With the usual apologies...
.............
Reworking the University: Visions, Strategies, Demands
Call for Ideas
April 24-26, 2009, University of Minnesota
The current "financial meltdown" has exacerbated the ongoing crises within
the university, resulting in even greater budget cuts, tuition hikes, hiring
freezes and layoffs. Responses from university administrations have been
predominantly reactive and have served to fortify the university as an
institution of neoliberal capitalism. The administration and others have
narrated this crisis as an external force that, while dramatic in the short
run, can nonetheless be managed properly. It is clear to many, however,
that the neoliberal logic that has been used to transform the university
over the past few decades has failed at a systemic level; the neoliberal
death spiral has come home to the university.
In contrast to these reactionary responses, we seek to create a space for
collective re-evaluation of the university in crisis as an opportunity for
real transformation. Last year's conference, "Rethinking the University:
Labor, Knowledge, Value" (April 2008), sought to challenge the supposed
inevitability of the neoliberal university. As a continuation of this
project, "Reworking the University" seeks to draw together academics,
artists, and activists, to share and produce political visions, strategies
and demands for building an alternative university in common.
"Reworking the University" seeks to generate a vibrant, political exchange
by troubling the traditional format of the academic conference. To this
end, we hope to produce spaces for individuals and groups from different
backgrounds and across a variety of institutional boundaries to converge.
While the conference will include the presentation of papers on the topic of
"Reworking the University," the committee's selection process will
prioritize workshops, roundtables, trainings, art installations, film
screenings, performances, and other forms of creative engagement.
The conference organizing collective has selected several questions and
themes that emerged out of the 2008 conference that we will address in
various formats. If you have interest in participating, please provide us
with a description of your proposed contribution. We encourage you to
self-organize a session (i.e. a performance, workshop, roundtable, training,
etc.) and submit it as a whole. Feel free to use the blog (
http://rethinkingtheu.wordpress.com) <http://rethinkingtheu.wordpress.com>
to help facilitate session organizing.
Below is a list of possible topics and we, of course, welcome additional
suggestions. In submitting your ideas for sessions, please give us as much
information as possible—suggestions for themes, other participants and the
session format.
The Reworking the University conference coincides with "Reclaim Your
Education – Global Week of Action 2009" (April 20-27:
http://www.emancipating-education-for-all.org/). <
http://www.emancipating-education-for-all.org/> Organizers also encourage
suggestions for additional actions as part of this event.
Send your submissions (of up to 500 words) to [log in to unmask] The
deadline for submissions is February 10, 2009.
- Confronting American Apartheid: Access to education
- The financial crisis and the university
- Counter/Radical Cartographies and Disorientation Guides
- Corporate funding and the university
- Autonomous/Open/Free Universities
- The Poverty of Student Life
- Post-Enlightenment Visions: Beyond the Liberal Model
- Anarchism and Education
- Adjunct Unionization
- Organizing Across Campuses, Cities, and Regions
- Post-Antioch Universities/the Antioch Legacy
- Anti-militarization Movements in the University
- Prisons and Education
- Undergrad Education Beyond Commodification
- Historical Struggles in the University: May '68 and beyond
- Autoreduction and Tactics for Direct Action in the Workplace
- Contemporary Struggles in the University: The Anomalous Wave & Movements
in
Italy, Greece and elsewhere
- Expropriating Institutional Space
- Graduate student unionization and Radicalizing the Academy
- Anti-professionalization; Anti-disciplinarity
- Student Debt
- Pedagogy of the crisis
- Creating Radical/Open Access Publications and the Politics of Citation
The schedule and proceedings from last year's conference can be found at:
http://www.makeumnpublic.org/conference.htm
Sincerely,
Committee on Revolutionizing the Academy (ComRAD)
