnelly – Faculty of Animation, Arts and Design, Sheridan College

Revolutionaries and socialists often yearn for an authentic, political art that can resist and even stand outside a monstrous, mimetic, commodity culture. The Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo are often called on to fill that need. Modern painters from the early 20th Century, they explored the new forms and imagery possible in painting, working in styles from surrealism to socialist realism, creating small autobiographical works for themselves and giant murals done for the wealthiest patrons in the world. Their work is rich, warm, and rewarding to look at, but it also suggests many contradictions and questions.

This talk will look at some of the methods by which art is discussed from a Marxist perspective, beginning with “Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art,” signed by Andre Breton and Diego Rivera (and involving considerable input from Leon Trotsky). By looking at the questions we ask about art and its objects, we can try to separate what is living from what is commodified and alienated in contemporary, visual culture.

AND….TOUR THE SHOW: People interested in the subject may also meet as a group at the Art Gallery of Ontario, at 1 pm on the Sunday before the talk, to tour the show, “Frida and Diego: Passion Politics and Painting.” It costs $25 (free to AGO members), and you should book a ticket online well in advance, to avoid disappointment.

If you RSVP BY THE 12th, we can book this as a group; we don’t have to pay in advance, and there is likely a discount. Indicate your interest to brian.donnelly@sheridanc.on.ca, and Brian will submit the official form and book spaces. http://www.ago.net/frida-diego-passion-politics-and-painting

From Brian Donnelly: People can tour the exhibition at their own speed; they recommend at least a half hour or more. The gallery does not permit non-employees to lead loud group tours on their own, and I won’t offer to do much more in the gallery than chat with people who approach me. We can arrange to meet for coffee between the tour and the talk, and begin the discussion then. I would enjoy focusing the talk based on what people have noticed and the questions they ask.

Organized by Ideas Left Out

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CANADIAN LABOUR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL – SPECIAL SCREENING

Sunday, November 25, 2012
1:30pm – 4:30pm
PSAC Office
90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 608
Toronto, Ontario

CLiFF is a labour oriented Film Festival dedicated to telling the stories of working people in our own words and images. CLiFF and PSAC are partnering to show four short films along with the film “We Are Wisconsin” to raise awareness of the devastating social impact of the austerity agenda on working people and indigenous peoples.

+++++

2ND INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION (ISLC 2013): EXPLORING NOVELTIES

Izmir, Turkey
June 17-19, 2013

Timeline:
– Deadline for extensive abstracts – 20 February 2013
– Full paper submission deadline – 1 April 2013
– Revised draft submission deadline – 15 April 2013
– Anticipated publication date – June 2013
– The registration deadline is – May 30, 201
– Anticipated publication date for late submissions – September 2013

The Second International Symposium on Language and Communication: Exploring novelties (ISLC-2013) will be held on June 17-19, 2013 at Ege University Ataturk Culture Center, Izmir, Turkey. The ISLC-2013 provides an opportunity for exploring many different facets of interdisciplinary language and communication fields.

The aims of the Institute of Language and Communication Studies (ILCS) include the followings: a) fostering research in the area of interdisciplinary language and communication, and b) promoting cooperation among all parts within the field. The ISLC’13 offers a forum for those inside and outside academia to exchange pedagogical and research methods, as well as to explore greater cooperation among the many different constituencies of the field.

For more information: http://www.inlcs.org/

+++++
+++++

NEWS & VIEWS

ONLINE TEACHING SURVEY ON WORKING CONDITIONS

The Online Teaching Working Group, and COCAL (Coalition on Contingent Academic Labor) request your help in surveying all faculty who teach online. We suspect that most people who teach on line do so as contingents (non-tenure-track). As higher education goes through rapid changes, this is likely to be the workforce and delivery system of the future.

The purpose of the survey is to collect information on wages and working conditions leading to possible organizing for improvements. We are not looking for a random sample in order to do anything quantitative. We are looking to find out what’s out there. Hopefully, we’ll be able to identify examples of “the good, the bad and the ugly” which will enable us to have an informed discussion of labor standards for online teaching. We will report back at the conference in Toronto.

Feel free to spread the link to any relevant lists or individuals.

If you do not want your name on your reply, just type in random letters in the “What is your name?” box. No individual names will appear in the final (or draft) report and no raw data will be circulated outside the committee that is working on this.

However, we DO need the name of your institution, the one through which you are teaching the class with the working conditions that you are describing.

Here’s the link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6WWJL2JOnLineTeaching

+++++

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS – JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN SOCIAL WORK – DISTANCE LEARNING AND ONLINE EDUCATION

Special Issue on Distance Learning and Online Education
Submission deadline: January 31, 2012

The Journal of Teaching in Social Work plans to publish a Special Issue on Distance Learning and Online Education in 2013. In this regard, we invite manuscripts that address all aspects pertaining to professional social work online, distance, and virtual instruction leading to an accredited BSW, MSW, or DSW degree, and continuing education toward social work specialization certification or licensure renewal. Preferred manuscripts will be those that provide a systematic and rigorous formative or summative assessment of current initiatives or offer a detailed and conceptually focused description and rationale for prospective programs.

