Readings

Some of the classes offered at the Free University have made links to accompanying readings available here and in the comments section below.

Readings for Structures for Building Student Power led by the Student Unionism Reading Group
“Towards A Student Unionism” by Jasper Conner
http://castudentunion.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/toward-a-student-unionism-jasper-conner/

Gage, P. (2012). Snapshots of the Student Movement in Montreal. http://recomposition.info/2012/05/27/snapshots-of-the-student-movement-in-montreal/

    Some questions we are interested in discussing:

  • What does it mean to structure decentralized power and what does it look like?
  • How do we have interrelated and accountable autonomies?
  • At which level do we begin organizing and when? (i.e. Do we begin at the program/department level separately from the school/city level? Or do we organize them concurrently?)
  • What is the relationship between public and private university organizing?
  • What are the issues that unite us as students across campuses?
  • What does it mean to be suffering from a crisis in education? And who suffers?
  • What is the relationship between a student union and already existing student clubs/governments and/or labor unions on campus?

Readings for A discussion on the Detroit Geographic Expedition and Institute led by the NYCGEI

I. II. III. The complete set of Field Notes. They only published 3 issues but they are full of the work done by the DGEI in its short lifespan. Field Notes III (1971) is the one written by Gwendolyn Warren, the main youth partner running the original institute.
Download Field Notes I
Download Field Notes II
Download Field Notes III

The Radical Ed piece by Heyman, (2007), builds on feminist discussions of situated knowledges, and uses the early example of the DGEI to try to convince current left geographers to reconceive the way we teach and work in the academy as a radically democratic project which includes breaking cycles of expert knowledge production. The reader is urged to further along radical geography’s project of promoting social justice through radical pedagogy. Whew.

Cindi Katz “The Expedition of Conjurers: Ethnography, Power, and Pretense” from Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork (1996)

Ronald Horvath “The Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute Experience”, Antipode (1971)