Rethinking the University

Here is another presentation from the Conference - Kathleen McConnell’s “Classes in Advanced Fantasy: A Brief History of The Free University.”

To see a contemporary free university in action, check out the Twin Cities Experimental College - offering 35 classes this summer, starting next week.

Tim Stallman (of the Counter Cartographies Collective) - “Carolina North.. mapping research, precarity, and labor in the 21st century (global) university” - (a draft of a radical comic book they are working on).

Jeff Williams (of the Minnesota Review) - “Debt Education” - “Student Debt and the Spirit of Indenture” - “Teach the University” - (three papers that were the basis of his talk - the third has a helpful bibliography of university fiction, ideas, and histories).

Some of the conference participants have graciously shared their papers with us - a few as the original paper and a few in the presentation form.  Click on the links below to download them.  Feel free to post comments here in response. 

David Cerniglia and Heather Steffen, “Composing the University”

Randall Cohn, “Artificial Disciplinarity? Policing the Boundaries between Art and Design History”

Lisa J. Disch and Jean M. O’Brien, “Innovation is Overtime: An Ethical Analysis of ‘Politically Committed’ Academic Labor”

Isaac Kamola and Eli Meyerhoff, “Creating Commons: Divided Governance, Participatory Management, and Struggles over the Enclosure of the University”

John Mowitt, “The Neo-liberalization of Knowledge”

Richard Ohmann, “Talk on Radical Teaching”

Zach Schwartz-Weinstein, “Without Our Brain and Muscle: NYU and the Future of the Neoliberal University”

Barbara Scott Winkler, “Laboring in the Knowledge Factory: A View from Women’s Studies”

Jess Sundin, “Labor in the Neo-liberal University”

(from Andy Cornell of NYU/GSOC):

We have some exciting news to share!  Two of our allies on Capitol Hill, Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative George Miller, have just introduced federal legislation to amend the National Labor Relations Act to grant collective bargaining rights to teaching and research assistants at private universities and colleges. Read more »

The Rethinking the University Working Group would like to solicit ideas for next year’s conference. Here are a few things we might want to consider, but feel free to post comments with any other suggestions.

• Where should it be held?
• When should it be held?
• What should the format look like? Or, what worked and didn’t work this year? For instance, a few people have made the suggestion that we incorporate seminars, or possibly reading groups.

Perhaps we can begin our continuation of the discussions from the conference by responding to this post with our reflections (click on “Comment” below).  Eli Thorkelson’s “notes on a lively conference on universities” provides some initial thoughts.