Topics might well include the following:
• Synchronous and asynchronous instruction
• Simulcast classes deploying ITV online
• Live, interactive web-based class and training sessions
• Interactive video technologies and programmed instruction
• Skype-based seminars, faculty advising, and video conferencing
• Hybrid courses using web-based platforms
• Alternative virtual academic degree-centered educational conceptualizations
• Assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of the pursuit of online (versus) residential degrees
• Effectiveness of providing licensure-mandated courses and examinations via distance learning
• Outcome evaluation of graduates’ preparation for practice, including comparative performance on licensing exams

Submit Manuscripts Via Scholar One – It’s Easy

Journal of Teaching in Social Work receives all manuscript submissions electronically via their ScholarOne Manuscripts website located at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/WTSW. Questions regarding the requirements for manuscript submission for this Special Issue can be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief at: jtsw@hunter.cuny.edu.

+++++

E. COLI IS SIGN OF A SICK SYSTEM: MY DAYS WORKING AT ALBERTA’S XL MEAT-PACKING PLANT

by Christopher Walke, rabble.ca

The major recall of E. coli contaminated meat from XL doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

There may be some substance to calls for greater regulation and the resignation of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. But there is a deeper problem that no one in the elite media seems capable of addressing: the sweatshop working conditions at XL. I know it from personal experience.

Read more: http://rabble.ca/news/2012/10/xl-and-e-coli-my-time-working-canadas-most-notorious-meatpacking-plant

+++++

POVERTY POCKETS GROWING IN SUBURBS

by Noor Javed, Toronto Star

Behind the sprawling subdivisions and glossy condo towers being built in the GTA are the people who go unnoticed: The homeowner working two jobs to pay his mortgage, the single mother living in a basement apartment or the newcomer sharing a home with another family — or two.

But policy makers and charitable organizations stress that because the problem is invisible, doesn’t mean it is non-existent.

In fact, it not only exists but in some cases — Markham-Unionville, Mississauga-Cooksville and Bramalea-Gore-Malton —poverty rates and child poverty rates are higher than the provincial average.

Read more: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/1277620–poverty-pockets-growing-in-suburbs

+++++

WALMART WORKERS AND COMMUNITY ALLIES WIN ANOTHER FREE SPEECH BATTLE AGAINST WALMART

A UFCW Canada Human Rights Department Release

Despite Walmart’s best efforts, a new website called walmartat50.com (http://www.walmartat50.com) will continue rallying people online to urge Walmart to become a socially responsible employer. As Walmart celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, the company is telling customers and communities a one-sided story about its business and values.

In response, walmartat50.com, launched by Making Change at Walmart, showcases the real stories of Walmart retail associates, customers, community members and those working in the company’s production and supply chains throughout the world, which offer a more complete story that Walmart
won’t tell.

The World Intellectual Property Organization recently ruled that the campaign can retain its domain names Walmartat50.com, walmartat50.com, walmartat50.net and walmartat50.org.

This latest freedom of speech win for Walmart workers, supporters and their communities follows a similar victory in 2010, when the company tried to force an injunction against the Walmart Workers Canada website.

To find out more about the Making Change at Walmart campaign, go to http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/

+++++
+++++

ABOUT CSEW (CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF EDUCATION & WORK, OISE/UT):

Head: Peter Sawchuk
Co-ordinator: D’Arcy Martin

The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) brings together educators from university, union, and community settings to understand and enrich the often-undervalued informal and formal learning of working people. We develop research and teaching programs at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (UofT) that strengthen feminist, anti-racist, labour movement, and working-class perspectives on learning and work.

Our major project is APCOL: Anti-Poverty Community Organizing and Learning. This five-year project (2009-2013), funded by SSHRC-CURA, brings academics and activists together in a collaborative effort to evaluate how organizations approach issues and campaigns and use popular education. For more information about this project, visit http://www.apcol.ca

For more information about CSEW, visit: http://www.csew.ca

 

**END**

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

 

The Zizek and Media Studies Reader – Call for Papers

Zizek

THE ZIZEK AND MEDIA STUDIES READER

CALL FOR PAPERS

Since the early 1970s, film, media, and cultural theorists have appealed to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory in order to discern processes of subjectivization, representation, and ideological interpellation.  In much of the early approaches to Lacanian theory in these fields, concepts such as the ‘mirror stage’, the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the ‘gaze’ figured heavily.  However, beginning with the work of theorists such as Jacqueline Rose, Joan Copjec and Slavoj Žižek, a new approach to Lacan has been advanced, one which pays closer attention to concepts such as sexual difference, the objet petit a (the object-cause of desire), fantasy, the Real, enjoyment, and the drive.  Žižek in particular has advanced a political-philosophical re-interpretation of Lacan that has spawned a whole new wave of Žižekian film, media, and cultural theory that shows a marked difference from an early Lacanian approach.  They differ insofar as a Žižekian approach demonstrates connections between the media, ideology, the objet petit a, the Real, the drive, and enjoyment.

