Presidential Plenary at Cultural Studies Association 2013 Conference. Introduction by CSA President Bruce Burgett with responses to the prompt, “Cultural studies should be…,” by Rob Gehl, Christina Nadler, Jamie Skye Bianco, Megan Turner, and Stephen J Luber.
Universities in Question
Cultural Studies Should Be… Unsettled
Bruce Burgett, the CSA president, asked CSA members to contribute to the plenary by responding to this prompt:
Cultural Studies should…
Cultural Studies is…
Cultural Studies could…
I approached this with my own idiosyncratic biography, anxieties, and hopes in mind.
Undisciplined
Cultural studies should be a political act against the institutionalizing processes of becoming disciplined
Q3C
Cultural Studies would, could, should, must, will, and does begin queerly in the middle of things.
Queer
Creative
Critical
Compositionism
Academic
Cultural studies should be a deliberate site of sustained and sustainable struggle.
Cultural Studies Should Gamify
I’ve created GamifytheCSA.org, an experiment in gamifying the academic conference. Gamifying the CSA will enhance serious play in discourse and practice and expand the scope of the conference, with models in business and social networking with programs such as FourSquare, and extending to health and fitness, with programs such as Zombies, Run!, and the list goes on.
Spontaneous Acts of Scholarly Combustion
The future of academic publishing, as well as its ability to create and sustain publics, rests upon its willingness to take up the protection, maximum use, and enjoyment of “personal energy under personal control. This will also mean understanding that the other critical term here, in addition to freedom, is responsibility. Someone, or some distributive collectives of someones, which might also form a nomadic para-institution, or “outstitution,” needs to take responsibility for securing this freedom for the greatest number of persons possible who want to participate in intellectual-cultural life. A publisher is a person, or a group, or a multiplicity, who is responsible.
Queering the Archive
This CSA plenary talk discusses a performance based on oral histories collected in the author’s book, ‘Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History’
PNAP Talk
This plenary talk discusses the author’s experience working with a college in prison program at Stateville Prison in Illinois.
La Perrouque
Intended for la perruque, Michel de Certeau’s modern-day proletariat, this is a user’s manual that critically examines the intricacies of the academic employment process, from the interview to the chicaneries that one endures during his at-will tenure. And so, this manifesto is not only a creative, autobiographical account of how I have so far tactically revolted or “made do” and am surviving the prodding and churning of the machine, it also is one of many portraits that collectively paint an encouraging picture of human resistance.
Manifestos, an Introduction
Because the manifesto was written to spark a dialogue rather than advance a particular program, we have chosen to present it here as part of a dossier of interrelated documents produced by youth-oriented communities struggling against global systems of exploitation and oppression. Whether produced in the barricades of Río Piedras or the reclaimed streets of Cairo, these calls to action and understanding critique intersecting systems of exploitation and gesture to points of solidarity and coalition-formation. In doing so, they open up spaces for imagining new futures and they create the conditions in which such a future may indeed come to pass.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
Solidarity Statement From Cairo
To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it’s our turn to pass on some advice.
Ocúp(arte): The Humanities Manifesto
Statement of occupation of the Humanities Action Committee, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
We Are Many Youth, But With One Struggle!
A worldwide economic crisis exploded in 2008 that has been deeply consequential. This crisis can be only compared to the 1929 crisis. Powerfully striking at the core of the system, first it shook the United States and now it is developing more intensely in Europe. However, the effects of the crisis can be seen all over the world.