Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Race, Gender & Class 2013 Conference



RACE, GENDER & CLASS 2013 CONFERENCE
Race, Gender & Class 2013 Conference
in New Orleans March 7-9, 2013

Co-sponsored by Race, Gender & Class journal (Jean Ait Belkhir & Christiane Charlemaine), Center for African and African American Studies (SUNO), & Sociological Association Race, Gender & Class Section

The conference is being held at the University of New Orleans
Lodging would be avalaible on the UNO Campus
If you are willing to share a room, contact  Christiane Charlemaine
In the subject line please include: RGC Conference, room avail. to share

Conference Registration Fees
Early Bird Registration by January 18, 2013                                                                                         Student $70; Non-student $180
All presenters have to register by February 15, 2013 in order to be in the program. No exception!

Late Registration: Student $95; Non-student $205

All attendees and presenters are expected to register
Make Checks Payable to Race, Gender & Class Conference.
Mail to
Jean Ait Belkhir
University of New Orleans
Sociology Department
Milneburg Hall Room 170
2000 Lakeshore Drive

New Orleans, LA 70148

Call for Papers and Organizers
PLEASE SUBMIT PROPOSAL / ABSTRACT BY DECEMBER 1ST
Race, Gender & Class and the 2012 Elections

Do progressives have an alternative for America?
Abstracts (250-300 words) should be sent only electronically by December 1st, 2012 to Jean Ait Belkhir at rgcso@uno.edu. Presentations at the 2013 RGC Conference would be selected for publication in the Race, Gender & Class journal.

To volunteer to serve as an RGC conference organizer, please contact Dr. Jean Ait Belkhir
rgcso@uno.edu, Ph.: (504) 280 1209, Fax: (504) 280 6302

We hope to see you at the RGC 2013 conference in New Orleans!

Please forward this page to colleagues you think may be interested: http://rgc.uno.edu/conference.cfm

Preliminary List of Presenters / Attendees
Paul Banaheine Adjei, University of Toronto, pbanahene@yahoo.com
Meshia Babers, student, Texas A&M University, chanelle2g@neo.tamu.edu
John C. Berg, Suffolk University, johncberg@verizon.net
Gregg Barak, Eastern Michigan University, gbarak@emich.edu
Damon Bell, alildabadou@yahoo.com
George J. Sefa Dei, OISE University of Toronto, gdei@oise.toronto.ca  
Loren Delaney, Oise, University of Toronto, loren.delaney@mail.utoronto.ca
Lisa A. Eargle, Francis Marion University, leargle@fmarion.edu
Ashraf M. Esmail, Dillard University, New Orleans, ashesmail@aol.com
Michael D. Forster, The University of Southern Mississippi, Michael.forster@usm.edu  
Barbara Jensen, The University of New Mexico, bjensen@umn.edu
Nikki Jones, University of California Santa Barbara, njones@soc.ucsb@edu
Chelsi King, Alliant International University - Fresno, cking2@alliant.edu
Lena Krone, University of Education at Ludwigsburg, Germany, krone@ph-ludwisburg.de
Komanduri S. Murty, Fort Valley State Univeersity, murtyk@FVSU.EDU
Denise A. Narcisse, Yougstown State University, danarcisse@ysu.edu
Linda Williamson Nelson, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Linda.Nelson@stockton.edu
Martha E. Richmond, Suffolk University, Boston, mrichmond@suffolk.edu  
Rosanna Rios-Spicer, New Orleans Social Activist, evariv2011@gmail.com
Shirley Rombough, The University of Texas-Pan American, srombough@utpa.edu
Demetrius Semien, University of Cincinnati, demetriussemien@yahoo.com
David Scott, Student, University of Kansas, dmscott@gmail.com


**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs
‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikwoski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge


TEACHING MARX: THE SOCIALIST CHALLENGE

Announcing a forthcoming book: Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge
Edited by Curry Stephenson Malott, Mike Cole and John Elmore
To be published by Information Age Publishing
Critical Construction: Studies in Education and Society, see: http://www.infoagepub.com/series/critical-constructions 
Series Editor: Curry Stephenson Malott, West Chester University

