Critical Education is proud to be the sponsor journal for Critical Theories in the 21st Century
4th annual:
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Critical Education is proud to be the sponsor journal for Critical Theories in the 21st Century
4th annual:
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Posted in CFPs, Conferences, Corporate University, Critical University Studies, Economics, Equity, Events, For Profit Universities, Politics, Publications, Research
Tagged anarchism, anti-capitalism, capitalism, CFP, CFPs, Conferences, Critical pedagogy, post-structuralism, postmodernism, West Chester University
August 19, 2013 9am – 5pm Holiday Inn Yorkdale
3450 Dufferin St, Toronto
Student, social movements and labour activists from across Ontario will come together to build alternatives to a right-wing agenda of austerity, poverty and repression. We believe a future is possible that respects democracy, environment, land and human rights. But we need deep organizing. Speakers include:
For more information: http://weareontario.ca/index.php/ontario-common-front-general-assembly-august-19-2013/
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Posted in Advocacy, Conferences, Employment rights, Organizing, Politics, Protests, Solidarity, Student Movement, Students, Unions
Tagged Organizing, Protests, Students, Working conditions
Third Annual Conference on Critical Education
Education Under Siege by Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism
May 15-17, 2013
Ankara,Turkey
Neoliberal and neoconservative educational politics have significantly been damaging education all over the World. Public education is regarded as old fashioned, private schools and a variety of types of education have been presented as an ideal model, schools and the students are now in a more competitive relationship, public education has been losing its status as a social right as a result of relationships with the market, and the state is rapidly losing its social character in the face of these developments. It leads us to rethink education given problems such as the education becoming less democratic, less secular and losing its scientific character; becoming more conservative and capital oriented and becoming less concerned with- in fact- detrimental to- issues of equality and critique. In rethinking education, the critical education movement takes an important role in creating new horizons and strategies against the global attack of the capital.
The International Conference on Critical Education, which was held in Athens for first meetings, provides a base for the academics, teachers and intellectuals who are interested in the subject to come together in order to overcome obstacles for public education. Therefore, in the age where education is under siege by neoliberalism and neoconservatism, we invite you to the IIIrd International Conference on Critical Education to reflect on the theory and practice of critical education and to contribute to the field.
Location: University of Ankara, Faculty of Educational Sciences & ATAUM (Ankara University European Research Center) located on University of Ankara Campus
Keynote Speakers:
Dave Hill, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, England
E. Wayne Ross, University of British Columbia, Canada
Fatma Gök, Bogaziçi University, Turkey
Fevziye Sayılan, University of Ankara, Turkey
George Grollios, University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Jerrold Kachur, University of Alberta,Canada
Kostas Skordoulis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Panagiotis Sotiris, University of the Aegean, Greece
Peter Mayo, University of Malta, Malta
Peter McLaren, University of California Los Angeles, USA
Ravi Kumar, South Asian University, New Delhi, India
Rıfat Okçabol, Bogaziçi University, Turkey
Sandra Mathison, University of British Columbia, Canada
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Tagged Conferences, Critical Education, E. Wayne Ross, Sandra Mathison, Turkey
COCAL X Conference in Mexico City
August 9-12, 2012
The tenth annual COCAL Conference will be held in Mexico City, on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico from Thursday, August 9 through Sunday, August 12, 2010.
The host for COCAL X is the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (STUNAM). Contingent faculty activists and representatives from North America will participate in the conference. Presentations and plenaries will be translated into English, French, and Spanish.
UNAM
(Photo by David Milroy)
Mexico City is about a five hour flight from Washington, D.C.; four hours from Chicago, and three and a half hours from Los Angeles. The conference arrangements include a group hotel and bus transportation to and from sessions.
We are requesting submissions for presentations at the COCAL X Conference. The deadline is June 15, 2012. Click here for guidelines for submissions.
