Events

Charles Hirschkind: A Workshop on Ethics & Politics

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The Religion, Culture, and Social Movements Research Cluster presents:

Charles Hirschkind: A Workshop on Ethics & Politics

Charles Hirschkind focuses on religious practice, media technologies, and emergent forms of political community in the urban Middle East and Europe. In The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (Columbia, 2006), he explores how a popular Islamic media form—the cassette sermon—has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle East over the last three decades.

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Professor Hirschkind is Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

For information, contact Josh Brahinsky at jbrahins@ucsc.edu.

Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores: “The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the U.S.”

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The Urban Studies Research Cluster presents:

Discussion with Miriam Jiménez Román & Juan Flores: The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History & Culture in the U.S.

For much of the past 500 years, Afro-Latinas/os have had to negotiate multi-dimensional expectations of shifting dominant ideologies and the realities of their everyday experiences. As Latinos and African Americans have been pitted against each other in a race for demographic supremacy, Afro-Latinas/os have emerged as a significant bridge across the social divide. Professors Román and Flores discuss their co-edited book, The Afro-Latin@ Reader (Duke, 2010).

Readings will be available at: www.wuala.com/Urban%20Studies%20Research%20Cluster

For more information, contact Miriam Greenberg at miriam@ucsc.edu.

Co-sponsored by the departments of Sociology, Latin American and Latina/o Studies, and American Studies.

Juan Flores

Juan Flores: “The Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning”

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The Urban Studies Research Cluster presents:

Lecture/Seminar with Juan Flores: The Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribeño Tales of Learning and Turning

Professor Flores looks at how ‘Nuyoricans’ have transformed their cities of origin, focusing on the introduction of hip hop and modern New York culture to the Puerto Rican city of Mayaguez in The Diaspora Strikes Back (Routledge, 2009).

Readings will be available at: www.wuala.com/Urban%20Studies%20Research%20Cluster

For more information, contact Miriam Greenberg at miriam@ucsc.edu.

Co-sponsored by the departments of Sociology, Latin American and Latina/o Studies, and American Studies.

Barbara Epstein

Barbara Epstein: “Belorussians, the State, and Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union: Perspectives of Minsk Ghetto Survivors”

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Barbara Epstein, Professor of History of Consciousness at UCSC, continues work emerging from The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism (California, 2008), which described cooperation between Jews and non-Jews in World War II Minsk. Interviews with ghetto survivors in Minsk and Israel yield assertions that relations between Jews and Belorussians were excellent before the war and deteriorated afterwards as a result of exclusively state-driven anti-Semitism.

Florence Hsia

Florence Hsia: “Personae Gratae”

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The Center for Cultural Studies presents:

Florence Hsia: “Personae Gratae”

History of Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Professor Hsia discusses the articulation of scientific personae in the context of the Jesuit mission to late imperial China. Author of Sojourners in a Strange Land (Chicago, 2009), she explores the early modern encounter between Europe and China.

Co-sponsored by the Department of History.

Wlad Godzich: “Towards an Epistemics of Knowledge: Knowledge and Capital”

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Professor Godzich examines how the elevation of knowledge into a motor of economic activity affects the status and organization of knowledge. It is his hypothesis that a knowledge-driven economy poses a challenge to a capital-driven one, and that it foreshadows the advent of a knowledge-centered society. His research examines the role of universities within such a society.

Professor Godzich is Distinguished Professor of General and Comparative Literature and Critical Studies at UCSC.

Photo by James Clifford, Professor of History of Consciousness at UCSC.

Ananya Roy

Ananya Roy – “Slumdog Cities: The Politics of Subaltern Urbanism”

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The Urban Studies Research Cluster presents:

Ananya Roy – “Slumdog Cities: The Politics of Subaltern Urbanism”

The study of megacities in the global South has come to be dominated by two contrasting paradigms: an apocalyptic vision of a “planet of slums” and a populist vision of entrepreneurial “shadow cities.” This talk will critically examine such paradigms, calling into question the ways in which “subaltern urbanism” is currently framed. Drawing on postcolonial theory, it will present an alternative framework for the understanding of urbanism in the global South and make the case for new geographies of theory.

Bio: Ananya Roy is a leading scholar in comparative urban studies and international development. She is Professor of City and Regional Planning at U.C. Berkeley, and also serves as Education Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies and as co-Director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Center at Berkeley. Roy is author of numerous books, including: City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty (2003), co-editor of Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America (2004), and co-editor (with Aihwa Ong) of the forthcoming Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global.

