Dear friends

Below are details of a new initiative which may be of interest to some of you, or some of your students. Apologies for cross-posting but please do pass it on wherever it might be useful.

Thanks


Culture, Power and Politics  will be a regular open seminar for anyone interested in learning about ideas from the radical tradition and how they can be used to make sense of our world and contribute to political and social change. 

Full details are available at http://culturepowerpolitics.org

 
What will it do?

It will mainly explore ideas from the traditions of cultural studies and radical theory, considering their relevance to understanding contemporary political issues, struggles and campaigns, as well as key themes in political history.

Who is it for?

Ideally, it’s for anyone who is interested. The idea for the seminar has come out of discussions amongst members of the New Economy Organisers’ Network  (http://neweconomyorganisersnetwork.org) and Compass (http://www.compassonline.org.uk). Our hope is that the seminars will be useful and relevant both to political activists and organisers and to others simply interested in exploring the ideas.

We also hope that they will work for people who have no prior knowledge of the subjects and for those who may be world-class experts, and everyone in between. If you don’t know anything about  these subjects then feel free to come and find out. If you’re an expert – then come and join in the discussions to help others learn and to deepen your own understanding through conversation with others. We believe that all learning is collective!

Who is organising it?

Initially, at least, the seminar is being organised, convened and led by Jeremy Gilbert, a professor at the University of East London, with support and encouragement from other members of both organisation. To what extent others get involved in organising, convening and teaching on the seminar remains to be seen, and probably depends on whether it lasts past summer 2015…

What will the format be?

Well in principle this will depend on who turns up and what they want to do. Ideally we would like it to be a fairly free-flowing mixture of lecture, open workshop, group discussion, skill-share and political debate. If people turn up with no real interest in learning or helping others learn about the topic of the session, then they will not be offered a platform to pontificate; but apart from that we would like to keep it fairly open.

At the moment the general idea is that the seminar will convene monthly, and that sessions will be grouped into short series of 3-4 seminars at a time, covering particular subjects. It will generally assumed that the same people will participate for each session of a series, but it’s not like we’re going to ban you for missing one. There will be some suggested reading which will hopefully always be available online, but it will never be assumed that everyone has read it. 

The sessions will be recorded and podcast.


Where and When?

The seminar will take place at the New Economics Foundation, 10 Salamanca Place, London SE1 7HB (nearest tube: Vauxhall) 6:30-8:30pm (roughly), and the first three  will take place on May 19th, June 16th and July 14th (these are all Tuesday evenings).

For details of topics, how to join, readings, etc. go to http://culturepowerpolitics.org

--------------------------------------------------------
MeCCSA mailing list
--------------------------------------------------------
To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the MECCSA list, please visit:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MECCSA&A=1
-------------------------------------------------------
MeCCSA is the subject association for the field of media, communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education.

This mailing list is a free service and is not restricted to members. It is an unmoderated list and content reflect the views of those who post to the list and not of MeCCSA as an organisation.

MeCCSA recommends that the list be used only for posting of information (for example about events, publications, conferences, lectures) of interest to members or to promote discussion of current issues of wide general interest in the field. Posts to the MeCCSA mailing list are public, indexed by Google, and can be accessed from the JISCMail website (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/meccsa.html).

Any messages posted to the list are subject to the JISCMail acceptable use policy, which states that users should avoid “engaging in unreasonable behaviour, or disrupting the general flow of discussion on a list.”

For further information, please visit: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/
--------------------------------------------------------