Click here for online registration
Click here for a mail-in registration form
Below is information about registration and accommodations for planning purposes:
Conference registration fee includes:
Optional tour: Thursday, August 9th visit to Pyramids of Teotihuacan, $50
Click here for an application to the scholarship fund
Plenaries and workshop topics
Plenary at COCAL IX
(Photo by David Milroy)
Plenary 1: Changes in academic work in the context of neoliberal globalization
1. Teaching, researching, and disseminating knowledge to the larger community, including academic management of e-learning
2. Gaining and maintaining health, unemployment, and retirement benefits
3. Supporting academic improvement, evaluation processes, and recognition
Plenary 2: Organization and new forms of struggle by academic workers; challenges and strategies for the 21st century
4. Forming and building unions, associations, federations, networks and coalitions
5. Expanding employment rights: hiring, retention, tenure, wages, health benefits, and safety
6. Strengthening union rights: institutional recognition, alliances and federations, collective bargaining rights, and labor laws and regulations
7. Supporting political rights, cultural rights, and academic freedom
8. Exploring forms of struggle and achievements: campaigns, negotiations, demonstrations, work stoppages, strikes, and use of new technologies and social media
Plenary 3: Culture and identity of the new academic citizens in North America and the world
9. Creating a sense of academic culture and university identity: freeway flyers and working with multiple assignments and institutions
10. New forms of academic citizenship, new work and the changing university community: finding spaces of resistance to the corporate model of higher education
11. Fighting discrimination and inequality: multicultural identity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and different capabilities
12. Building connections between the contingent academic worker and the university community: tenure-track faculty, research faculty, students, staff, and administrators
Planned Social/Cultural Events
Teotihuacan Pyramids
(Photo by David Milroy)
Optional preconference excursion day ($50 extra):
Accommodations
Hotel Radisson Paraíso Perisur
Cuspide 53, Col. Parque del Pedregal, 14020 Mexico D.F.
$82 US, taxes included, each night for a single-bed or double-bed room. Additional persons in room are $10 per person, up to 4 persons total per room.
Hotel Royal Pedregal
Periférico Sur 4363, México, D. F.
$82 US, taxes included, each night for a single-bed or double-bed room.
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Tagged adjuncts, COCAL, Conferences, Contingent labor
‘Doing and Undoing Academic Labour’
7 June 2012, 9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
University of Lincoln (UK)
In recent decades, a wealth of information has been produced about academic labour: the financialisation of knowledge, diminution of professional autonomy and collegiality through managerialism and audit cultures; the subsumption of higher education into circulations of capital, proletarianisation of intellectual work, shift from dreams of enlightenment and emancipation to imperatives of ‘employability’, and experiences of alienation and anger amongst educators across the world.
This has also been a period of intensifying awareness about the significance of these processes, not only for teachers and students in universities, but for all labour and intellectual, social and political life as well. And now we watch the growth of a transnational movement that is inventing new ways of knowing and producing knowledge, new forms of education, and new possibilities for pedagogy to play a progressive role in struggles for alterantives within the academy and beyond.
Yet within the academy, the proliferation of critical work on these issues is not always accompanied by qualitative changes in everyday practice. The conditions of academic labour for many in the UK are indeed becoming more precarious and repressive – and in unequal measure across institutions and disciplines, and in patterns that retrench existing inequalities of gender, physical ability, class, race and sexuality. The critical analysis of academic labour promises much, but often remains disconnected from the ways we work in practice with others.
This conference brings together scholars and activists from a range of disciplines to discuss these problems, and to consider how critical knowledge about new forms of academic labour can be linked to struggles to humanise labour and knowledge production within and beyond the university.
Contributors
Public / Free / Open
This conference is public, free and open to everyone; we warmly invite you to attend. Please register via the website so we know how many people will be attending. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Dr. Sarah Amsler at samsler@lincoln.ac.uk.
Getting here
Doing and Undoing Academic Labour will be held in Learning Landscapes, MB1019, the University of Lincoln. Click here for a map of the campus.
We hope to see you here!
Best wishes,
Dr. Sarah Amsler
Sr. Lecturer in Education
Centre for Educational Research and Development
University of Lincoln
Lincoln LN6 7TS
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OCCUPY EDUCATION! Class Conscious Pedagogies and Social Change
The Rouge Forum 2012 will be held at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The University’s picturesque campus is located 50 minutes northwest of Cincinnati. The conference will be held June 22-24, 2012.
Proposals for papers, panels, performances, workshops, and other multimedia presentations should include title(s) and names and contact information for presenter(s). The deadline for sending proposals is April 15. The Steering Committee will email acceptance notices by May 1.
Read the Call for Proposals.
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Tagged #OCCUPY, CFPs, Conferences, Rouge Forum
The Chronicle: Will Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Occupy the MLA Convention?
Feeling downsized, disrespected, and exploited, disgruntled members of the Modern Language Association—seeking to capitalize on the Occupy Wall Street movement’s messages about income disparity—have called for action in advance of the group’s annual meeting next month.
Those members, mostly faculty who are off the tenure track, have turned to blogs and a Twitter feed called OccupyMLA to air grievances about deteriorating labor conditions on their campuses for part-time instructors. Among their list of complaints: low wages; no health insurance; lack of access to office space, phones, and computers; abrupt decisions by administrators to cut programs and courses; criticisms of unions; little or no openness about spending; job insecurity; and fear of retribution if they speak out.
