CSA 2009 Seminars
Applications are invited for three
seminars to be held at the 2009 US Cultural Studies Association conference in
Kansas City, April 16-18: “Bio/Cultural Studies”; “Going Pro:
What Difference Does Cultural Studies Make?”; “New Research in
Cultural Studies.” For details about the seminars and how to apply,
please see the descriptions below or click on the links on the front page at www.csaus.pitt.edu.
Applications are due by November 14,
2008.
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Seminar 1.)
Bio/Cultural
Studies
[Individuals interested in
participating in this Cultural Studies Association seminar should contact
Bernice Hausman at [log in to unmask] or Brad
Lewis at [log in to unmask]. Deadline: 14
November 2008.]
Seminar Description:
Lennard Davis and David Morris, in their “Biocultures
Manifesto” that opens the summer 2007 special issue of New Literary History on Biocultures, argue
that the field of intellectual endeavor encompassing biocultural studies exists
but needs a name. They write, “We are not necessarily nominalists, but we
do believe in the power of a name to consolidate scattered research agendas and
to generate change.” Their manifesto is a clarion call to begin to
reconceptualize the existing cross-fertilization of scientific investigation
with cultural inquiry, broadly construed.
We are interested in a more pointed version, or subfield, of
biocultures that sets cultural studies against, or into, biomedicine. Some of
the more interesting variants of this field explore biopsychiatry and detail
the emergence of the “neurochemical person” (N. Rose) and/or the
“pharmaceutical person” (E. Martin). The bio/cultural studies
approach to medicine cannot rest on a “cultural critique” of
science and its objectified research paradigms. Instead, biocultures demands a
kind of interpenetration of objectives from both fields, assuming that the
alleviation of suffering is approached authentically in both cultural analysis
(where the goal is often social justice) and medicine (where physical suffering
begins the diagnostic enterprise and ending it is the goal). In this way,
bio/cultural studies is about critique but also collaboration; as a paradigm it
insists on new research questions that straddle the edge of the “two
cultures” so famously described by C. P. Snow.
Seminar Requirements:
This seminar is for scholars and scholar-activists interested in
learning more about what we are calling bio/cultural studies and in developing
research questions and projects in this field. We will circulate a set of texts
to seminar participants in February, and ask for brief (5-page) descriptions of
projects, research areas, or developed research questions in mid-March. These
will be shared with all seminar participants in late March. The object of the
seminar itself will be to workshop these projects and questions to aid
participants in the development of their projects, and to establish an ongoing
research network of scholars. We will also discuss funding opportunities and
cross-discipline collaborations that will allow research in this field to
impact medical practice, biomedical research, and public health initiatives
both nationally and globally. It is our belief that bio/cultural studies is not
a project enclosed within academic contexts but one that should reach out to
affect practices and policies worldwide.
Seminar Moderators:
Bernice L. Hausman, PhD, is professor of English at Virginia Tech and a
teaching affiliate in Women’s Studies and Science and Technology Studies.
Educated in feminist and critical theory, she has spent her career studying
medicine, gender, sexed bodies, and motherhood. Her research addresses how
human embodiment has become both a problem for, and a project of, modernity. Her
books include Changing Sex: Transsexualism,
Technology, and the Idea of Gender (1995) and Mother’s Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in
American Culture (2003).
Bradley Lewis, MD, PhD is an assistant professor at NYU’s
Gallatin School of Individualized Study with affiliated appointments in the
Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and the Department of Psychiatry. He
has dual training in humanities and medicine (with a psychiatric specialty),
and he writes and teaches at the interface of cultural studies, medicine, and
humanities. Lewis is the author of Moving
Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry: Birth of Postpsychiatry
and is associate editor for the Journal of
Medical Humanities.
Contact information:
Bernice L. Hausman, English Dept. (0112), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
24061; 540-231-5076; [log in to unmask]
Bradley E. Lewis, Gallatin School of
Individualized Study, New York University, 715 Broadway, 6th Floor, New York,
NY 10003-6806; 212-998-7313; [log in to unmask]
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Seminar 2.)