“There is growing disillusionment with a social system where increasing productivity leads only to increased gaps between rich and poor, where reductions in social programs (retirement, health care, education) are the chief response an uninspired political sector can muster, and where non-sustainable exploitation of the Earth continues undiminished -- in short, as the looming, world-wide economic crisis draws nearer, the essays in Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge are critical reading. It is time for our teachers to prepare students not to take their place in an increasingly corrupt economy, but to bring about the fundamental changes we need to build an equitable, prosperous, sustainable future” -- Dr. Dennis Vickers, Humanities Department, College of Menominee Nation, Keshena, Wisconsin.
Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge is an extraordinarily important text at this juncture of world history. Functioning as more than just another pedagogical weapon to be used against the ideological structures of death and social hallucinogenics manufactured by the transnational capitalist class, it is a book that can provide fecund opportunities for teachers to re-learn how to put social and economic justice front and center in the agenda for educational reform by putting Marx front and center, where he belongs” -- Peter McLaren, Professor, UCLA and author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire and the Pedagogy of Revolution

Teaching Marx: The Socialist Challenge provides a useful starting point for understanding the origins of today's global crisis of capitalism. Our work in public schools to encourage respectful dialogues between Indian and non-Indian students about local conflicts over land ownership, through the TERRA Institute, should encourage cooperative action to find common interests. This book reminds us to move those specific discussions to explorations of the causes of conflicts over land, including the imperatives of global capitalism” -- David Stanfield, TERRA Institute, www.terrainstitute.org

“As this book so clearly and illustratively points out, the work of Marx has always served as a critical tool for identifying and scraping away the residue of commodity relations as a means to an end of revolutionary purpose, and teaching Marx is therefore keynote to education becoming able to serve as a tool of liberation and revolution. The reasons for why this is so are very clear in the book. As its authors successively and in detail clearly point out, we are ‘educated’ to believe that we live in a meritocracy where god-given abilities and hard work afford position and reward, and the work of social institutions like the school play a key part in this. These institutions, as ideological apparatuses of the State, barrage us with propaganda and bombard us with ideas inside practices that are designed to convince us all that at the head of the equation of the constitution of the social and economic order is the work, skills, ideas, knowledge and commitment of individual people themselves and that the effort and competences of these individuals determine social position and the possibilities for economic reward and even social justice for all.
Put directly and simply, the book shows us how the public has been hoodwinked by the school and other social institutions to believe in the ethics of capitalism and its central ideological tenet that the present social order is natural and in the end inevitable and beneficial for us all. However, as well as critiquing the work of the school as an instrument of reproduction, the book also shows how and why the education system could and should challenge the anti-democratic perspectives that disguise and defend the current social relations of production and the ideological and material needs of the capitalist class. It offers that is an educational challenge to the inevitability and “correctness” of capitalism by showing how its laws can be made visible to ordinary people so the oppressive power of the capitalist class can be more correctly identified, challenged and defeated.  In this way the book both poses the question and provides answers concerning what role education can play in a possible future revolutionary moment: both as a “true” education as an act of liberation and as a dialectic lens for critiquing the world in which we live. Used appropriately the book can become a clear and fundamental ingredient for helping to create the possibilities for a more egalitarian and socially just world” -- Dennis Beach, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

“This collection by Malott, Cole and Elmore’s is a very timely contribution to the current revival of Marxism in education. The authors engage seriously with the ideas of Marx – from his theory of capitalist crises to the increasing impoverishment of the working class – and debunk many of the commonly held myths about Marxism. The compilation of writings provide a devastating rejoinder to those who believe that we can only make changes within the present system and show how this crisis has made discussion of socialist alternatives, in education and society, an urgent necessity. They argue that, in Marx’s words, the educators need to get educated and find ways – through their students, through what they teach, and through their political activism – to feed into wider movements of social change” -- Marnie Holborow, author on Marxism and Language, Dublin City University, Ireland.

“A spectre haunts the contemporary capitalist classroom: the ghost of Karl Marx. This volume explores the implications of opening the classroom door to Marx’s ideas, theories and outlook on capitalist and post-capitalist life. It does this in an engaging and thought-provoking manner, providing conceptual foundations and inspiration for teachers seeking to generate a critical edge and relevance to classroom activities in the current crisis of capital. Malott, Cole and Elmore have produced a book desperately needed by teachers, students, teacher-trainers and administrators in educational institutions dissatisfied with the apologetics and evasions of mainstream capitalist pedagogy” -- Glenn Rikowski Senior Lecturer in Education Studies, University of Northampton, UK.  
**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Council for the Defence of British Universities



COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF BRITISH UNIVERSITIES

The formation of the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU) was announced in The Guardian on Thursday 8th November. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/nov/08/coalition-thinkers-fight-marketisation-universities

From the CDBU website:

Defending A World-Class System

Universities are amongst Britain’s most successful institutions. They currently occupy four of the top six places in the QS/USNWR World University Rankings, three of the top ten of the Times Higher World University Rankings, and two of the top ten in the Academic Ranking of World Universities, with all the others going to US institutions.

