Tag Archives: conferences

Rouge Forum Archive

The Rouge Forum Archive is now available at RougeForum.com The RF Archive includes flyers, broadsides, conference programs, issues of our zine The Rouge Forum News, the Adam Renner Education for Social Justice Lectures, and more. And also check out RougeForum.org for additional information about RF activities.

The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society.

We are concerned about questions like these:

  • How can we teach against racism, national chauvinism, and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society?
  • How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals and still teach—or learn?
  • Whose interests shall schools serve in a society that is ever more unequal?

We are both research and action oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy, and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what these are.

We seek to build a caring inclusive community that understands an injury to one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless.

Read about the origins and history of The Rouge Forum here.

Why do you call it The Rouge Forum?

The River Rouge runs throughout the Detroit area—where the Rouge Forum was founded in 1998. Once a beautiful river bounteous with fish and plant life, it supported wetlands throughout southeast Michigan. Before industrialization, it was one of three rivers running through what is now the metropolitan area. Today the Rouge meanders through some of the most industrially polluted areas in the United States, past some of the poorest and most segregated areas of North American, only to lead some tributaries to one of the richest cities in the U.S.: Birmingham. The Rouge cares nothing for boundaries. The other two Detroit rivers were paved, early in the life of the city, and now serve as enclosed running sewers. Of the three, the Rouge is the survivor.

The Ford Rouge Plant was built before and during World Way I. By 1920, it was the world’s largest industrial complex. Everything that went into a Ford car was manufactured at the Rouge. It was one of the work’s largest iron foundries and one of the top steel producers. Early on, Henry Ford sought to control every aspect of a worker’s life, mind and body, in the plant and out. Using a goon squad recruited from Michigan prisons led by the infamous Harry Bennet, Ford instituted a code of silence. He systematically divided workers along lines of national origin, sex, race, and language groupings–and set up segregated housing for the work force. Ford owned Dearborn and its politicians. He designed a sociology department, a group of social workers who demanded entry into workers’ homes to discover “appropriate” family relations and to ensure the people ate Ford-approved food, like soybeans, voted right, and went to church.

While Ford did introduce the “Five Dollar Day,” in fact only a small segment of the employees ever got it, and those who did saw their wages cut quickly when economic downturns, and the depression, eroded Ford profits.

The Rouge is the site that defined “Fordism.” Ford ran the line mercilessly. Fordism which centered on conveyor production, single- purpose machines, mass consumption, and mass marketing, seeks to heighten productivity via technique. The processes are designed to strip workers of potentially valuable faculties, like their expertise, to speed production, expand markets, and ultimately to drive down wages. These processes seek to make workers into replaceable machines themselves, but machines also capable of consumption. Contrary to trendy analysis focused on globalization and the technique of production, Ford was carrying on just-in-time practices at the Rouge in the early 1930’s. Ford was and is an international carmaker, in the mid 1970’s one of Europe’s largest sellers. In 1970, Ford recognized the need to shift to smaller cars, and built them, outside the U.S., importing the parts for assembly—early globalism.

Ford was a fascist. He contributed intellectually and materially to fascism. His anti-Semitic works inspired Hitler. Ford accepted the German equivalent of the Medal of Honor from Hitler, and his factories continued to operate in Germany, untouched by allied bombs, throughout WWII.

At its height, more than 100,000 workers held jobs at the Rouge. Nineteen trains ran on 85 miles of track, mostly in huge caverns under the plant. It was the nation’s largest computer center, the third largest producer of glass. It was also the worst polluter. The Environmental Protection agency, in 1970, charged the Rouge with nearly 150 violations.

Today there are 9,000 workers, most of them working in the now Japanese-owned iron foundry. Ford ruthlessly battled worker organizing at the Rouge. His Dearborn cops and goon squad killed hunger marchers during the depression, leading to massive street demonstrations. In the Battle of Overpass Ford unleashed his armed goons on UAW leaders, a maneuver which led to the battle for collective bargaining at Ford, and was the founding monument to what was once the largest UAW local in the world, Local 600, led by radical organizers for years.