Going Pro: What
Difference Does Cultural Studies Make?
[Individuals interested in
participating in this Cultural Studies Association seminar should contact Randy
Martin: [log in to unmask].
Deadline: 14 November 2008.]
Seminar Description:
Every
good discipline has its protocols of professional socialization. Get into the
right program, leave with the ideal dissertation, land the perfect post. Reset.
The commingled crises of jobs and fields have gummed up the reset button.
Cultural studies would seem to promise something different even as it inhabits
some familiar terrain. This seminar aims to provide some analysis of where
cultural studies fits in the broader ambit of interdisciplinarity that seeps
through the ruins of professional replication and to offer a space to consider
participants’ own projects, aspirations, and strategies in deploying
their cultural studies training inside the university and without. It
will approach the pathways by which our labor travels as a matter of
intervention—an array of strategic concerns by which we evaluate the
institutional and epistemological forces at hand, how we divine available
alliances and affiliations, where there are the greatest prospects of yielding
more of what we seek. Specifically, this means thinking through issues such as
where we publish or disseminate work, how we approach job searches, what is
involved in implementing new programs and curricula. One premise of this
conversation will be that cultural studies loops not only through the
university, but through the entire field of what can be called the cultural
industries or knowledge sectors. How this circumstance bears upon
theoretically informed and politically engaged work remains an open question.
The potential of the CSA itself to play a constructive role in this process
will also be part of the discussion, insofar as we can strategize as to the
kinds of critical reflection, support and resources our professional
association can provide to these endeavors.
Seminar Requirements:
Participants
will be asked to provide short scenarios of predicaments they have face in the
annals of professional socialization and what questions and dilemmas they would
like to work through as a consequence. These will be shared along with a series
of relevant readings. The first portion of the seminar will be devoted to a
diagnosis of institutional/epistemological circumstances, and the second part
will draw problematics from the submitted scenarios.
Seminar Moderator:
Randy Martin is the current CSA president and chair of the department
of art and public policy at
Contact Information:
Randy Martin, Professor and Chair, Department of Art and Public Policy,
Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, 665 Broadway, Room 605, New
York, NY 10012; 212-992-8243
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Seminar 3.)
New Research in Cultural
Studies
[Individuals interested in participating in this
Cultural Studies Association seminar should contact Bruce Burgett: [log in to unmask]
and Patricia Clough [log in to unmask].
Deadline: 14 November 2008.]
Seminar Description:
This CSA seminar is designed for graduate students at or
approaching the dissertation-writing stage of their doctoral programs and
working on projects in or adjacent to the field of cultural studies. It
is intended to provide a workshop environment for cross-disciplinary and
cross-institutional collaboration on the development of those projects.
One of its central goals is to break down the isolated institutional contexts
in which those projects typically take place; another is to map the emerging
landscape of cultural studies research today; a third is to situate those
projects within a larger discussion of what cultural studies research can and
should do.
Seminar Requirements:
Participants will be asked to submit in advance of the seminar a
brief set of materials related to their existing or emerging research projects
(e.g., an abstract, proposal, or chapter), along with a short (1-2 page)
statement describing how they imagine those projects as fitting into a larger
network of professional and life activities and ambitions, either inside or
outside of university (teaching, engagement, activism, service, etc.).
These materials will be circulated in advance of the CSA conference in April
and provide the basis of the workshop at the conference itself. Other
pre-conference readings may also be required, based on the suggestions of
seminar participants.
Seminar Moderators:
Bruce Burgett is Professor and Director of Interdisciplinary Arts
and Sciences at the
Patricia Ticineto Clough is professor of
Sociology and Women’s Studies at the
Contact and Proposal Information:
To apply to the seminar, please send a cv and short description
(50-100 words) of your existing or emerging dissertation research to Bruce
Burgett ([log in to unmask])
and Patricia Clough ([log in to unmask]).