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Historical Materialism Conference Toronto – MAY 11-13, 2012

Historical Materialism Conference

Toronto

YORK UNIVERSITY, MAY 11-13, 2012

“SPACES OF CAPITAL, SPACES OF RESISTANCE”

Call for Papers: Following on the successes of the two previous North American Historical Materialism Conferences at York University (2008 and 2010), we are pleased to issue a call for papers for our third conference. In light of the continuing instability of global capitalism and the mounting resistances from Egypt to the Occupy Movement, our over-riding theme will be “Spaces of Capital, Spaces of Resistance.” But we welcome all contributions that contribute to critical knowledge on the activist and scholarly Left and the development of historical materialism as a living research program. We specifically welcome papers dealing with The Spaces of Power; Critical Theory and the Politics of Liberation; Capital and its Discontents; Modes and Movements of Resistance.

We welcome individual submissions as well as panel proposals. For individual papers, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words. Panel organizers should submit a 100-word panel abstract along with individual paper abstracts of no more than 250-words for each paper to be presented as part of the panel. We will formulate the conference itinerary based upon the broad themes generated through the submission process. Proposals will be accepted until January 15, 2012 by email to historicalmaterialism12@gmail.com

We apologize, but cannot accommodate requests to present on specific days, so please be prepared to attend the full three days of the conference.

Critical Education
Volume 2 Issue 11 (September 21, 2011)

The ‘Highly Qualified Teacher’ Trope: Democratic Professionalism and Educational Policy in the Face of Risk, Uncertainty, and Blame
JoVictoria Nicholson-Goodman

Abstract

The descriptor, ‘highly qualified teacher,’ serves as a trope in educational reform rhetoric that invites interrogation if it is to be vaunted as a key signifier of utopian thinking about improving American education in our times. Such interrogation may be furthered by informed awareness of the past, critical attentiveness to the present, and engaged openness for a future that reaches towards democratic aspiration as its guiding ethos. A trilateral orientation of historical awareness, policy critique, and democratic educative theory are linked to interrogate how ‘quality’ as a construct is constrained and distorted in talk about ‘21st century skills’ and teacher quality as guarantors of global economic competitiveness. Of primary concern is how the distortion manifests in the face of risk and uncertainty as features of a ‘culture of blame’ under a neo-liberal logic that replaces democracy with corporatist control. The ‘highly qualified teacher’ trope is interrogated and subverted as it is contrasted with a ‘democratic conception of professionalism’ and ‘wide-awakeness’ in ‘the nightmare that is the present’.