On 1 February 1999, the boilers at the aging Rouge plant blew up, killing six workers. The plant, according to workers, had repeatedly failed safety inspections. UAW local president made a statement saying how sorry he was for the families of the deceased–and for William Clay Ford, “who is having one of the worst days of his life.” Papers and the electronic press presented the workers’ deaths as a tough day for the young Ford who inherited the presidency of the company after a stint as the top Ford manager in Europe. The steam went out of Local 600 long ago. The leaders now refer to themselves as “UAW-FORD,” proof that they have inherited the fascist views of the company founder.

When environmentalist volunteers tried to clean the rouge in June 1999, they were ordered out of the water. It was too polluted to clean. So, why the Rouge Forum? The Rouge is both nature and work. The Rouge has never quit; it moves with the resilience of the necessity for labor to rise out of nature itself. The river and the plant followed the path of industrial life throughout the world. The technological advances created at the Rouge, in some ways, led to better lives. In other ways, technology was used to forge the privilege of the few, at the expense of most–and the ecosystems, which brought it to life, The Rouge is a good place to consider a conversation, education, and social action. That is why.

XII International Conference on Critical Education (Ankara, Turkey)

XII International Conference on Critical Education

Ankara University
July 3-6, 2024

REVITALIZING THE WORK OF CRITICAL EDUCATION IN AN AGE OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL CRISIS: COMMUNITY, STRUGGLE AND RESISTANCE

Living in an age of economic, social, political, personal, and ecological crises, educators and school communities face serious physical and mental risks, tensions and other challenges. Under the effect of rising authoritarianism, conservatism, commodification, inequality, pseudoscience, fatalism, war, migration, unemployment, poverty, racism, misogyny, discrimination, displacement, abuse and xenophobia, educators and students feel more andmore insecure, hopeless, powerless, and become isolated from the community. There has been an increase in neoliberal, neo-conservative, andanti-democratic, authoritarian pressures on education, becoming the most significant and current obstacles to development, emancipation and humanization of both educators and students. Curricula have been structured to align with the requirements of the neoliberalism and neo-conservatism diverting from the liberating educational practices. While public education is diminished and discredited with lower funds, unscientific education, private schools are skyrocketing. The ideal of education for public good has been replaced by commodified education. Multiple intertwined crises require a response and community effort that interrupts paralysis, isolation. For these reasons, against all these attacks and the current of isolation, atomization, objectivation, and fragmentation, we would like to convene in the XII.International Conference on Critical Education in Ankara, Turkey, as the space of people where the powers and ideas can be developed, our solidarity and sense of community are refreshed, and we reconstruct new ways of resistance, struggle, and transformation.

We open this call for papers with some comments on our theme and purpose. We welcome all to join our conference which aims to advance and strengthen research, pedagogy, struggle, and critical community. Educators under the stress need this fellowship with new urgency. Critical educators are a foremost ally with democratic communities of struggle facing new attacks on the historic expansions of democracy and its promise. Fresh attempts to rebuild the discredited means of unjust exclusion now intensify at the head waters of the river of historic progress for the oppressed.

We welcome critical educators, progressive thinkers, and students to participate in the XII International Conference on Critical Education, fostering solidarity within community to seek new sources of inspiration, learning experiences, and tools of struggle, in order to build a democratic, scientific,libertarian, egalitarian, public, and secular education.

The International Conference on Critical Education, previously held in Athens (2011, 2012, 2017), Ankara ( 2013), Thessaloniki (2014, 2022), Wroclaw (2015), London (2016, 2018), Naples ( 2019), Valetta, Malta (2023) is a forum for scholars, educators and activists committed to social justice and social emancipation.

This conference, will be hosted by the Ankara University Institute of Educational Sciences with the help of the Faculty of Educational Sciences and its departments. The 12th ICCE will take place at the Cebeci Campus of the University of Ankara.

The Language of the conference will be English and Turkish.