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Tagged #OCCUPY, Contingent labor, MLA, Protests
Free Interactive Conference Open to All
To Know is Not Enough:
Activist Scholarship, Social Change & The Corporate University
www.RougeForumConference.org
Friday April 13, 2012
University of British Columbia,
Robson Square Campus
HSBC Hall
Vancouver, BC
The theme for the 2012 annual meeting of the American Education Research Association is “Non Satis Scire: To Know Is Not Enough.” It is laudable that AERA is promoting “the use of research to improve education and serve the public good” rather than the mere accumulation of research knowledge, but The Rouge Forum is interested in exploring what it means for scholars, and educators in general, to move beyond “knowing” to the pursuit of activist agendas for social change.
The Rouge Forum @ AERA will bring together world-renowned scholars, teachers, community organizers, and other activists to discuss these questions and others related to activist scholarship, social change, academic freedom, and work in the corporate university as part of a one-day interactive conference at the Robson Square Campus of University of British Columbia in downtown Vancouver.
What is the Rouge Forum?
The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. 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 that is. We seek to build a caring inclusive community that understands that 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. RougeForum.com
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Posted in Academic freedom, Conferences, Corporate University
HOW CLASS WORKS – 2012
CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS
A Conference at SUNY Stony Brook June 7-9, 2012
The Center for Study of Working Class Life is pleased to announce the How Class Works – 2012 Conference, to be held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, June 7-9, 2012. Proposals for papers, presentations, and sessions are welcome until December 12, 2011 according to the guidelines below. For more information, visit our Web site at <www.workingclass.sunysb.edu>.
Purpose and orientation: The conference seeks to explore ways in which an explicit recognition of class helps to understand the social world in which we live, and ways in which analysis of society can deepen our understanding of class as a social relationship. Presentations should take as their point of reference the lived experience of class; proposed theoretical contributions should be rooted in and illuminate social realities. Presentations are welcome from people outside academic life when they sum up social experience in a way that contributes to the themes of the conference. Formal papers will be welcome but are not required. All presentations should be accessible to an interdisciplinary audience.
Conference themes: The conference welcomes proposals for presentations that advance our understanding of any of the following themes.
The mosaic of class, race, and gender. To explore how class shapes racial, gender, and ethnic experience and how different racial, gender, and ethnic experiences within various classes shape the meaning of class.
Class, power, and social structure. To explore the social content of working, middle, and capitalist classes in terms of various aspects of power; to explore ways in which class and structures of power interact, at the workplace and in the broader society.
Class and community. To explore ways in which class operates outside the workplace in the communities where people of various classes live.
Class in a global economy. To explore how class identity and class dynamics are influenced by globalization, including experience of cross-border organizing, capitalist class dynamics, international labor standards.
Middle class? Working class? What’s the difference and why does it matter? To explore the claim that the U.S. is a middle class society and contrast it with the notion that the working class is the majority; to explore the relationships between the middle class and the working class, and between the middle class and the capitalist class. Class, public policy, and electoral politics. To explore how class affects public policy, with special attention to health care, the criminal justice system, labor law, poverty, tax and other economic policy, housing, and education; to explore the place of electoral politics in the arrangement of class forces on policy matters.
Class and culture: To explore ways in which culture transmits and transforms class dynamics.
Pedagogy of class. To explore techniques and materials useful for teaching about class, at K-12 levels, in college and university courses, and in labor studies and adult education courses.
How to submit proposals for How Class Works – 2012 Conference
Proposals for presentations must include the following information: a) title; b) which of the eight conference themes will be addressed; c) a maximum 250 word summary of the main points, methodology, and slice of experience that will be summed up; d) relevant personal information indicating institutional affiliation (if any) and what training or experience the presenter brings to the proposal; e) presenter’s name, address, telephone, fax, and e-mail address. A person may present in at most two conference sessions. To allow time for discussion, sessions will be limited to three twenty-minute or four fifteen-minute principal presentations. Sessions will not include official discussants. Proposals for poster sessions are welcome. Presentations may be assigned to a poster session.Proposals for sessions are welcome. A single session proposal must include proposal information for all presentations expected to be part of it, as detailed above, with some indication of willingness to participate from each proposed session member.Submit proposals as an e-mail attachment to michael.zweig@stonybrook.edu or as hard copy by mail to the How Class Works – 2012 Conference, Center for Study of Working Class Life, Department of Economics, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384.
Timetable: Proposals must be received by December 12, 2012. After review by the program committee, notifications will be mailed on January 17, 2012. The conference will be at SUNY Stony Brook June 7-9, 2012. Conference registration and housing reservations will be possible after February 20, 2012. Details and updates will be posted at http://www.workingclass.sunysb.edu.
Conference coordinator:
Michael Zweig
Director, Center for Study of Working Class Life
Department of Economics
State University of New York Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384
631.632.7536
michael.zweig@stonybrook.edu ##
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Fourth International Conference on Education, Labor and Emancipation
This year’s Theme: Manifesto for New Social Movements: Equity, Access, and Empowerment
It will be held in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil on June 16th – 19th 2009.
Scholars, teachers, students and activists from various fields and countries will convene in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) to compare theoretical perspectives, share pedagogical experiences, and work toward developing a global movement for social justice in and through education. We invite proposals from the following perspectives: indigenous, feminist, postcolonial, Marxist/neomarxist, queer theory, critiques of neoliberalism/globalization, CRT, liberation theology, anthropology, comparative/international education, etc. Visit our website for more information. http://academics.utep.edu/confele
We appreciate if you can forward this invitation to others who may be interested.
Please do send in your proposals, here are the guidelines:
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
We are currently witnessing the emergence of a new context for education, labor, and emancipatory social movements. Global flows of people, capital, and energy increasingly define the world we live in. The multinational corporation, with its pursuit of ever-cheaper sources of labor and materials and its disregard for human life, is replacing the nation-state as the dominant form of economic organization. Faced with intensifying environmental pressures and depletion of essential resources, economic elites have responded with increased militarism and restriction of civil liberties.
At the same time, masses of displaced workers, peasants, and indigenous peoples are situating their struggles in a global context. Labor activists can no longer ignore the concomitant struggles of Indigenous peoples, African diasporic populations, other marginalized ethnic groups, immigrants, women, GLBT people, children and youth. Concern for democracy and human rights is moving in from the margins to challenge capitalist priorities of “efficiency” and exploitation. In some places, the representatives of popular movements are actually taking the reins of state power. Everywhere we look, new progressive movements are emerging to bridge national identities and boundaries, in solidarity with transnational class, gender, and ethnic struggles.
At this juncture, educators have a key role to play. The ideology of market competition has become more entrenched in schools, even as opportunities for skilled employment diminish. We must rethink the relationship between schooling and the labor market, developing transnational pedagogies that draw upon the myriad social struggles shaping students’ lives and communities. Critical educators need to connect with other social movements to put a radically democratic agenda, based on principles of equity, access, and emancipation, at the center of a transnational pedagogical praxis.
Distinguished scholars from numerous fields and various countries will convene in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) to compare and contribute to theoretical perspectives, share pedagogical experiences, and work toward developing a global movement of enlightening activism. Issues related to education, labor, and emancipation will be addressed from a range of theoretical perspectives, including but not limited to the following:
Critical Pedagogy
Proposals may be offered as panel presentations or individual papers. Please indicate type of proposal with the submission.
Individual paper proposals should contain a cover sheet with the paper title, contact information (e-mail, address, telephone number, and affiliation), a brief bio, for each presenter, and an abstract of no more than 250 words (not including references). Please indicate whether you will present in Portuguese, Spanish or English. Presenters who wish to present in Portuguese should nevertheless include an English or Spanish translation of the abstract with their submission.
Panel proposals must include a cover sheet with the panel title and organizers’ contact information (e-mail, address, telephone number, affiliation), as well as an abstract of the overall panel theme (no more than 400 words, not including references) and abstracts/bios for each paper included in the panel. Please indicate whether panel members will present in Portuguese, Spanish or English. Proposals submitted in Portuguese should include translations (either English or Spanish) of the panel theme with each individual abstract.
Please submit proposals by E-mail only to: confele@utep.edu . THE DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS IS March 1st, 2009. Proposals must be accompanied by your conference registration in order to be considered.
Following the tradition of the last three conferences, a book will be produced comprising the most engaging papers from CONFELE 2009, as selected by an editorial board. Presenters wishing to be considered for this volume should submit full papers (in APA style) for review by August 1st, 2009.
César Augusto Rossatto, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Critical Pedagogy & Multiculturalism and Social Justice
The University of Texas at El Paso
College of Education, Room #812
El Paso, TX 79968-0574
(915) 747-5253
www.academics.utep.edu/confele
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A Conference on the impact of standardized evaluation on education in the Americas
The Research Network of the Initiative for Democratic Education in the Americas (IDEA), identifies standardized testing of students and productivity-based evaluation of teachers as areas of serious concern for the education community from Canada to Argentina.
Important studies on the theme have been carried out in many countries, but it is necessary to enrich this work through the development of a regional understanding of the repercussions these neoliberal policies have on teachers’ working conditions and professional autonomy, and on students’ rights to access public education at all levels and to define their role in society as fully participating socio-cultural historical subjects.
