On Friday, 5 November 2010, the Sociology Students Association at the CUNY Graduate Center is hosting its second annual graduate student conference. We are currently soliciting abstracts for presentations from graduate students in all disciplines and schools.
Tagged Call for papers, Conference, SSAJoin us for our Second Annual Academics and Activism Workshop on Saturday, 22 May 2010, from noon until 4 p.m. The workshop will take place in the sociology lounge (room 6112). It will be followed by a reception. Participation is free and open to the public.
For this year’s workshop, we will build on the theme from last year when we discussed how to bridge the gap between activists and academics. This year, we will step back and rethink what that would mean. While implicitly rethinking what academia means, this year’s theme will be “What is Activism”?
How do we address the changing nature of activism and its relation to changing ideas of what a politics is or could be? What is the activism involved in a politics of refusal? Where can we find spaces for creativity and how can creativity be activism in itself? How can we be activists while rejecting mainstream political goals and thinking beyond the state? How do we resist the commodification of revolutionary paradigms that end up being reformist at best? As academics, what are the methodologies we can employ to answer these questions? What is an activist methodology, that perhaps goes beyond “representing” or “giving back” to the community?
Our distinguished participants include Patricia Clough, Valerie Francisco, Sarah Hanks, Demond Mullins, Jasbir Puar, Amit Rai, and Jerry Watts.
If you are a member of the sociological theory section of ASA, you have the opportunity to vote for Stanley as president-elect in the ongoing election. Show some love for your fellow Grad Center sociologist, vote for him.
You should have received a message about how to vote in the SSA elections that are currently underway. If so, please vote! If not, let us know and we’ll get instructions to you.
Elections are coming up soon! If you received an email about having been nominated for a committee position, please respond as quickly as possible so we can begin voting in a timely manner.
Maliha Safri, Assistant Professor of Economics at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, will give a talk titled “An Alternative Political Economy.” Join us in the Sociology Lounge (room 6112) on Friday, 26 March 2010 at 3pm. As always, the talk will be followed by a wine-and-cheese reception.
Professor Safri will tell us about her recent work with Jersey Shore Haitian and Latino community members who are in the midst of mapping the “solidarity economy” projects that are either already in existence or in the process of materializing. She argues that simultaneously theorizing and constituting a new object of policy and politics allows us to reconfigure the imaginary of economic transformation.
Professor Safri has been working in the areas of political economy, immigration, and subjectivity. She is a member of the Solidarity Economy Network and the Center for Popular Economics. Professor Safri is also associate editor of the Routledge journal Rethinking Marxism.
Update: Our flyer is now online.
We only have twenty more tote bags to give away, so don’t miss your chance to pre-register before Friday! Not convinced yet that you want to come? Take a look at our program and our illustrious line-up of participants. Did we mention Frances Fox Piven, author of Regulating the Poor, will be there? And that we’ll be serving Manhattan’s best Korean comfort food for lunch?