What Teachers, What Citizenship, What Future? The challenges of teaching the social sciences, geography and history — Homage to Joan Pagès i Blanch

[Read the talk here.]

I am very pleased and honoured to be giving the keynote address at the XV International Conference on the Research of Teaching Social Sciences /XV Jornades Internacionals de Recerca en Didàctica de les Ciències Socials (February 8-10 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona), a homage to one of the leading scholars in the field in the past half century, Professor Joan Pagès i Blanch.

In my talk I’ll respond to the questions posed in the conference title “What teachers, citizenship, future for research in social studies education?”

What kind of teachers?
Those who understand their role in creating classrooms where students can develop personally meaningful understandings of the world and recognize they have agency to act on the world, to make change.

What kind of citizenship?
The dangerous kind.

What kind of future?
One where social studies education emphases the connection between the social and the individual, between the political and the existential; where a focus on institutional transformation is pursued in tandem with concerns for the existential dimension of meaning, that is personal desire for belonging, community, and moral commitment.

Rouge Forum 2016 – Teaching for Democracy & Justice in an Age of Inequality

THE ROUGE FORUM CONFERENCE 2016

Teaching for Democracy and Justice in an Age of Inequality

May 27-28, 2016
Calgary, AB, Canada

#RougeForum16

Keynote Speaker: E. Wayne Ross, Professor, University of British Columbia
Location: St. Mary’s University [map]
Registration information and form
Submit Proposal
Housing Information
Program and schedule
Session abstracts
Conference web site

The Rouge Forum holds meetings on a regular basis at both local and national levels. The national conferences have been held on a more or less annual basis; all meetings are action-oriented and the national conferences usually include workshops for teachers and students; panel discussions; community-building and cultural events; as well as academic presentations. Many prominent voices for democracy and critical pedagogy have participated in Rouge Forum meetings. On this site you’ll find the latest information about upcoming Rouge Forum meetings and conferences as well information on past conferences, including abstracts, papers, and videos.

CFP: AVPC 2016: Visual Pedagogies and Digital Cultures

Call for Papers AVPC 2016

We are pleased to announce the Second Call for Papers for the first Association of Visual Pedagogies Conference AVPC 2016: Visual Pedagogies and Digital Cultures. The conference is hosted by the University of Applied Sciences in Zagreb, Croatia, on June 18-19 2016.

 Peer reviewed conference articles will be published in The Video Journal of Education & Pedagogy (Springer) and a invited selection from the conference will be published as a special issue by conference organisers in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief, Michael A. Peters. 

Please send an abstract of no more than 400 words to Petar Jandrić (pjandric@tvz.hr) by 15 February 2016.                                                                                                                                                                        

Conference website: http://avpc.tvz.hr/

We look forward to meeting you in Zagreb!

 Conference Committee:

Petar Jandrić, University of Applied Sciences, Croatia, Michael A. Peters, University of Waikato, New Zealand, Tina Besley, University of Waikato, New Zealand, Jayne White, University of Waikato, New Zealand, Kathrin Otrel-Cass, Aalborg University, Denmark, John O’Neill, Massey University, New Zeland, Milan Bajić, University of Applied Sciences, Croatia.  

XXI Symposium on Research on Applied Linguistics & III International Symposium on Literacies and Discourse Studies – Call for Papers

UNIVERSIDAD DISTRITAL FRANCISCO JOSÉ DE CALDAS

XXI SYMPOSIUM ON RESEARCH IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS &
III INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LITERACIES AND DISCOURSE STUDIES

1ST CALL FOR PAPERS

This academic event is committed to the interdisciplinary promotion and support of research on literacies and discourse studies to push further the boundaries of applied linguistics. Papers drawing on research experiences around topics such as literacies, multilingualism(s) and discourse studies are welcome. Some key areas within these broad topics which contributors could explore include, but are not limited to:

LITERACIES

MULTILINGUALISM(S)

DISCOURSE STUDIES

Early literacy

Language planning & policy

Classroom discourse(s)

Digital literacy

Languages in contact

Political discourse(s)

Multimodality

Minority languages

Media discourse(s)

Bilingualism/Biliteracies

Community-based pedagogies in multilingual contexts

Narratives

KEY NOTE SPEAKERS

Professor
Margaret Hawkins, PhD
University of Wisconsin – USA

Professor
Gary Barkhuizen, PhD
The University of Auckland – New Zealand

Alvaro Quintero, PhD Candidate
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas – Colombia

Download Call for Papers and Submission form here: CALL FOR PAPERS – 2015

CFP: Critical Theories in the 21st Century

4th annual:
critical theories in the twenty first century:
a conference of transformative pedagogies
november 6th & 7th

location:


West Chester University
700 South High St, West Chester, PA 19383

2015 theme:
critical pedagogy vs. capital:
reigniting the conversation

Sponsored by:
Educational Foundations
The Department of Professional and Secondary Education
West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Closing Conference Keynote (November 7th):
Dave Hill

Call For Papers
The 4th Annual Conference on Critical Theories in the 21st Century aims to reinvigorate the field of critical pedagogy. The primary question driving this conference is: What is to be done to make critical pedagogy an effective educational weapon in the current struggle against capitalism and imperialism?

There is no doubt that we are at a critical juncture in history in terms of the limits of nature’s vital ecosystems, the physical limits of the progressive accumulation of capital, and the deepening reactionary ideology and scapegoating that exacerbates the oppression of youth of color. If critical pedagogy is to play a significant role in intervening in the current context, then a sharpened sense of purpose and direction is needed.

Some examples of possible topics include:

  • Marxism
  • Post-structuralism/post-modernism
  • Anarchism
  • Challenging the unholy trinity of state, capital, and religion
  • Class and the capital-labor dialectic
  • Identity and economics
  • Hierarchical and vertical forms of organization (i.e., vanguards versus networks)
  • Reform versus revolution
  • Socialism, communism, & democracy
  • Affect theory and the new materialisms
  • The knowledge economy, post-Fordism, and “cognitive capitalism”
  • Critical geography

While this conference will include important presentations and debates in critical pedagogy, it will not be limited to this focus. In other words, as critical theory becomes more inclusive, global, and all encompassing, this conference welcomes more than just academics as important contributors. That is, we recognize students and youth groups as possessing authentic voices based on their unique relationship to capitalism and will therefore be open to them as presenters and discussion leaders.

While this conference will include important presentations and challenging discussions based in critical pedagogy, it will not be limited to this focus. In other words, as critical theory becomes more inclusive, global, and all encompassing, this conference welcomes more than just academics as important contributors.

Please submit abstract proposals (500-1000 words) to:
Curry Malott (cmalott@wcupa.edu)

Proposal due date: September 27th, 2015

CFP Transformative Researchers & Educators for Democracy: “How public is public education?”

TRED Conference 2014
How Public is Public Education?
Call for Proposals

The Transformative Researchers and Educators for Democracy (TRED) will be holding its third Annual Conference, “How Public is Public Education?”, November 14 and 15, 2014, at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Founded in 2011, UMass Dartmouth’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies has grown to four cohorts of future transformative leaders. Ph.D. and Ed.D. candidates in the program have sought to provide a public space for educational researchers and practitioners to engage in critical and transformative dialogues. Through forums, presentation sessions, panel discussions, and informal gatherings, TRED continues its ambition to place the discussion of educational leadership and policy within the dynamics of ideological production that reflect existing power imbalances that perpetuate inequalities within society.

The theme of the 2014 conference, How Public is Public Education?, reflects the critical elements within and beyond the field of education that need to be discussed, heard, and analyzed as we search for solutions. Professors, students, educational leaders, and the public are all welcome to submit proposals and to attend the conference.

Submitting Proposals
Proposals can be submitted to TREDconf@umassd.edu
Like us on Facebook and look for any new information at Facebook.com/TRED.UMassD
ALL PROPOSALS MUST BE RECEIVED BY: Tuesday September 30th 2014.