As part of IDEA’s hemispheric “Evaluation for Success, Not in Excess” campaign, the Network is organizing “Testing, Testing, Testing…,” a conference on standardized evaluation to take place in Mexico City, Mexico February 19 – 21, 2009.
The event is an opportunity to share research and experiences regarding standardized testing, and to participate in the collective construction of knowledge that will enrich international strategies to resist neoliberal evaluation and develop alternative evaluation processes.
The IDEA Network in invites researchers working for, or allied with, education organizations, and other education activists working for democratic public education to participate in the “Testing, Testing, Testing…” conference to share their concrete experiences as educational actors. Contact the IDEA Network at sstewart@idea-network.ca for conference registration forms and other information.
Download a conference registration form here: ideas/admin/UserFiles/File/REGIFORM_-_evaluation_-_Eng.doc
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WHAS11.com: The former dean surrendered to authorities
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The 4th Annual Community As Intellectual Space Symposium Registration is Open!
http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/cpd/CIS2008/
What:
The 4th Annual Community as Intellectual Space Symposium:
“Aesthetics as Resistance: The Act of Community Building”
Hosted by the Community Informatics Initiative, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.
This year promises to be an extraordinary event, exploring notions of the “art” of community building in cultural context: from murals to media, technology to teaching. Join us for an unprecedented celebration of cross-cultural community in the heart of the Paseo Boricua neighborhood of Chicago.
(Continuing professional development units for K-12 educators will be available.)
When: June 13-15, 2008
Where: Puerto Rican Cultural Center, Chicago
Who:
•Dr. Margaret Burroughs (invited), founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History
•Internationally known muralist and artist Pablo Marcano
Other speakers include:
Dr. Carol Lee, Northwestern University,
Dr. Lisa Yun Lee, Director of Jane Addams Hull-House Museum at the University of Illinois, Chicago;
Dr. Sarai Lastra, Turabo University, Puerto Rico;
Dr. Antonia Darder and Dr. Abdul Alkalimat, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign;
Dr. Jacqueline Lazu, DePaul University;
Dr. Jose Lopez, Executive Director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, and community and government representatives
Activities:
–A unique artist-led mural tour on the nationally known Paseo
–Community Informatics Initiative workshops:
Curating Identity: Newberry Library exhibit created by high school students as curators;
“Do You ‘Squeak’?”: How to use creative technologies with early childhood learners;
Going Teen Green: How to inspire creative urban gardening in the high school;
How to build a community library
•Premier of the third play in a trilogy by noted Puerto Rican author and playwright, Tato Laviera, performed by Pedro Albizu Campos High School students
•June 12, a Pre-Symposium reception is being hosted by the Humboldt Park Branch of the Chicago Public Library featuring Chicago Public Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey (invited) and artists
•And, of course, we will be attending the 30th Anniversary People’s Parade
Want to hear more? Visit our registration website:
http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/cpd/CIS2008/
CONTACT:
Ann P. Bishop, Associate Professor
501 E. Daniel
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
217.244.3299
abishop@uiuc.edu
www.cii.uiuc.edu
Sharon L. Comstock, M.A., M.L.S.,
Ph.D. student
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
scomstoc@uiuc.edu
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SDS – UBC is hosting a Week of Resistance! We’ll be discussing the privatization and commodification of education with an anti-military, anti-gentrification and direct-action bent! Join us if you’re a student activist, a wanna-be student activist or simply intrigued by student activism and open to learn more about it! This conference is open to everyone as the issues explored are consequential for society at large.
email sds.ubc@gmail.com to get involved.
bookface group: http://ubc.facebook.com/event.php?eid=20667840135&ref=nf
SCHEDULEOF EVENTS:
MONDAY:
12-2 p.m. — Opening Ceremony:
Keynote: DAVID NOBLE – “From Whining to Winning: Winning the Battle with the University—Dummy Corporations and all!”
David Noble is one of Canada’s most famous professor-activists. He’s currently a history professor at York University. He’s flying all the way out here to share his experiences fighting the Corporate University – and winning!
5-7 p.m. — “Military-free UBC” panel
SDS Tacoma, UVIC anti-military recruiters and more discussing anti-military strategies on campus and what you can do about it!
TUESDAY:
12-2 p.m. — “Labour and Corporatization of Campus” panel
The issue of rising sessesional instructors, the connection between labor and race and the CocaCola bastards on campus will be addressed all in one sitting!
Presenters: Petra Ganzenmueller (sessional instructor—CAUT); Larry Ngoma (CUPE and issues of racism); Stefanie Ratjen, AMS VP external elect (tuition fee increases); Steven Klein, SDS (history of Coca-cola contracts on campus).
More to Come!
WEDNESDAY:
12-2 p.m. — “Unschooling Oppression” panel
Alternative models of education will be explored!