Readings
Seminar flyer (PDF)

Seminar co-sponsored by the Departments of Sociology, Feminist Studies, and Colleges 9 & 10.

Reimagining the Poet-Critic: Practice, Pedagogy, Poetics

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The Poetry & Politics Research Cluster presents:

Reimagining the Poet-Critic: Practice, Pedagogy, Poetics

This conference invites participation in a series of dialogues about the role of the poet-scholar. As a practitioner of poetry or other “imaginative” writing and more theoretical or critical work, the poet-critic or poet-scholar works both inside and outside the university. How do these two activities come together to affect the reading and writing practices of poet-critics and their readership? Since many poet-critics are read within college classrooms or are themselves professors or teachers, we are interested in the pedagogical implications of their writing practices. The conference is an occasion for dialogue across genres, disciplines, readerships and pedagogical practices and focuses on the ways writing practices can encourage creative and critical thinking.

The conference consists of six panels with three papers and invited respondents; a pedagogy colloquium and short paper workshop; and poetry readings. Respondents will consist of invited guests and UCSC faculty.

SCHEDULE

Daytime Panels: Humanities 210, UCSC
Evening Poetry Readings: Felix Culpa Gallery, Downtown Santa Cruz

10:30-12:00pm — Panel 4: Writing and Thinking Between Genres

12:00-1:00pm — Lunch and Informal Poetry Reading

1:00-2:30pm — Panel 5: Poetic Conceptualisms and Poetic Productions

3:00-4:30pm — Panel 6: Poetry and Pedagogy

6:30-8:00pm — Poetry Reading, Felix Culpa Gallery, 107 Elm Street, Santa Cruz

Guest Respondents:

CRAIG DWORKIN is the author of Signature-Effects (Ghos-Ti, 1997), Reading the Illegible (Northwestern, 2003), Dure (Cuneiform, 2004), Strand (Roof, 2005), and Parse (Atelos, 2008), and the editor of, among others, The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound (Chicago, 2009). He teaches at the University of Utah and curates two online archives: Eclipse and The UbuWeb Anthology of Conceptual Writing.

VANESSA PLACE is a writer and lawyer. She is the author of Dies: A Sentence (Le Figues, 2005), La Medusa (Fiction Collective 2, 2008), Statement of Fact (Publishing the Unpublishable/Ubu, 2008), Notes on Conceptualisms with Robert Fitterman (Ugly Duckling, 2009). Other work has appeared in Northwest Review, Northridge Review, Film Comment, Contemporary Literary Criticism, 4th Street: A Poetry Bimonthly, LA Weekly Literary Supplement, Five Fingers Review, and n/Oulipo. She is a co-founder of Les Figues Press.

SINA QUEYRAS is the author of Slip (ECW, 2001), Teethmarks (Nightwood, 2004), Lemon Hound (Coach House, 2006), and Expressway (Coach House, forthcoming). Lemon Hound won the Lambda and the Pat Lowther awards for poetry. She is also the editor of Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets (Persea, 2005). She teaches at Concordia University in Montreal, is a contributing editor for the online literary journal Drunken Boat, and maintains Lemon Hound, a blog of contemporary arts and letters.

JULIANA SPAHR has published three books of poetry, including Response (Sun & Moon, 1995), This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (California, 2005), and Well Then There Now (Salt, forthcoming). She is the author of a book of criticism, Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity (Alabama, 2001), and a memoir, The Transformation (Atelos, 2007). She is an Associate Professor at Mills College.

For more information, contact Jessica Beard at jbeard@ucsc.edu or Andrea Quaid at aquaid@ucsc.edu.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Cultural Studies, the Puknat Endowment, and the Literature Department.

Reimagining the Poet-Critic: Practice, Pedagogy, Poetics

Posted on

The Poetry & Politics Research Cluster presents:

Reimagining the Poet-Critic: Practice, Pedagogy, Poetics

This conference invites participation in a series of dialogues about the role of the poet-scholar. As a practitioner of poetry or other “imaginative” writing and more theoretical or critical work, the poet-critic or poet-scholar works both inside and outside the university. How do these two activities come together to affect the reading and writing practices of poet-critics and their readership? Since many poet-critics are read within college classrooms or are themselves professors or teachers, we are interested in the pedagogical implications of their writing practices. The conference is an occasion for dialogue across genres, disciplines, readerships and pedagogical practices and focuses on the ways writing practices can encourage creative and critical thinking.