Guidelines
TRED will be accepting presentation proposals for papers, symposiums, and research-in-progress roundtables. Upon submission of your proposal, please identify it to one of the following strands:

A. K-12; charter schools, innovation schools
B. Higher Education; adjunct faculty, campus based women’s, gender and cultural centers
C. Public Policy; Race to the Top, high-stakes standardized testing

PAPERS
Paper sessions provide individuals an opportunity to present a condensed version of their study. The research may focus on, but is not limited to, a question from an empirical or theoretical perspective. After all papers within a session have been presented, those in attendance will have the opportunity to dialogue with panelists.

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS ROUNDTABLE
Roundtable sessions are to open critical and insightful dialogue from colleagues familiar with a subject matter to support a developing study. Roundtables will be organized and led by a facilitator.

SYMPOSIUM
Symposiums consist of an integrated set of presentations with a similar topic as the focal point. This format of presenting will be limited to at least three, but no more than five, presentations. The proposal should identify who will be lead discussant or organizer, and, upon review, a TRED committee member may be named as the chair.

Proposal Requirements (For all submissions)
1. Cover Page

  • Title
  • Researcher(s)
  • Contact Information
  • Organization/University
  • Panel Category

2. Abstract(300 word limit, not included in 1,000 word limit for proposal)
3. Individual Proposal (1,000 word limit)

  • Presenters (Identify who is the main contact person)
  • Theoretical Framework and Connections to Conference Theme;
  • Purpose;
  • Research Design/Methods;
  • Conclusion/Findings;
  • References

4. Symposium Group Proposal (1,500 word limit)

  • A common objective or theme should be outlined, providing perspectives on the particular topic.
  • 1-2 paragraphs in which the purpose of the symposium and connections among presenter paper’s is defined;
  • Overview of each paper being presented including: methods, theoretical framework, research topic, and findings;
  • Briefly describe the format and structure of the symposium

*If your symposium proposal is accepted, only the first author will be notified, and the first author is responsible for notifying all other co-authors*

For questions or comments, please contact: TREDconf@umassd.edu

Adam Renner Education for Social Justice Lecture at Rouge Forum 2014

renner-adam

Rouge Forum 2014 runs from June 5-7 at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Check out the details here.

Every year the Rouge Forum honors the life and work of Adam Renner (August 18, 1970 – December 19, 2010) by inviting a critical scholar, educator, or activist to deliver the Adam Renner Education for Social Justice Lecture.

Adam was a teacher, scholar, musician, revolutionary activist, martial artist, and lover of life. His courage took remarkable forms, from being willing to sacrifice to help others, to always learning, and altering his views, on the path to discover what is true in order to make the world a little better. What could be a more powerful legacy?

He received his BA in Mathematics from Thomas More College. While teaching mathematics at Seton High School in Cincinnati, OH, he completed his MEd at Northern Kentucky University. In 2002, Adam received his PhD in Cultural Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and subsequently worked as a professor at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY.

His scholarship focused on service learning, social difference, social justice, and pedagogy and he published in numerous journals including Educational Studies, EcoJustice Review, High School Journal, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Rethinking Schools and more. (Many of Adam’s publications are available to read here.)

Along with his life partner, Gina Stiens, he created a service partnership with schools and social service organizations in Jamaica and taught an ongoing course, “Education for Liberation or Domination: A Critical Encounter in Jamaica.” He was a key leader and organizer in the Rouge Forum serving as Community Coordinator and as editor of the Rouge Forum News.

In the fall of 2010, Adam left his professorship at Bellarmine University and returned to the school classroom, as a math teacher at June Jordan School for Social Equity in San Francisco.

In an article for Substance News, published just weeks before he died, Adam wrote,

“For me and my K-12 classroom, for instance, I have been searching for the intersection of liberation, curriculum, and student experience (comprised of individual traumas, structural oppression, nine years of mis-schooling, varying levels of confidence and skill, etc.). How can I shape the revolutionary subjects necessary to help tip the inflexion point toward the necessary qualitative changes?