Presenters: Representatives from colour school, Indigenous free school, Windsor House, Bruce Baum.
5-7 p.m. –“Deconstructing ‘Progress’: Housing, Gentrification and Olympic Resistance” panel
No to the gentrification of the University/City!
Presenters: Gord Hill (No 2010 coalition), professor Chris Shaw (2010 Watch), Margaret Orlowski (Students for a Democratic Society), and Tom Malenfant (Anti-Poverty Committee)
THURSDAY:
12-2 p.m. – “Demystifying the Power Structure at UBC” panel + Lunch
Ever wondered what the fuck the AMS, BoG, Student Council, Resource Groups, GSS, AUS, and billions of other acronyms stand for? This is a student-directed workshop aimed at unmasking the power structure at UBC! Shit you actually need to know if you are a UBC student.
Lunch Will be Served!
5-7 p.m. — “History of Activism at the University” panel
Come listen to UBC and SFU activists from the APEC period and before! Let’s integrate the older narratives with the new ones and make the interconnections. Awesome workshop for any current or wanna-be activist!
FRIDAY:
12-2 p.m. March in solidarity for International Women’s day!
3-5 p.m. — Closing Keynote: DENIS RANCOURT – “Anarchism in Academia Now!”
Radical professors are needed to indoctrinate progressive students. Anarchist professors are needed to make sanity. If they’re not trying to stop you, then you’re not making a difference.
Denis G. Rancourt is a physics professor, environmental researcher, activist, and anarchist teaching at the University of Toronto.
http://www.science.uottawa.ca/~dgr/
7-11pm — RHIZOME CAFé (317 East Broadway)
Fundraiser, celebration of student art, music and resistance; entrance by donation
Full list of panel speakers and more activities on the way!
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BCTF Public Education Conference
October 27, 28, 2006
Delta Vancouver Airport Hotel and Conference Centre
The BCTF is pleased to sponsor the public education conference, “What really counts! Rethinking accountability.”
This conference will examine the bureaucratic accountability mandate imposed on BC’s public schools and its impact on learning, teaching, and the principles of public education. The conference will feature keynote speaker, Paul Shaker, Dean of Education at Simon Fraser University, and a wide range of workshop presentations providing delegates with a choice of topics to pursue in detail.
The delegates invited to this conference include parents, teachers, school support staff union reps, trustees, superintendents, MLAs, and representatives from organizations and groups. The BCTF is looking forward to this opportunity to discuss the issues, strategies, and positive alternatives. It’s certainly time to rethink accountability and talk about what really counts in BC’s public schools.
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The Chronicle: Adjunct Professors Discuss Labor Issues and College ‘Corporatization’ at Biennial Conference
The biennial conference of the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor brought more than 200 non-tenure-track professors, activists, and union leaders together here this weekend to discuss the precarious employment situation of more than half the people who teach college courses.
Over three days of workshops and panels, the participants traded ideas about organizing strategies, legislative efforts, and threats to academic freedom for adjuncts.
The attendees came from all over Canada, the United States, and Mexico — many of them paying their own way. Conference-travel budgets, after all, are one of the many perks that tenure-track professors have and adjuncts lack.
“We have no institutional support other than what comes out of our own pockets,” said Flo Hatcher, a member of the executive committee of the American Association of University Professors, who is an adjunct professor of art at Southern Connecticut State University.The conference began with “state of the nation” reports delivered by speakers from the countries in attendance.
In Canada and in the United States, the delegates reported, the challenges are much the same: Decreases in public spending on higher education have led to tuition increases for students and to the erosion of tenure protections for professors.
Although all professors once performed a mix of research, teaching, and service duties, those roles have been progressively “unbundled,” creating a two-tiered professoriate, said Greg Allain, president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
More and more, he said, tenure is the preserve of the elite research professor. For everyone else, short-term contracts are the rule, because of administrators who place a high priority on “flexibility,” he said.
Mr. Allain said his association had gained several victories in bargaining for adjuncts, winning things like Internet access and personal offices on many campuses. But, he said, those victories have not been enough. He said the group had started arguing for a “pro rata” model of employment for adjuncts, in which an adjunct’s pay and benefits, as well as his or her research and governance responsibilities, would be directly proportional to the adjunct’s share of a full-timer’s load.
Cary Nelson, president of the AAUP, delivered the report for the United States. He said he hoped that the large numbers of adjuncts at American institutions would assert themselves in their local unions because adjuncts are more sensitive to the crises affecting higher education. “I urge contingent faculty to take over every union that they can,” he said.
“We are all in the same boat,” he went on. “Only you can teach all of us the boat is leaking.”
