Join 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.