“When we teach math, social studies, language arts, and science, can we credibly do so in a way that is separate from the growing militarization of our schools and society, gang and drug infestations in our communities, rampant unemployment, a school to prisons pipeline, the assurance of our students’ ignorance through standardization and a teach-to-the-test mafia-like pressure on teachers?

“So, if we shouldn’t teach our classes that way, can we organize in such a way that militates against such explorations?”

Theses are powerful questions that challenge us to embodied the interaction of critical, ethical theory and determined practice, just as Adam did everyday of his life.

Adam Renner Education for Social Justice Memorial Lecturers

2011
Peter McLaren, Professor at the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences, UCLA, world renowned critical pedagogue and author of over 40 books, including Life in Schools and Revolutionizing Pedagogy.

2012
Susan Ohanian, public school teacher, author, and winner of the National Council of Teachers’ of English “George Orwell Award,” for her outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse.

2013
Patrick Shannon, Professor of Language and Literacy at Penn State University, former primary grade teacher and author of over 16 books, including Reading Wide Awake and Reading Against Democracy.

2014
David Barsamian, founder and director of Alternative Radio and author of Occupy The Economy: Challenging Capitalism and Targeting Iran. He is best known for his interview books with Noam Chomsky, including What We Say Goes.

 

 

Mapping the Rouge Forum from 1998-2014

Join us in June 5-7, 2014 in Denver, CO on the campus of Metropolitan State University of Denver for Rouge Forum 2014.

Rouge Forum meetings and conferences
The Rouge Forum holds meetings on a regular basis at both local and national levels. The national conferences have been held on a more or less annual basis; all meetings are action-oriented and the national conferences usually include workshops for teachers and students; panel discussions; community-building and cultural events; as well as academic presentations. Many prominent voices for democracy and critical pedagogy have participated in Rouge Forum meetings.

  • Detroit, MI (June 1998) International Social Studies Conference of the Rouge Forum
  • Detroit, MI (January 1999) International Social Studies Conference of the Rouge Forum
  • Rochester, NY (February 1999) Developing Democratic Citizens: Teaching Social Education K-16 (with Whole Schooling Consortium)
  • Detroit, MI (June 1999) Whole Schooling Consortium and The Rouge Forum Summer Institute
  • Albany, NY (June 2000) Standardized Testing in K-12 Schooling: Tool of Reform or Tool of Tyranny? (with Whole Schooling Consortium)
  • Detroit, MI (June 2000) International Education Summit for a Democratic Society (with Whole Schooling Consortium and Whole Language Umbrella)
  • Chicago, IL (June 2001) Freedom to Teach, Freedom to Learn: Critical Literacy for Caring Democratic Classrooms (with Whole Schooling Consortium and Whole Language Umbrella)
  • Bethesda, MD (July 2002) Restoring the Passion: Thriving in a Standards Environment (with Whole Schooling Consortium and Whole Language Umbrella)
  • Louisville, KY (June 2003) Rouge Forum Summer Institute on Education and Society
  • Detroit, MI (November 2003) Lessons of War Teach-in for a Democratic Society
  • Sryacuse, NY (June 2004) Rouge Forum Summer Institute on Education and Society
  • Detroit, MI (March 2007) Their Wars Left Behind: Education for Action
  • Louisville, KY (March 2008) Education: Reform or Revolution?
  • Ypsilanti, MI (May 2009) Education, Empire, Economy & Ethics at a Crossroads
  • Williams Bay, WI (August 2010) Education in the Public Interest
  • Chicago (Romeoville) IL (May 20-22, 2011) Education and the State: A Critical Antidote to the Commercialized, Racist, and Militaristic Order
  • Vancouver, BC, Canada (April 13, 2012) The Rouge Forum at the American Educational Research Association
  • Oxford, OH (June 22-24, 2012) Occupy Education! Class Conscious Pedagogies for Social Change
  • Detroit, MI, (May 16-19, 2013) Winning the Class Struggle Against Corporate Education Reform
  • Denver, CO (June 5-7, 2014) The Struggle for Social Justice Inside and Outside the Classroom