Lawrence Gold, director of the higher-education division of the American Federation of Teachers, told the meeting that his union was planning a campaign to push legislation in a number of states that would “address all aspects of the academic staffing crisis.”
“We have to work at the policy level as well as at the bargaining level,” said Mr. Gold.
If “corporatization” was the name most American speakers gave to the evil they perceived to be threatening higher education, “neoliberalism” was what those from Mexico called it. One speaker, Maria Teresa Lechuga, a 30-year-old contract professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, described the conditions of her employment in a tone of mordant humor.
She began her academic career, she said, after getting a graduate degree in educational sciences. But her teaching responsibilities expanded quickly. “They asked me if I knew anything about art or linguistics,” she said through a translator. “I said yes, and I got the job.”
“I worked for six months,” she said, “and then they asked me if I knew anything about teaching history. I said yes.”
Five years into her career, Ms. Lechuga said, she was teaching mathematics, art, history, and Italian — just to make ends meet. “We no longer have contracts for full time or part time,” she said. “We only have contracts for hours.”
She suggested that her situation — which has her teaching a grab bag of liberal-arts courses with little qualifications and low pay — was the result of a system that places little value on the “humanist project” of education. Instead, she said, the system cares most about producing a reliable work force.
Mr. Nelson, of the AAUP, echoed that concern. “The less academic freedom there is, the less job security there is, the easier it is for universities to become a place just for job training,” he said.
Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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HOW CLASS WORKS — 2006
A conference at the State University of New York at Stony Brook
JUNE 8 to 10, 2006
ON-CAMPUS HOUSING REGISTRATION ENDS APRIL 30!
DISCOUNT REGISTRATION RATE ENDS MAY 7
To see the full program and register
visit the conference page at www.workingclass.sunysb.edu
Speakers Confirmed
Joe Berry
Barbara Bowen
Steve Fraser
Jennifer Gordon
Peniel Joseph
Nelson Lichtenstein
Joyce Mills
Susie Orbach
Uhuru Williams
Nancy Wohlforth
Plus over 150 presentations in working class studies from graduate students, faculty, union and community activists — from Canada, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Nigeria, UK, and US — plus film, music, photography, poetry
Sponsored by the Center for Study of Working Class Life
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VANCOUVER, Aug. 9 /CNW/ – Teaching Assistant Unions from across Canada
will come together in Vancouver from August 12 – 13, 2005, to share
information and strategies to improve their working conditions and position
themselves to get better contracts. The inaugural meeting of the Canadian
Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions (CCGEU) is set to include discussions of
coordinated bargaining and organizing.
“This conference lays the groundwork for continued cooperation for the
benefit of Teaching Assistants across Canada and the improvement of
post-secondary working conditions for years to come,” explained Elissa Strome,
President of CUPE Local 2278. The local, which represents more than 2,000
Teaching Assistants at the University of British Columbia, is hosting the
meeting. “Teaching Assistants from Newfoundland to Victoria have many issues in
common. Wages, tuition fees, and class sizes are just a few that come to mind.
This conference provides an opportunity to learn from one another and to open
the doors to further communication,” said Kevin Tilley, Chair of the Teaching
Support Staff Union (TSSU) representing more than 1,500 Teaching Assistants
and Sessional Lecturers at Simon Fraser University.
Delegates to the CCGEU meeting represent unionized Teaching Assistants at
14 universities across Canada. They are members of the Canadian Union of
Public Employees, Public Service Alliance of Canada, and independent unions.
Organizers have also invited non-union Teaching Assistant organizations
to attend. “We have a responsibility to aid our colleagues who are working at
universities without the same rights and benefits that we have,” said Archana
Rampure, Chair of CUPE Local 3902. Local 3902 has recently organized 1,000
Sessional Lecturers and now represents some 5,500 Graduate Student Employees
and Sessionals at the University of Toronto.
Teaching Assistants are graduate and undergraduate students who teach
classes, lead labs and tutorials, and mark papers and exams. They do a
significant amount of the teaching at Canadian universities.
For further information: Elissa Strome, president, CUPE Local 2278,
Telephone: (604) 224-2118 or Cell: (778) 883-5068 or email:
president@cupe2278.ca.
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CALL FOR PAPERS
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
March 2-5, 2006
Vancouver, Canada
http://www.cmstudies.org/conference_index.html
The SCMS Caucus on Class is sponsoring the following calls for papers. Please send 150-word proposals, plus brief bibliography and bio statement, to the listed contact person by August 20, 2005.
“The Canadian Imaginary: Paradise in the North or Cheap Labor Market?” This panel examines the place of Vancouver and other Canadian filmmaking centers in terms of their relationship to Hollywood television and film production over the past decade. Vancouver, where The X Files, The Sopranos, and many other television series have been filmed has been seen as a cheap location stand-in for more expensive, because more union-based, shooting in the United States, particularly in New York. Toronto, the other major Canadian filmmaking city, has seen a wholesale migration of Hollywood production in the wake of the recent Screen Actors Guild strike by actors in commercials. The panel would also look at, from the Canadian perspective, the effect of these industry trends on the heavily government financed Canadian independent scene both in film and on Canadian television. The panel also explores the Hollywood/Canadian relationship in terms of screen image. What is the effect on the concept of the veracity of location shooting when “Vancouver” substitutes for “America,” and, on the Canadian side, what does it mean to have Canadian locations effaced and presented as literally a part of the U.S.?
CONTACT: Dennis Broe – dennis.broe@liu.edu
“Materialism and Cinema”
The popularity of Deleuze in cinema studies is coincident with a philosophical return in the field to phenomenology, especially as inspired by Heidegger. Papers are sought which instead examine the application of materialist philosophy to the screen. What might a materialist theory of film look like and signify in the age of transnational capitalism? How would it differ from the cognitivist approaches of Bordwell and of Anderson, the analytic approaches of Allen, Smith, and Wartenberg, and the aestheticist approaches of Carroll and of Plantinga? How might it negotiate the Althusserian approaches of the 1960s-70s?
CONTACT: Terri Ginsberg – t.ginsberg.1@alumni.nyu.edu
“Argentine and Latin American Post-Crisis Cinema: From Memories of Underdevelopment to Strategies of Revolt” The economic crisis that nearly bankrupted Argentina also coincided with the emergence of Argentine cinema as a major force in world filmmaking. This panel will examine that cinema and its relationship with the crisis as well as expanding to note the ways in which an entire block of Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador, are now governed by leaders seeking different solutions to neoliberal expansionism. What impact has this had on the cinema and other forms of media expression in the region? In what ways have these developments in Argentina and in other countries influenced one another and bolstered critical film and media making in the region?
CONTACT: Susan Ryan – ryan@tcnj.edu
“The Crisis of Academic Labor, Part V: Structural Determinants and Organized Responses to the New McCarthyism” This workshop explores the economic and political grounds of the “New McCarthyism” facing academia and taking the form of highly organized campaigns against academic freedom by conservative think tanks and philanthropies. Presentations are invited which analyze the systemic
structural determinants of these phenomena and their affects on film and media studies, both in terms of institutional and ideological reaction and critical response and resistance.
CONTACT: Kelly Dolak – kdolak@ramapo.edu
“The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Cell Phone: Recent Chinese and East Asian Cinema and the Socialist-Capitalist Tradition”
The Chinese transition from a socialist to a market economy has effected rapid changes in the country in the last 20 years and exacerbated contradictions that were already pronounced in the Chinese system. This panel examines the ways in which Chinese filmmakers have mapped those contradictions in the last decade as they comment wryly on the process of directly overlaying a socialist propaganda model with a market propaganda model. The panel would look at how filmmakers are addressing these contradictions both in documentary and fiction films, as in the fiction work of filmmakers such as Jia Zhangke (The World) and the documentary work of Wang Bing, whose 14-hour chronicle of the transformation of a Chinese town, West of the Rails, reworks the concept of documentary.
CONTACT: Pat Keeton – pkeeton@ramapo.edu
“Filling the Void: How Docs, Blogs, Zines, and Other Online Media Are
Redefining Journalism”
While mainstream media grows more economically consolidated and politically conservative, social issue documentaries like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Supersize Me have achieved surprising box office success and received extensive critical attention. Other critical documentaries (e.g. Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War) have reached audiences through links to progressive political organizations. This panel seeks papers exploring the ways in which contemporary documentaries-as well as other forms of alternative, online distribution (websites, blogs, online journals, etc.) and exhibition venues-are explicitly engaging political discourse. How has the “new journalism” influenced documentary technique and challenged that of corporate and mainstream media? How are online distribution and alternative exhibition venues related to the politics of such films/videos? Are there significant differences from political documentary strategies of the 1930s and 1960s?
CONTACT: Christopher Sharrett – sharrech@shu.edu
“Class Issues in Reality Television”
The rising popularity of reality television has transformed television programming, yet important questions remain about the genre’s representation of class as well as its influence on modes of production in the television industry. Papers are sought which explore the ideological dimensions of this televisual genre. Are reality shows more “democratic” because “real” people volunteer to take part? How might a class analysis broaden our understanding of shows like Wife Swap and The Apprentice? What are the implications for labor relations in the industry and for other televisual genres as editors come increasingly to serve as producers, and producers as writers?
CONTACT: Yasmin Nair – nairyasmin@yahoo.com
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