Category Archives: Miscellaneous

CFP: Graduate Studies and the Academic Labor Market

Call for Papers:
Graduate Studies and the Academic Labor Market

Special Issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor 2012
Guest Editors: Bradley J. Porfilio, Julie A. Gorlewski, and Shelley J. Jensen

Workplace invites and authors to submit papers for a special issue on Graduate Studies and the Academic Labor Market. What are the futures of the academic labor market for graduate students? Or more to the point, is there a future in academic labor for graduate students? Even a casual glance at The Chronicle of Higher Education and, in Canada, at the CAUT Bulletin and University Affairs, suggests a shrinking job market for PhDs. In some disciplines, academic careers have all but disappeared. Post-PhDs are increasingly tracked or streamed into adjunct and sessional appointments, most of which are dead-end and even on full time bases may amount to less than $25,000 per year. This “income” is oftten typically annulled by student loan payments; indeed, the income to debt ratio for post-PhDs adds to a heavy burden of anxiety. We readily romanticize the life of the intellectual, but – more and more – this life does not put food on the table. Food banks are becoming more and more common on university grounds and the lines are not limited to students.

What is the nature of this phenomenon in higher education?
What do these trends mean for the future of education and learning beyond mere technical training?
How do economic hardships affect scholarly pursuits?
How might graduate students reclaim their futures in the professoriate?
What roles exist for the scholar activist – both novice and veteran?
What other questions we should be asking?

The editors request abstracts for papers by September 15, 2012, with full drafts due by December 15, 2012.

For more information and due dates contact Brad Porfilio (porfilio16@aol.com)

2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION (Athens, Greece)

The Department of Education, University of Athens, Greece is hosting the

2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION

10-14 July 2012, Athens, Greece

Organized by the journals:

JOURNAL OF CRITICAL EDUCATION POLICY STUDIES (UK)

CULTURAL LOGIC (USA/CANADA)

KRITIKI (GREECE)

RADICAL NOTES (INDIA)

ICCE Conference Website: http://icce-2012.weebly.com/index.html

Some of last year’s papers (from the 2011 conference) will go into a special edition of JCEPS, the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, coming out in around April 2012. In addition, all the papers that were presented at the 2011 conference and were submitted in written form will be published as conference proceedings in the next couple of months.The website is in process of improvement, e.g. re methods of payment, also final keynote speakers not yet confirmed.. we are asking Dennis Beach, Dave Hill, Marnie Holborow, and Alex Callinicos. As well as leading Greek Marxists/critical educators. So, hope to see you at this conference in Athens in July! Last year’s was great- politically, intellectually, socially!

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to confirmation)

Kostas Skordoulis (University of Athens, Greece)

Dave Hill (Universities of Middlesex, United Kingdom; Limerick, Ireland; Athens, Greece)

Peter McLaren (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

Grant Banfield (University of South Australia, Australia)

Dennis Beach (University of Göteburg, Sweden)

Ramin Farahmandpur (Portland State University, Oregon, USA)

Marnie Holborrow (University College Dublin, Ireland)

Alpesh Maisuria (Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom)

Sharzad Mojab (University of Toronto, Canada)

Ravi Kumar (South Asian University, New Delhi, India)

Deborah Kelsh (College of St. Rose, Albany, NY, USA)

Curry Malott (West Chester University, Pennsylvania, USA)

Gregory Martin (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)

Micheal O’Flynn (University of Limerick, Ireland)

Perikles Pavlidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece)

Brad Porfilio (Lewis University, Romeoville, Illinois, USA)

Martin Power (University of Limerick, Ireland)

Helena Sheehan (University College Dublin, Ireland

Juha Suoranta (University of Tampere, Finland)

Spyros Themelis (Middlesex University, United Kingdom)

Salim Vally (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa)

New issue of Cultural Logic: “Culture and Crisis”

Cultural Logic

2010
SPECIAL ISSUE:
CULTURE AND CRISIS

EDITED BY JOSEPH G. RAMSEY

Introduction

Joseph G. Ramsey
“Culture and Crisis”

The Current Conjucture:
Capitalist Crises and the Crisis of the Left

Michael Joseph Roberto, Gregory Meyerson, Jamey Essex, and Jeff Noonan
“Moment of Transition:
Structural Crisis and the Case for a Democratic Socialist Party”

Jeffrey Perry
“The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from
Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen
on the Centrality of the Fight against White Supremacy”

Julie P. Torrant
“Class and the New Family in the Wake of the Housing Collapse”

Dan DiMaggio
“Road Maps, Dead Ends, and the Search for Fresh Ground:
How Can We Build the Socialist Movement in the 21st Century?”

