Call for Participation, Thinking Politically Workshop, UVIC, April 15-17, 2011

Call for Participation

Thinking Politically

Cultural, Social, and Political Thought Workshop

University of Victoria: April 15-17, 2011

Through the pervasive reach of social movements over the past few decades, it has become obvious that the problems that we struggle with in everyday life cut across arbitrary boundaries, such as those between public and private, us and them, and so on. In the context of North American universities, this realization has led many scholars to see disciplinary boundaries as getting in the way of meaningful studies of these problems. Interest in the proliferating approaches to interdisciplinary studies seems to be gaining momentum.

This “new” interdisciplinarity continually raises the question of how we think politically within these inherited contexts. Since 1989, this challenge has been posed at UVic through the Cultural, Social, and Political Thought program (CSPT) – one of the few interdisciplinary programs in Canada that explicitly politicizes interdisciplinary thinking.

The difference that the political makes, we suggest, is in how we approach our sites of study. Given the complexity of interdisciplinary problems, attentiveness to the political disposes us to see how those problems are of our making, including how they are conceived. In this sense, the political is not simply an object of study (as in Political Studies), or a dimension of contemporary problems (as it tends to be in Cultural Studies). Rather, our very ways of thinking can be understood as political – that is, with implications for how we live together. Over the course of this three-day workshop, we endeavour to create a venue for meaningful conversation about how problems are conceived (e.g. aesthetically, geographically, materially), and to what effects.

In this spirit, we are now seeking graduate student workshop participants of diverse (inter)disciplinary inflections, spanning areas of study such as Sociology, History, English, and Political Science. The question that will focus the workshop conversations is that of “Thinking Politically”, with each working group approaching this challenge through one of the following sites:

Under each of these six thematic nodes, we are inviting 2 MA students, 2 PhD students, 2 alumni or guest faculty, and 2 faculty members involved with CSPT to engage in a conversation about how they come to think politically. These working group sessions will be conversation-based, and thus we are not asking that you prepare a formal presentation for your chosen group. Instead, we are inviting participants to share a previous piece of work, in any form, that exemplifies how they have taken up the challenge to think politically. Circulated a few weeks before the workshop, this piece – accompanied by a brief description of how it relates to thinking {their chosen field} politically – will serve as a starting point for conversation.

All submissions must be received by January 10th, 2011, by which time we ask that interested graduate students submit both a 500-word Expression of Interest that speaks to how their piece relates to thinking {} politically, as well as the accompanying more substantial piece. Applicants need not be registered in CSPT at UVic to participate.

Submissions and inquiries can be directed to:cspt[dot]thinking[dot]politically[at]gmail[dot]com

You can also use the contact form available on this website (cf. http://thinkingpolitically2011.wordpress.com).