The conference consists of six panels with three papers and invited respondents; a pedagogy colloquium and short paper workshop; and poetry readings. Respondents will consist of invited guests and UCSC faculty.

SCHEDULE

Daytime Panels: Humanities 210, UCSC
Evening Poetry Readings: Felix Culpa Gallery, Downtown Santa Cruz

9:00-9:30am — Welcome

9:30-11:00am — Panel 1: Historicizing the Poet as Intellectual

11:00-12:00pm — Lunch and Informal Poetry Reading

12:00-1:30pm — Panel 2: Poetics and Reading Methodologies

2:00-3:30pm — Poetry in the Classroom: Pedagogy Colloquium and Short Paper Workshop

4:00-5:30pm — Panel 3: Poetic Epistemologies and Alternative Forms of Scholarship

7:30-9:00pm — Poetry Reading at Felix Culpa Gallery, 107 Elm Street, Santa Cruz

Guest Respondents:

CRAIG DWORKIN is the author of Signature-Effects (Ghos-Ti, 1997), Reading the Illegible (Northwestern, 2003), Dure (Cuneiform, 2004), Strand (Roof, 2005), and Parse (Atelos, 2008), and the editor of, among others, The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound (Chicago, 2009). He teaches at the University of Utah and curates two online archives: Eclipse and The UbuWeb Anthology of Conceptual Writing.

VANESSA PLACE is a writer and lawyer. She is the author of Dies: A Sentence (Le Figues, 2005), La Medusa (Fiction Collective 2, 2008), Statement of Fact (Publishing the Unpublishable/Ubu, 2008), Notes on Conceptualisms with Robert Fitterman (Ugly Duckling, 2009). Other work has appeared in Northwest Review, Northridge Review, Film Comment, Contemporary Literary Criticism, 4th Street: A Poetry Bimonthly, LA Weekly Literary Supplement, Five Fingers Review, and n/Oulipo. She is a co-founder of Les Figues Press.

SINA QUEYRAS is the author of Slip (ECW, 2001), Teethmarks (Nightwood, 2004), Lemon Hound (Coach House, 2006), and Expressway (Coach House, forthcoming). Lemon Hound won the Lambda and the Pat Lowther awards for poetry. She is also the editor of Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets (Persea, 2005). She teaches at Concordia University in Montreal, is a contributing editor for the online literary journal Drunken Boat, and maintains Lemon Hound, a blog of contemporary arts and letters.

JULIANA SPAHR has published three books of poetry, including Response (Sun & Moon, 1995), This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (California, 2005), and Well Then There Now (Salt, forthcoming). She is the author of a book of criticism, Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity (Alabama, 2001), and a memoir, The Transformation (Atelos, 2007). She is an Associate Professor at Mills College.

For more information, contact Jessica Beard at jbeard@ucsc.edu or Andrea Quaid at aquaid@ucsc.edu.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Cultural Studies, the Puknat Endowment, and the Literature Department.

Kelly Dennis: “Internet Art and the Economies of Porn”

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The UCSC Women’s Center and the Feminism & Pornography Research Cluster present:

“Internet Art and the Economies of Porn”

The intersection of art and pornography on the radically dispersive Internet activates multiple discourses surrounding nudity, obscenity, feminism, voyeurism and exhibitionism, as well as the increasingly warring agendas of corporate profit and community and amateur ideals. As one commentator acknowledges, “[t]he debate over Internet porn isn’t community standards vs. free speech. It’s community standards vs. a free market.” Even as pornography is enviously acknowledged as a communications technology pioneer by the corporate sector, many artists are attuned to the implications of this envy. Though the artists that I will discuss deal ostensibly with pornography, they also negotiate many of the terms of pornography’s own negotiation of the Internet: its economies, its communities, its sexisms, and its surveillance.

Kelly Dennis is Associate Professor of Art History & the History of Photography at the University of Connecticut Storrs and is author of Art/Porn: A History of Seeing and Touching (Berg, 2009). Her work on photography, pornography, performance, and feminist art has appeared in several books and journals. She is currently at work on her second book, The Politics of the Sublime: Landscape Photography and the West.

This event was made possible by the financial support and co-sponsorships of the departments of Sociology; Literature; Art; History of Art & Visual Culture; Digital Arts & New Media; and American Studies. For accessibility information or accommodations, contact the Women’s Center at 459-2072 women@ucsc.edu or the Feminism & Pornography Research Cluster at npurcell@ucsc.edu.