U Tube
To see part one of Marc Bousquet’s interview with Cary Nelson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, click on Twilight of Academic Freedom.
Mar 11 2010
System Crash: Risk, Crisis, Literature
Call for Papers
System Crash: Risk, Crisis, Literature
2010 SFU English Graduate Student Critical & Creative Conference
Simon Fraser University: (Thursday June 10th – Saturday, June 12th)
Submission deadline: March 15th
We are surrounded by the language of crisis: financial meltdown (economic systems), environmental catastrophe (ecological systems), terrorist attack (nation-state systems). These crises permeate our discourses of global, regional, institutional, and personal experience. The university is no exception; it too faces crises of disintegrating disciplinary boundaries, collapsing departments, reduced funding, and radical shifts from textual to visual culture. Despite the material (and discursive) specificities of these recent crises, the language of crisis and concomitant sense of immediacy are nothing new; authors, theorists, cultural producers, and readers have always struggled with the crises of their times. Some attempt to contain crisis, while others attempt to incite it; all make reference the fragility of socio-economic, socio-political and ecological systems that are precarious by their very nature. The 2010 SFU English Graduate Student conference asks the question of how literature and culture engage with crisis now. Thematic streams and suggested panels include: Neo-liberalism and the University, Canadian Literature and Borders, Historical Representations of Crises, Subject Matters, Crises of Form. We welcome submissions on these or on related topics addressed in the questions/keywords below:
KEYWORDS: etymology and history of the crisis – economic history – medium/form/genre – language/linguistics – media and technology – mimesis – copyright – property (private and public) – capitalism – the culture industry – the body – food and food production – sustainable development – consumption – faith/belief – subjectivity – neoliberalism – the nation-state – citizenship – immigration – borders – disciplines/divisions/departments – education.
QUESTIONS: What is the history of crisis? How has crisis been represented? What were/are the mediums, forms, and genres used to represent crisis? How has technology altered form, content, and subjective experience? How has capitalism altered our understanding of the subject and its body? How is the body consumed and commodified? How are geo-political borders, crossings and exiles represented in literature, art or film?
The 2010 SFU English Graduate Student conference is pleased to present two events designed to inform, compliment and expand upon the formal panels of Friday and Saturday. The first encourages creative submissions that deal with the art(s) of crisis and the second is an activist plenary (Saturday, June 12th) that will explore possibilities of social activism in the university. Below is an outline and prompt for creative submissions:
Creative Presentations, Discussions and Investigations: Friday, June 11th:
Reading, rousing, and responding to categorical crises, creative texts may incorporate any or all of the above critical classifications. Conversely, submissions to our creative cluster may seek to challenge or disrupt whatever is holding these theories in place—stirring textual crises that tremble from the level of the word and shake loose the binds of social order. Writers should consider: how do we write “going wrong”? And more importantly, why do we try?
The 2010 SFU Graduate conference is also pleased to announce this year’s Keynote speaker, Dr. Marc Bousquet, author of How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage-Nation (2008). Dr Bousquet will be speaking during the first day of the conference, Thursday June 10th.
Proposals for complete panels are encouraged.
Please submit a 300 – 400 word abstract by MARCH 15, 2010 to gradconf@sfu.ca
Mar 03 2010
Edu-Factory Web Journal: Zero Issue
Journal Launch
The innaugural issue of the Edu-Factory Web Journal has been published. You can find the zero issue on the “double crisis” at this address.
After more than three years of vigorous discussion, a collective book published in various languages and countless mobilizations all around the world, the edu-factory collective has decided to adopt a new instrument: a freely downloadable journal. Like all our projects, this journal isn’t simply another publication of experts but an active transnational laboratory founded on open, collective cooperation in both its contents as well as its editing and production process. It is an experiment born from the common production of shared knowledges, and resistance to exploitation inside and outside the universities. Moreover it is a step toward the goal of building up autonomous institutions. The journal has two sections: “occupations” and “anomalies”, which aim respectively to analyze transformations of the university and conflicts in knowledge production. The edu-factory journal has an editorial board,comprising critical scholars,students, and activists from all around the world, and it is open to free contributions.
Finally, by experimenting with forms of collective reading, and review, it aims to question the traditional peer review processes, and to open new spaces of thinking, learning and struggle within and against the hierarchies of the global knowledge and university market.
Introduction
Edu-factory collective
The Double Crisis: Living on the Borders
Occupations
Christopher Newfield, The Structure and Silence of Cognitariat
George Caffentzis, The World Bank and the Double Crisis of African Universities
Jon Solomon, Reappropriating the Neoliberal University for a New Putonghua (Common Language)
Stefano Harney, In the Business School
Ned Rossiter, The Informational University, the Uneven Distribution of Expertise and the Racialization of Labour
Anomalies
Marc Bousquet, After Cultural Capitalism
Revista Multitud, The Double Crisis of the Chilean University
Pedro Barbosa Mendes, The Double Crisis of the University
Claudia Bernardi and Andrea Ghelfi, We Won’t Pay for Your Crisis, We Will Create Institutions of the Common!
Lina Dokuzoviæ and Eduard Freudmann, Squatting the Crisis. On the current protests in education and perspectives on radical change
Appendix
Uninomade, Nothing Will Never Be the Same. Ten Thesis on the Financial Crisis
Mar 03 2010
March 4th Strike and Day of Action in California
From: The California Coordinating Committee
Date: Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 9:42 PM
Subject: March 4th Strike and Day of Action
To: CUPE 3903 and YUFA
Via: Bob Hanke
March 4th is before us! This Thursday thousands of students, teachers, staff, parents and workers from all over California, the nation and the world will come together in a show of solidarity that will embody the will and strength of a people ready to take a stand against the attacks on public education and demand their right to a fully-funded, quality education and an end to the layoffs and re-segregation in public education and social services.
Throughout the state of California and beyond tens of thousands of people are organizing for the Strike and Day of Action on March 4th indefense of public education. To get involved and participate in the struggle please join us in the events planned for March 4th — below is an updated list of events that will be happening on March 4th in California. We welcome all to participate in this historic day!
Form San Diego to Eureka, from California to New York, from the Mexico to Brazil, from England to Germany, from Portugal to Greece, from Russia to Japan the March 4th Strike and Day of Action will mark the moment when students, teachers, staff, parents and workers began turning the tide against the attacks on our right to education. March 4th is just the beginning of this monumental movement.
We would like to thank our brothers and sisters from New York, Mexico, Brazil, England, Germany, Portugal, Greece, Russia, and Japan for their words and actions of solidarity.
The updated version of the March 4th list of events and more information on March 4th Strike and Day of Action can be found on our website. If you have any questions about March 4th, please email march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com.