Cultural Studies Now
Posted on | October 23, 2006 |
An International Conference
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS
Docklands Campus, University of East London, UK, 19-22 July 2007
Plenary speakers will include Ien Ang, Rosi Braidotti, Kuan-Hsing Chen; Judith Halberstam, Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige, Doreen Massey.
Cultural Studies, as the paradigmatic interdisciplinary project, has always been defined by its relationships to proximate sets of ideas, practices and institutions. As Cultural Studies has grown and matured, its borders have multiplied. Cultural Studies has affected and been affected by contiguous disciplines, academic and non-academic institutions, political movements and projects, and creative practices of many kinds.
The question now is: has Cultural Studies been expanded, relocated and disseminated to the point where it no longer has a coherent identity? Is there a future for Cultural Studies as such? This major international conference will consider these issues by addressing a number of connected topics:
* Cultural Studies and politics:
o Cultural Studies was once closely allied with socialism, feminism and antiracism. Is this still the case? Has Cultural Studies lost its political edge? Has it moved to the right? Or is it finding a home in the latest new social movements?
* Cultural Studies and its disciplinary neighbours:
o history, literature, sociology, philosophy, geography, visual culture, psychoanalysis, political science, postcolonial theory, economics, environmental studies, science and technology studies; film and media studies, queer studies and popular music studies are among the disciplines and fields that have contributed to and drawn on Cultural Studies. Has Cultural Studies been a good neighbour?
* Cultural Studies in the public sphere:
o what has been the influence of Cultural Studies outside the academy? How has the corporate universe made use of it? Has the selective uptake of Cultural Studies in a range of institutional contexts, including government, been positive in its effects?
* Cultural Studies and creative practice:
o what are the actual and potential relationships between Cultural Studies and other forms of creative practice? What has been the impact of Cultural Studies on cultural practices and vice versa? How has this been played out?
* Cultural Studies and national contexts:
o does Cultural Studies occupy different institutional and intellectual spaces in different national, international, and global contexts? Is there a cosmopolitan Cultural Studies or have local conversations predominated? Is there any continued relevance for the Birmingham CCCS models?
Today, when Cultural Studies risks responding to these challenges by collapsing into theoretical obscurantism or technocratic ineffectuality, we at the University of East London believe that there is a place for a Cultural Studies which is politically committed and relentlessly experimental in its intellectual, institutional and creative practices.
To this end, we invite contributions which address these topological and methodological questions directly or which present examples of current work in the field. We welcome proposals for papers and presentations engaging with the full range of current themes and issues in contemporary cultural studies, cultural theory and cultural production.
Panels will normally consist of three twenty-minute presentations. Abstracts (max 200 words) and biographical notes (max 150 words) for individual papers and/or suggestions for panels or alternative formats to be sent by 1st November 2006 to:
csnow@uel.ac.uk
Cultural Studies Now
School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies
University of East London
University Way
London E16 2RD
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6 Responses to “Cultural Studies Now”
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October 23rd, 2006 @ 9:54 pm
eek - must hurry up and think!
October 24th, 2006 @ 11:30 am
Damn, I wanna go. Submissions are now invited to get me there. Gold coins donations gratefully accepted (silver coins for students/other unwaged).
October 24th, 2006 @ 11:29 pm
I think that it is tragic that Cultural Studies has moved to the right. And it has moved to the right because it is just so middle class. And who invented Cultural Studies I wonder? I would like to see cultural studies rediscover its working class roots and also to piss off out of ‘digital culture’ unless it can actually make a substantial technical contribution to the field. Are these conferences just some bourgeois tea party or have you got something to say? What did your parents do for a living miss research fellow; do you remember? It is just about the networks or do you have a soul?
Craig Bellamy
October 25th, 2006 @ 10:35 am
Heya Mel,
here’s my abstract for the conference. Contrary to Craig, who seems to be a self-righteous prick [oh, feel free to contact me Craig, if you have anything useful to contribute], I think there is a lot of CS that is engaged in very real everyday politics. And this means having to negotiate and politically intervene across the entire socio-economic spectrum. There is a such a thing as ’studying up’ too.
Xc
Taking Cultural Studies to Heart
In Outside Belongings Elspeth Probyn (1996) instructs us to take our research as a political and intellectual assemblage to heart, but what affect does this have on the communities we research?
This paper draws on a current collaborative project to discover how young Australians experience participation, cultural differences, and intimate relationships in sport - on and off the field. This has involved a collaboration with various sports-based community groups, such as the Refugee Youth Soccer Development Program.
In this paper I will configure the research experiences as affective assemblages, elements of which include very different bodies and affects - the fear that surrounds communities of refugees and migrants, the joy in their eyes after a soccer tournament. As a part of the assemblage it is clear that the researchers involved must make sure that community programs benefit from the process, and that we come up with practical tools to challenge the politics of fear currently pervasive in Australia. I will discuss some of the questions and challenges encountered in the at times difficult work of making research practical, as well as local, political and affective.
October 25th, 2006 @ 11:23 am
It’s ok Cliffy. Craig is right - a cultural studies conference won’t help me work out if I have a soul! If only. But there are plenty of workers in digital culture, no? That’s what I’m spending the next three years studying, anyway.
October 25th, 2006 @ 8:31 pm
cult stud bourgies!!! lol
forget the working class, I’d be happy with any root(s)…