Crisis, Imagination, and the Return to Marx’s Capital

Max Haiven
“The Financial Crisis as a Crisis of the Imagination”

Vesa Oittinen and Andre Maidansky
“A Marx for the Left Today:
Interview with Marcello Musto”

Amedeo Policante
“Vampires of Capital:
Gothic Reflections between Horror and Hope”

Robert T. Tally Jr.
“Meta-Capital:
Culture and Financial Derivatives”

Rethinking Crises in
Twntieth-Century Socialism and Communism

Joseph Ball
“The Need for Planning:
The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union
in the 1950s and the Decline of the Soviet Economy”

Grover Furr
“Stephen Cohen’s Biography of Bukharin:
A Study in the Falsehood of Khrushchev-Era ‘Revelations'”

Remembering the Depression Era:
Recovering Left Culture in a Time of Crisis

Benjamin Balthaser
“Re-Staging the Great Depression:
Genre as Social Memory in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler“

Barbara Foley
Forward to Wrestling with the Left:
The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

Joseph G. Ramsey
“Invisible Tragedies, Invisible Possibilities:
Or, Re-Reading What’s Left of a Great American
(Anti-Communist) Novel”
(Review of Barbara Foley’s Wrestling with the Left)

Tristan Sipley
“Proletarian Pastoral Reconsidered:
Reading Mike Gold in an Age of Ecological Crisis”

Chris Vials
“Fight Against War and Fascism and
the Origins of Antifascism in US Culture”

Theoretical Practice in a Time of Crisis:
Adorno, Benjamin, and Brecht

Rich Daniels
“Non-Pious Discourse:
Adorno, Ethics, and the Politics of Suffering”

Kevin Floyd
“The Importance of Being Childish:
Queer Utopians and Historical Contradiction”

Carl Grey Martin
Review of
Walter Benjamin and Bertold Brecht —
The Story of a Friendship

Reading Crisis as Ruling-Class Strategy

Kanishka Chowdhury
“Deflecting Crisis:
Critiquing Capitalism’s Emancipation Narrative”

Kim Emery
“‘Crisis Management’ in Higher Education:
RCM and the Politics of Crisis at the University of Florida”

Heather Steffen
“Student Internships and the Privilege to Work”

Poetry

Mary Kennan Herbert
“Been There, Done That” and
“Nothing to Say”

George Snedeker
“Progress” and Other Poems

Joseph G. Ramsey
“Fault Lines: Haiti, Two Years On”

CFP: Children’s Human Rights and Public Schooling in the United States

Call for Chapters/Chapter Proposals

Book: Children’s Human Rights and Public Schooling in the United States

Editor:

J. Hall, Associate Professor of Sociology

D’Youville College, Buffalo, NY USA

Under Contract with Sense Publishers

Foreword by Christine Sleeter

Book Description

This volume draws attention to serious human rights violations taking place among children in the US, and the fact that public schools are in many cases implicated in these breaches. The definition of “children’s human rights” under consideration is taken directly from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC]. More countries have ratified the CRC than any other human rights treaty in history, with only Somalia and the United States yet to ratify this agreement. The CRC is critiqued for its Judeo-Christian bias, and like most conventions put out by the UN, it is not enforceable, and is routinely violated by ratifying nations. The refusal of the US to ratify the CRC has weakened the efforts of those who advocate for children’s human rights as a political concept, both worldwide and in the US (e.g. Ensalaco & Majka, 2005).

The premise behind the CRC is that there are significant vulnerabilities related to childhood that require a special set of protections, especially when it comes to the young from marginalized groups. As outlined in the convention, all children have the right to protection from physical and mental violence and mistreatment. It is also contended that schools be free of violence, and that school discipline be based on the dignity of the child. This volume will address the incongruence between these specific state responsibilities in the CRC and the realities of life in public schools in the US.