They mark the ‘frontier of possibility’, according to a recent EC-sponsored study, for the efficient production of both high quality research and highly sought-after graduates:

* They also rank amongst the best systems globally in performing all the other functions expected of a great university system aside from research
* They attract more international students than any university system but the US, and a higher proportion of international students than any other system but Australia

Yet the character of Britain’s universities is being radically altered.

For decades, UK universities have been bound by increasingly restrictive management practices, loaded with endlessly augmented administrative burdens, and stretched virtually to breaking point. Now, in the two years since the publication of the Browne Review‘a radical reform of the higher education system’has begun, designed to change its character fundamentally, permanently, and virtually overnight.

Although these radical changes were planned in detail before the last election, no democratic mandate for them was ever sought. Although opposed by student protests, devastated by scholarly criticism, and unsupported by even the most elementary analysis of the empirical evidence, these changes are being driven forward relentlessly without benefit of Parliamentary debate or public scrutiny.

Why has opposition to these changes proved so ineffective?

The basic answer is surprisingly simple. In the protracted recession of a knowledge economy, where knowledge is money and growth is elusive, powerful forces are bending the university to serve short-term, primarily pragmatic, and narrowly commercial ends. And no equal and opposite forces are organised to resist them.

The UK higher education sector is crowded with bodies representing the interests of one academic group or another: The Russell GroupUniversities UKMillion+, The 1994 GroupUniversity Alliance, the UCU, and the NUS, to name a few.

But no organisation exists to defend academic values and the institutional arrangements best suited to fostering them.

The problem is not that academic values are obsolete: in an increasingly complex world, they are as valid and important as ever. But after decades of subordinating them to other priorities, it can no longer be taken for granted that every educated person understands the enormous value to society as a whole of maintaining places devoted primarily to the pursuit of understanding and to the transmission of that pursuit to the next generation.

The CDBU has been established to fill this void.

Academic values need fresh reformulation and skilful advocacy by influential figures both in and outside the academic world. Scores of these figures have now come together to form the nucleus of the Council for the Defence of British Universities.


See the CDBU website at: http://www.cdbu.org.uk

**END**

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Glenn Rikowski’s paper on higher education, Life in the Higher Sausage Factory:

Rikowski, G. (2012) Life in the Higher Sausage Factory, Guest Lecture to the Teacher Education Research Group, The Cass School of Education and Communities, University of East London, 22nd March, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Life%20in%20the%20Higher%20Sausage%20Factory.


Friday, November 2, 2012

Discourse, Power & Resistance in Education - Conference 2013


DISCOURSE, POWER & RESISTANCE IN EDUCATION – CONFERENCE 2013

Discourse, Power, Resistance: DPR 13      
DISCOURSES OF INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION
9 - 11 April, 2013 – University of Greenwich, United Kingdom

Power can be a wonderful thing, as Terry Eagleton told the DPR conference in 2008: wonderful and essential for the achievement of our best and most generous purposes. But it can also be abused.
A widespread abuse of power is to organise the social world into groups that are included and others that are excluded, using the discourse of the powerful group, like subtly barbed wire, to distinguish the insiders from the outsiders on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, age, wealth, sexuality, class and other grouping. Communities may then disintegrate. The excluded members may seek to be admitted to the privileged group by learning and adopting its discourse; or they may resist this assimilation and celebrate their difference in defiant counter-cultures of their own.

What is the scope of research, learning and teaching in this contested space? What knowledges and methodologies should be included or excluded, and why? These are the issues the conference will consider.

Exchanging words and papers is a powerful academic practice at the heart of DPR. But the conference is about the discourses of inclusion and exclusion, so images, music, performance, display, story-telling - the variously imaginative ways of sharing our understanding - must have their space. DPR13 will include the contributions of the creative and performing arts so that the conference tells and shows a freshly inclusive vision.

Preparations and plans for DPR13 are already well under way with over 60 abstracts accepted and more coming in daily. The Second Call for Papers is Friday 21 December. This is not a deadline but we strongly encourage delegates planning to offer papers, workshops, posters or exhibition work to send abstracts as soon as possible. Details of 12 projects and seminars already in preparation are posted on the website.

Further proposals are being developed and will be posted soon. For further information or to discuss ideas, please contact Jerome Satterthwaite by email at jnsatterthwaite@gmail.com

Conference website for full details and registration: dprconference.com

Power and Education journal: www.wwwords.co.uk/POWER

**END**

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski