[csaa-forum] CFP: DIsciplining Innovation: new pedagogies in cultural studies

[Nicole Matthews]

Call for papers:
Disciplining Innovations: New Pedagogies in Cultural Studies
Special issue of Cultural Studies Review
Edited by Nick Mansfield and Nicole Matthews, Macquarie University

As a discipline heavily invested in making sense of the contemporary
world,  cultural studies is constantly engaging with new examples, new
technologies, new political contexts and even new theoretical paradigms.
 Cultural studies, as a relatively recent interdiscipline, does not have
a canonical set of texts or all-conquering theoretical heroes or classic
methodologies.  What we teach and how we teach shifts, in part, along
with the evolving experiences and enthusiasms of our students and
changes in the cultural landscape. 
 
The progressive political ethos of many working in this field makes
many of us  sympathetic to pedagogical innovations that promise to shake
up existing  practices, hierarchies and conventions.  Cultural studies
would seem to be a natural bedfellow for those who want university
teachers to reflect on,  research and transform cultures of teaching in
the academy.   Many of us have taken up the opportunities and rewards
offered by universities in their recent acknowledgement that academics
are not just scholars and writers, but also teachers.

Yet many current innovations in university teaching repeat assumptions
instrumental progressivism, technological utopianism, the fetish of the
new—that it has long been the business of cultural studies to
deconstruct.  Similarly, since the 1980s, universities have been
constantly subject to uncertainty about funding policy, and whether it
will be distributed equitably between campuses. This uncertainty feeds
the suspicions of academics about the purpose of repeated re-structures
and the encouragement to innovate.

This issue of Cultural Studies Review will analyse the experience and
future of pedagogical innovation in cultural studies. Has technological
innovation  allowed flexibility and an extension of the curriculum, or
merely been used to reduce face-to-face teaching hours? Has the
consistent demand to plan and 
report on teaching programs encouraged forward thinking or
burdenedacademics with bureaucratic demands? Have universities truly
internationalised their curriculums or merely exploited upwardly mobile
international students? Has pedagogical innovation advanced or
compromised the university's ethical commitments: to social justice,
equal access, human rights and environmental sustainability? What
broader cultural developments does the consistent call to innovate in
the classroom reflect?

Cultural studies academics have long been committed to understanding
cultural and institutional change, finding ways of assessing its
programs,  revealing its agendas and spreading its benefits. The aim of
this special issue  is to bring a cultural studies methodology to bear
on recent changes in the  pedagogy of cultural studies, as an insight
into changes in the historical role of the academic and educational
sector more generally.

Deadline for abstracts of 250 words: December 1, 2009.  Please submit
abstracts by email to Nicole.matthews at mq.edu.au with the subject line
Disciplining Innovation
Deadline for full papers for peer review: May 15, 2010
Proposed publication date: September 2011
For further information, contact Nicole Matthews 
Nicole.Matthews at mq.edu.au or Nick Mansfield Nick.Mansfield at mq.edu.au