Clarifying ways in which US public schools are in direct violation of the high profile CRC may help draw more interdisciplinary attention to already existing work on education inequality. A coalition of those in education, government, NGOs, non-profits, human rights advocacy, law, health care, social work, child development, and those who care about preserving the public must push back against the UN P5, IMF/World Bank, and transnational policy networks (e.g. World Economic Forum, World water Forum) that protect markets instead of human rights (Goldman, 2006). This volume provides a way to enter this conversation.

Contributing chapters –- from a broad range of interdisciplinary perspectives — are sought in the following two areas, each of which are directly reflective of specific protective promises made to children in the CRC (the editor will be responsible for making particular connections to the CRC):

*Schoolchildren as Vulnerable Populations. Seeking research on the schooling experiences of US children who are impoverished, live in isolated urban/rural areas, those from culturally marginalized groups, those with transient lifestyles, those who are migrant workers, refugees, those with disability, those engaged with issues related to sexual orientation, etc.

*Violence, Punishment, and the Juvenile Justice System among Schoolchildren. Seeking research on the schooling experiences of US children who bear witness to domestic and street violence; the school to prison pipeline; the juvenile justice system; metal detectors, zero tolerance policies, searches in schools, and other forms of surveillance and criminalization; the militarization of schooling; types of punishments experienced by children in schools, etc.

Process for Chapter Proposals
Submit the following:

a) Proposed title of chapter

b) Authors, with complete addresses and 150 biography for each author

c) 300-word outline of proposed chapter, including, where applicable, theoretical, methodological, and conceptual considerations

d) To J. Hall jhalledu@yahoo.com

e) By October 1, 2011.

*final chapter requirements: times new roman 12 pt. font., APA 6^th edition, and approx. 25 pp. double-spaced, by January 1, 2012

For questions or queries, contact J. Hall at <a href=:mailto:jhalledu@yahoo.com”>jhalledu@yahoo.com</a>

Is an Emancipatory Communism Possible?

Is an Emancipatory Communism Possible?
A talk by Allan Armstrong

Wednesday, April 13th at 7:00 PM

at TRS, Inc, 44 East 32nd Street, 11th Floor
Manhattan (between Madison & Park Avenues)

Presented by Marxist-Humanist Initiative & The New SPACE

===========

Mention of the word “Communism” today conjures up visions of tyrants. Young people, even when they clash violently with the representatives of global capitalism in Seattle or London, call their protests “anti-capitalist,” not communist. However, anti-capitalism is not enough. Revolutions can lead to
immediate feelings of intense liberation, but they are usually followed by much longer periods of defense, setbacks, and painful reconstruction. The 20th century was the “Century of Revolutions,” but it eventually produced so little for humanity at such a high cost, that it is not surprising that many are very cautious, despite growing barbarism.

Allan Armstrong will argue that it is vital that we outline a genuine new human emancipatory communism, which takes full stock of the failings of both “official” and “dissident Communism,” and which can persuasively show that human liberation can still be achieved. He will explore Marx’s vision, particularly as detailed in his “Critique of the Gotha Program,” which emphasizes the need to break with capitalist production relations rather than expecting a new society to come about through political changes.

Allan Armstrong, a republican, Scottish internationalist, and communist, is currently co-editor of Emancipation & Liberation, the journal of the Republican Communist Network. He is also involved with the commune, a collective dedicated to outlining a new communism for the 21st century. Armstrong is the author of “Why We Need a New Emancipatory Communism” and “The Communist Case for ‘Internationalism from Below“

Red scare at Georgia university

Inside Higher Ed: The Would-Be Provost Who Quoted Marx

“In the university, the higher up the hierarchical structure, the more one has decision-making power and the further one is from the actual ‘work’ (discovering and disseminating knowledge).”

Timothy J. L. Chandler, the co-author of a 1998 journal article with that quote about university hierarchies, is going to stay a step closer to actual work. On Thursday, he announced that he is turning down the position of provost at Kennesaw State University — in part because of furor set off in the local area over the article, which applies class analysis and several times cites Marx.

Announcing the Purple Thistle Institute! Radical social change from below

Announcing the Purple Thistle Institute!
RADICAL SOCIAL CHANGE FROM BELOW

The Purple Thistle in East Vancouver, Coast Salish Territory is super‐pleased to announce that in JULY 2011 we will be running a three‐week summer institute. We’d be thrilled if you would consider attending.

WHAT IS IT? The PTI will be something like an alternative university, or maybe better: an alternative‐to-university.

The idea is to bring together a bunch of engaged, interested people to talk about theory, ideas and practise for radical social change. We’ll have a great time, meet good people, get our praxis challenged and with luck refine and renew our ideas, politics and energies.

Importantly, the conversations will very deliberately cut across radical orientations – anarchists, socialists, lefties, progressives, anti‐colonialists, anti‐authoritarians, ecologists of all stripes are welcome.

The idea is to work, think and talk together – to articulate and comprehend differences sure – but to find common ground, get beyond factionalized pettiness and stimulate radical ecological and egalitarian social change. We want to get good people with good ideas together to talk and listen to each other.

WHEN IS BEING HELD? July 4th – 23rd, 2011

WHAT WILL THE SCHEDULE LOOK LIKE? Essentially all three weeks will follow the same pattern. We will be running 6 days a week with Sundays off. We will be offering 8 morning classes of which participants will be able to choose up to four to attend. Then we will all have lunch together, then every afternoon community work placements will be offered. Evenings will be a mix of open‐space activities, shows, speakers, films and free time.

WHAT WILL THE CLASSES BE LIKE? We have put together an awesome roster of instructors and speakers including Astra Taylor, Cecily Nicholson, Carla Bergman, Am Johal, Matt Hern, Geoff Mann, Glen Coulthard and lots more. The classes will be fairly rigourous (loosely at an upper‐year university level) and include a certain amount of reading and some writing. Attendance is not mandatory and you can engage with as much or as little as you like. The classes include: Decolonization, Activist Art, Urban Studies, Deschooling, Understanding Economics, Contemporary Social Philosophy and Critical Theory.

WHO IS THIS FOR? The PTI is for anyone, of any age, but we will be giving priority to youth, racialized and low‐income folks. As mentioned the classes will be pretty rigourous intellectually, but please don’t let that scare you off. The language will not be overly academicized and as long as you like to read, think, talk and listen you’ll probably be OK. The one real requirement is that you are keenly interested in radical social transformation and come with a generous spirit ready to listen and collaborate.

WHAT WILL IT COST? The three weeks are priced on a sliding scale: $350 ‐ $500. This includes lunch six days a week. If you are coming from out of town, need a place to stay and want to kick down an extra $100 we will find you a good billet who will give you a bed and feed you. There will be a few bursaries available, but we are going to need most people to pay at least the minimum.

HOW DO I APPLY? Hit us with an email at institute@purplethistle.ca and we’ll send you a formal application and instructions.

Update to issue 17 of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

The current issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor has been updated with two new field reports.

Issue No. 17 of Workplace “Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions” is guest edited by Howard Stevenson of Lincoln University (UK).

The new field reports include:

The NEA Representative Assembly of 2010: A Longer View of Crisis and Consciousness
Rich Gibson

Abstract
Following the 2009 National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly (RA) in San Diego, new NEA president Dennis Van Roekel was hugging Arne Duncan, fawning over new President Obama, and hustling the slogan, “Hope Starts Here!” At the very close of the 2009 RA, delegates were treated to a video of themselves chanting, “Hope starts Here!” and “Hope Starts with Obama and Duncan!” The NEA poured untold millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours, into the Obama campaign. In 2009, Van Roekel promised to tighten NEA-Obama ties, despite the President’s educational policies and investment in war. What happened in the year’s interim? What was the social context of the 2010 RA?

Resisting the Common-nonsense of Neoliberalism: A Report from British Columbia
E. Wayne Ross

Abstract
Faced with a $16 million budget shortfall, the Vancouver school trustees, who have a mandate to meet the needs of their students, have lobbied for more provincial funding to avoid draconian service cuts. The government has refused the request, and its special advisor to the Vancouver School Board criticizes trustees for engaging in “advocacy” rather than making “cost containment” first priority. The clash between Vancouver trustees and the ministry of education is not “just politics.” Rather, education policy in BC reflects the key features of neoliberal globalization, not the least of which is the principle that more and more of our collective wealth is devoted to maximizing private profits rather than serving public needs. British Columbia is home to one of the most politically successful neoliberal governments in the world, but fortunately it is also a place to look for models of mass resistance to the neoliberal agenda. One of the most important examples of resistance to the common-nonsense of neoliberalism in the past decade is the British Columbia teachers’ 2005 strike, which united student, parent, and educator interests in resisting the neoliberal onslaught on education in the public interest.