We are seeking papers to be included in an edited collection titled, The Žižek and Media Studies Reader.  Papers should discuss Žižek’s relevance for and connection to one of the following areas of media studies:  film/cinema; popular culture; and, new/digital media.  Suggested topics include:

·      A Žižekian reading of a particular film/popular culture artefact

·      Ideology critique

·      Media politics

·      Subjectivity/Identity studies

·      Media in the context of the ‘demise of symbolic efficiency’

·      Communicative capitalism

·      The relationship between media and desire/drive

·      Media and fantasy

·      Media and enjoyment

Please submit abstracts between 250-500 words and a short biographical statement by September 15th, 2012 to either

Matthew Flisfeder matthew.flisfeder@gmail.com<mailto:matthew.flisfeder@gmail.com>
or
Louis-Paul Willis louis-paul.willis@uqat.ca<mailto:louis-paul.willis@uqat.ca>

Accepted papers, between 8000-12 000 words (including endnotes), must be submitted by April 30th, 2013.

 

Originally at: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/reminder-cfp-the-zizek-and-media-studies-reader  

 

**END**

 

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

Situationist Aesthetics: The S.I. Now

Situationist Human

SITUATIONIST AESTHETICS: THE S.I. NOW

University of Sussex, Brighton, UK – Friday 8th June 2012

Keynote: McKenzie Wark (The New School, NY), author of The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (2011), Gamer Theory (2007) and Hacker Manifesto (2004).

“Since the beginning of the movement there has been a problem as to what to call artistic works by members of the SI. It was understood that none of them was a situationist production, but what to call them? I propose a very simple rule: to call them ‘antisituationist.’ We are against the dominant conditions of artistic inauthenticity. I don’t mean that anyone should stop painting, writing, etc. I don’t mean that that has no value. I don’t mean that we could continue to exist without doing that. But at the same time we know that such works will be coopted by society and used against us. Our impact lies in the elaboration of certain truths which have an explosive power whenever people are ready to struggle for them. At the present stage the movement is only in its infancy regarding the elaboration of these essential points.” — Attila Kotányi at the Fifth Conference of the SI, 1961

Is it oxymoronic, heretical or just plain wrong to talk about Situationist aesthetics? The Situationist International (SI) condemned attempts to discuss its work in terms of aesthetics, but perhaps it is now time to brush the SI against the grain.

When it first announced its programme, the SI insisted that ‘There is no such thing as Situationism’. A few years later, before expelling its members deemed to be too invested in artistic production, the SI declared that in an age of spectacle any work of art produced by a Situationist must necessarily be ‘antisituationist’. The SI’s tactical intransigence regarding the political value of the aesthetic, and its refusal of the possibility of a specifically Situationist aesthetic, threw up problems that remained unresolved by the time of the SI’s dissolution. Since 1972, particularly in Anglophone contexts, Situationist practices have penetrated an array of cultural spheres, and much cultural production which the SI would have dismissed as spectacular has claimed some Situationist influence.

The SI located itself within but against culture. This symposium asks whether such a position is tenable, and what possibility might there be for Situationist aesthetics after all. Do cultural phenomena such as punk, or the current psychogeography industry, for example, work as or against Situationist aesthetics? Is it possible to identify art works and/or practices indebted to the SI that do not recuperate its politics but fortify and develop them?

Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

·           The work of Guy Debord and other members of the Situationist International

·           The work of artists, writers, thinkers or film-makers proximate to or influenced by the SI

·           Critiques of the SI

·           (Post-)Situationist theory now

·           Détournement, plagiarism, and recuperation

·           Spectacular and anti-spectacular aesthetics

·           The uses and abuses of psychogeography

·           Punk and art writing

Please submit proposals of no more than 250 words for papers or presentations of 20 minutes to Sam Cooper at situ.aesthetics@gmail.com by 16th March 2012.

For further information: http://situationist-aesthetics.blogspot.com

**END**

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub,Bangor, northWales)  

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

‘Land and Destiny’ – A Film by Brett Story

The Island

‘LAND OF DESTINY’ – A FILM BY BRETT STORY

The Committee on Globalization and Social Change Presents

Brett Story – Filmmaker and Geographer, University of Toronto

Land of Destiny (80 minutes, 2010)

Friday, March 2nd, 2012 | 6.30 – 8.30 pm

Segal Theatre, The CUNY Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10016

A hard-working petrochemical town is rocked by revelations that its workers suffer an epidemic of cancers. But even more terrifying is the looming spectre of deindustrialization and joblessness.

Retired pipefitters serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer firemen, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor – the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial economy. In the rich fabric of the city’s landscape – rows of boarded storefronts, the bright sprawl of petrochemical plants and the swollen rooms of hospital wards and crowded bars – one finds a microcosm of the 21st century. A portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a meditation on work and place in the modern economy, Land of Destiny offers an intimate story about work, struggle, and
survival.

Brett Story is a writer, organizer, and independent documentary filmmaker based out ofToronto. She is currently working toward a PhD in geography at the University of Toronto, conducting a project about the relationship between prisons and cities.

Free and open to the public
The Committee on Globalization and Social Change Email: globalization@gc.cuny.edu
Website: http://globalization.gc.cuny.edu

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub,Bangor, northWales)  

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski