[csaa-forum] CSA Conference Call for Seminar Participants (Apr. 2006, George Mason Univ., Washington .D.C.)

[elizabeth conforti]

The CSA conference (April 19-22, 2006) will again feature a series of 
seminars. Seminars are small-group (maximum 15 individuals) discussion 
sessions for which participants write brief ''position" papers that are 
circulated prior to the conference. Those interested in participating in 
(rather than leading) a seminar should consult the list of seminars below.

In order to participate in a seminar, send an email message to 
csaus at pitt.edu with "Seminar Request" in the subject line. Your message 
should list up to two seminars, ranked in order of preference, in which you 
would like to participate. (Note: You will be allowed to participate in 
only one seminar.) Your message should also include your name, contact 
information, and institutional affiliation.

Seminar requests should be sent by November 25, 2005. You will be notified 
of your seminar assignment by December 20, 2005.


SEMINARS FOR CSA CONFERENCE, APRIL 2006

#1

Proposed Seminar:
 “Cultural Studies as Cultural Praxis: Reshaping the Research University”

Seminar Description: How can we better connect academic and community-based 
cultural work?  This seminar is designed for participants interested in 
discussing and critically assessing current efforts to develop and 
institutionalize cultural studies curricula oriented toward diverse forms 
of cultural praxis.  We are particularly interested in hearing about 
initiatives aimed at building sustainable arts and cultural pathways for 
campus-community partnerships ? including community and participatory 
action research strategies, arts and performance-based research projects, 
and service learning or other experiential pedagogies.  We are also 
centrally interested in the implications of this type of activist 
scholarship for the future of cultural research in (and outside of) 
institutions of higher education, and in appraisals of the current 
neo-liberal policy landscape that enables and encourages this institutional 
shift in research and teaching priorities.

The co-moderators of this seminar are involved in developing and 
institutionalizing community-based public humanities and cultural studies 
graduate curricula at the University of Washington.  We envision this 
seminar as an opportunity to learn more about related initiatives elsewhere 
and to open a conversation about this type of work to participants who may 
not be currently involved in such initiatives (and/or may be skeptical 
about them).  We hope to conclude with suggestions for further 
collaboration among the seminar participants, as appropriate.

Seminar Requirements: Seminar participants will be asked to read three 
short essays (by Stuart Hall, Ien Ang, and Handel Wright) and to provide a 
brief (2-3 page) written response in which they raise one or more central 
questions or concerns.  Ideally, these responses should balance a critical 
assessment of the readings and a description of the participant’s 
institutional experience (if any) with praxis-oriented forms of cultural 
studies scholarship.  The questions and concerns raised in the responses 
will serve as a jumping-off point for our discussion.

Response papers should be sent to the seminar moderators by March 21st, and 
will be distributed to all seminar participants by April 1st.  The seminar 
moderators will also develop and circulate a summary of key questions and 
concerns raised in these response papers.

Seminar moderators’ names and contact info:

Miriam Bartha
Simpson Center for the Humanities
University of Washington
Box 353710
Communication Building, Suite 206
Seattle, Washington 98195-3710
mbartha at u.washington.edu
206-543-3929

Bruce Burgett
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program
University of Washington
Box 358530
18115 Campus Way NE
Bothell, WA 98011-8246
burgett at u.washington.edu
425-352-5403

Brief bios of the seminar moderators:
Miriam Bartha joined the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at 
the University of Washington in 2004 as Assistant Director, having earned 
her Ph.D. in American Literature from Rutgers University in 2002.  She has 
taught literary, cultural, and feminist studies at Rutgers and San 
Francisco State Universities.  She previously worked as an administrator at 
the P.E.N. American Center, an international nonprofit writers’ advocacy 
organization based in New York, as coordinator of the Poetry and the Public 
Sphere series at Rutgers, and as project manager for the electronic 
archiving of HOW(ever), a historic journal of feminist experimental 
writing.  In 2005, she co-directed (with Bruce Burgett) the Simpson 
Center’s “Institute on the Public Humanities for Doctoral Students.”

Bruce Burgett is Professor of American and Interdisciplinary Studies in the 
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program at the University of 
Washington-Bothell (UWB), and graduate faculty in the English Department at 
the University of Washington-Seattle.  He co-directed the "Placing the 
Humanities: New Locales, New Meanings" tri-campus faculty development 
workshop series in 2004-2005, currently co-directs the follow-up activities 
of the “Cultural Studies Praxis Collective,” and is involved in developing 
a community-based M.A. in Cultural Studies at UWB (planned to begin in 
2007).  He is the author of Sentimental Bodies: Sex, Gender, and 
Citizenship in the Early Republic (Princeton, 1998), and is working on two 
books: American Sex: Cultures of Sexual Reform in and Beyond the Antebellum 
U.S. (Chicago) and Keywords of American Cultural Studies (NYU, co-edited 
with Glenn Hendler).  He has taught, researched, and published widely in 
the fields of American Studies, Cultural Studies, and Queer Studies.  He 
serves on the editorial boards of American Quarterly and American Literary 
History.


#2
Proposed Seminar:
Seminar on Biopower
The paradigm of biopower first elaborated by Michel Foucault has
gained steadily as a means for thinking simultaneously a host of
vital political and cultural issues:  race and sexuality, empire and
globalization, governmentality and the state, post-humanism and eco-
politics, technoscience and human capital.  The goal of this seminar
will be to compare different applications of, and problematics raised
by, the biopower analytics.  Participants should re-read one of the
following texts in preparation for the seminar:  Foucault's The
History of Sexuality (Volume One), Foucault's Society Must Be
Defended, Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer, or another major theoretical
statement.  Participants will also be asked to share 2-3 page
abstracts for whatever research project brings them to the question
of biopower (if they have such a project).  We will aim to move back
and forth between our theoretical readings and the research projects
with the aim of generating a deeper knowledge of what is at stake
(and also what are the risks) in bringing this model to bear on our
respective objects of critical inquiry.

Leerom Medovoi
Associate Professor of English
Portland State University
medovoi at pdx.edu




#3
Proposed Seminar:
Beyond Biopolitics: bodies affect and media
The seminar will explore what Michel Foucault described as 'the demonic 
mix' of biopolitics and sovereignty to rethink bodies, affect and media. By 
weaving together theories of ‘new media’ and 'biomedia' that have  been 
deeply influenced by Gilles Deleuze among others, we will explore the 
status of political economy, ideological analysis, semiotics, the concepts 
of culture and language in and for critical theory. We will draw out the 
relationship between digital video technologies (database, compositing, 
surround sound, digital animation, and digital ‘proprioception’) and 
entertainment (video games, TV shows, blockbuster cinema, websites). We 
will take as a larger context the fraught connectivities developing between 
homeland security, the encrypted security of biomedia, entertainment and 
racism as exemplified in counter/terrorism, mass incarceration, war and 
massacre.

Amit S. Rai
Department of English
Florida State University
Williams 226
Tallahassee, FL 32306-1580
Office: 850-645-1459
Fax: 850-644-0811


Patricia Ticneto Clough
Sociology and Women's Studies
The Graduate Center
CUNY
New York, New York 10016
212 817 8896