Critical Education launches new series: A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation.

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review articles and items of interest.

This issue launches the Critical Education article series “A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation”, edited by Adam Renner and Doug Selwyn.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,

Sandra Mathison, Co-Editor
E. Wayne Ross, Co-Editor
Critical Education

Critical Education
Vol 1, No 7 (2010)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/18

Articles
——–
A Return to Educational Apartheid?
Adam Renner, Doug Selwyn

Abstract: Series co-editors Renner and Selwyn introduce a special series of articles focusing on the articulation of race, schools, and segregation. Each of the articles in this series will analyze the extent to which schooling may or may not be returning to a state of educational apartheid.

A Separate Education: The Segregation of American Students and Teachers
Erica Frankenberg, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley

Abstract: Despite the obvious connection between the two, student and teacher segregation are rarely examined together. To help fill that gap, this essay explores what is known about the extent of interracial exposure for students and teachers in U.S. public schools. This article reviews evidence underscoring the paramount importance of school integration. A description of the legal landscape governing desegregation follows, as well as a discussion of why current patterns of racial isolation persist. The essay next describes the demographics and segregation of today’s students and teachers. In particular, the essay focuses on the growing segregation of students of color, the lingering isolation of white students, and the ways in which the overwhelmingly white teaching force reinforces patterns of student segregation. We close with a discussion of the implications of these trends.

Workplace No 17 (2010): Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor No 17 (2010):
Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions

Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/issue/view/8

Articles
——–
Working In, and Against, the Neo-Liberal State: Global Perspectives on K-12 Teacher Unions: Special Issue Introduction
Howard Stevenson

Terminating the Teaching Profession: Neoliberal Reform, Resistance and the Assault on Teachers in Chile
Jill Pinkney Pastrana

Social Justice Teacher Unionism in a Canadian Context: Linking Local and Global efforts
Cindy Rottmann

Australian Education Unionism in the Age of Neoliberalism: Education as a Public Good, Not a Private Benefit
Jeff Garsed, John Williamson

“What’s Best for Kids” vs. Teacher Unions: How Teach For America Blames Teacher Unions for the Problems of Urban Schools
Heidi Katherine Pitzer

Gramsci, Embryonic Organic Intellectuals, and Scottish Teacher Learning Representatives: Alternatives to Neoliberal Approaches to Professional Development in the K-12 Sector
Alex Alexandrou

Pedagogy of Liminality? The Case of Turkish Teachers’ Union Egitim-Sen
Duygun Gokturk

Book Reviews
——–
Review of Industrial Relations in Education: Transforming the School Workforce
Merryn Hutchings

A Portrait of Authenticity: A Review of Carl Mirra’s (2010) The AdmirableRadical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970. Kent, OH: Kent University Press
Adam Renner

Review of Union Learning Representatives: Challenges and Opportunities
Becky Wright

Review of How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation
Marisa Huerta

Review of Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic-Industrial Complex
Leah Schweitzer

The Sociopathology of Everyday Business: A Review of The University Against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace
Jim Rovira

Review of The Rich World and the Impoverishment of Education: Diminishing Democracy, Equity and Workers’ Rights
Paul Orlowski

Technology and (Human) Rights: A Review of Human Rights in the Global Information Society
Stephen Petrina

Review of The Developing World and State Education: Neoliberal Depredation and Egalitarian Alternatives
Steven L. Strauss

Miscellany
——–
Connecting Teacher Unions and Teacher Union Research
AERA Teachers’ Work/Teacher Unions SIG

2010 SPECIAL ISSUE: CULTURE AND CRISIS

Call for Chapters/Chapter Proposals

J. Hall, Associate Professor of Sociology

D’Youville College, Buffalo, NY USA

Book Description

2010
SPECIAL ISSUE:
CULTURE AND CRISIS