Deadline August 15
In 2003 graduate students of the anthropology department at American University convened the first Public Anthropology Conference. This year we celebrate a decade of resistance and social justice. The 10th Annual Public Anthropology Conference seeks to reflect on what it means to resist, and the ways in which people are working to achieve social justice(s). Among the questions we seek to answer through this conference are: How has academic and popular resistance to domination and injustice changed our world in the past ten years? Where have our overtures to social justice fallen short and what must change in our analyses and approaches? We welcome your creative submissions on the following ideas, broadly envisioned, and of course your own ideas.
PAC @ 10: A Decade of Resistance
Pedagogy:
How can activists and academics work together to build a more socially just world? Many academics work with activists, or are activists themselves. What works in these relationships and where can those relations be improved?
Community/Action:
What are the challenges/ barriers involved in working towards social justice, and more importantly, how do we overcome them? It is easy to point out where the system is broken, the challenge lies in formulating a solution. We welcome your critiques and suggestions for how to engage in effective resistance and make social justice a reality.
What does the material world offer us that might help us imagine alternatives ways of being, doing, and knowing? In what ways can we learn from historical social justice movements? The world is constantly changing, and the way that we actively resist must change to, how do we proceed?
How can we move from analysis of perennial concerns like gentrification, housing, and food justice to an academically informed collective action?
Collaboration:
How can we work across disciplines, across sectors, across agendas to resist domination and oppression? In what ways do the barriers divide us and facilitate domination? How can academics be more collaborative with one another and with public scholars and community members outside the academy to effect social justice? How can we improve the academic environment to facilitate the activist-scholars, and PhD and MA candidates?
These are just a few examples of the kind of papers, panels, workshops, roundtables, posters and presentations we would like to see, and welcome your ideas on a variety of topics broadly related to social justice and resistance. Submissions from all disciplines are welcome and encouraged!
We will accept abstracts and panel proposals on a rolling basis with a final deadline of Aug. 15, 2013. Submit abstracts here: http://www.american.edu/cas/anthropology/public/call.cfm