May 3rd - Talking, thinking and writing about Academic Identity, Utopia and Grace

 Change of date: this workshop will now take place on May 3rd

The identities theme 2011 spring term interdisciplinary  workshop will take the form of a talking and writing day exploring academic identity and, in these halcyon times within the academy, the relationship between Academic identity and the necessity of utopia as method or 'looking for the blue' for any of us to survive in academic life at all. The workshop will take place May 3rd 10.00am-4pm  in Room 410, GSoE and places will be limited in order to facilitate discussion and networking across disciplines. To secure a place , e-mail Jane.speedy@bristol.ac.uk


Timetable: 10.00am-11.00am Ruth Levitas, Professor of Sociology will talk and provoke discussion about  her current Leverhulme funded project on Utopia as method and how this shapes her own academic identity:


Negotiating Heresy in the Academy: Sociology, Utopia, Grace


Ruth Levitas comments:
I've been researching questions around utopianism for 40 years. Most people who do this are located either in literature or political theory. Social theory, and sociology more specifically, have not been very open to utopianism - although H G Wells said that 'the creation of utopias and their exhaustive criticism is the proper and distinctive method of sociology'. So although I'm a Professor of Sociology, most sociologists don't recognise what I do as sociology at all - a curiously marginal position. I'm currently funded by a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship to work on 'Utopia as Method'. I'll say a little about what this means - but the position I'm developing is heretical in two ways. Firstly, there's the normativity and future orientation of utopia which is at odds with sociology. Secondly, it is impossible to talk about the nature of a better society without recourse to an account of the selves that would inhabit it and thus the elucidation of a utopian ontology (or identity). The theme of a secular version of what I can only call grace as an existential experience and a relational quality (see writers like Levinas and Roberto Unger) is even more heretical for a sociologist - or indeed any social scientist, and may indeed put people off the whole idea of this workshop. My own sense is that I can only say what I want by being semi-detached from the Academy itself, and possible only by being old enough to contemplate retirement. So I'm interested in how we manage our own identities as academics when we fit neither disciplinary norms, nor possible academic norms at all, in our most honest accounts of being in the world.

11.00am-noon, After what promises to be an inspiring talk and discussion we shall have coffee and break into small interdiciplinary groups to have further conversations about our own sense of managing our own academic identities, heresies, utopias and versions of secular grace.
Noon - 1.00pm lunch will be provided

1.00pm-4.00pm Jane Speedy (GSoE); Ann Rippin (DoM) and Sue Porter (SfPS) will facilitate a collective biography  workshop on Academic identity, Utopia and Grace. Tea and biscuits will be provided after the workshop.


Collective Biography Workshop 

Collective biography is a collaborative writing method (and as such is a somewhat heretical research method in relation to the gaze of the REF) that works at the level of bodily knowledge and of affect, and moving beyond individualized versions of the subject, toward subjects-in-relation, subjects-in-process.  The practice of collective biography involves participants meeting and talking about their chosen topic, telling their own remembered stories relevant to that topic, and writing them down. The relationship between the participants and the written texts, and memories evoked in the workshop space, is developed through a close attention to each others’ stories. Through listening and questioning each other on the remembered, embodied, affective detail, each story becomes imaginable with/in the minds/bodies of everyone. After telling stories, and listening to stories, and talking together about those stories, each story is written then read out loud to the group. In the writing and reading  each storyteller works to express the remembered moments.  Within collective biography workshops, through developing the skills of listening and attending to the minute bodily detail of moments of being, it becomes possible for each story to become a collective story, its purpose no longer to signal the substance of any particular individual, but to open participants to new insights into the processes of being and becoming in the world—and to new ways of being.  If the group finds that they want to work further with the material they have generated it may be possible to work together after the workshop on  collaborative papers.

Cities, Universities and Everyday Life Identities

An interdisciplinary cross-faculty team led by Jane Speedy, including:
Dr Nell Bridges (School of Applied Community and Health Studies), Dr Frances Giampapa (Graduate School of Education), Dr Tamar Hodos (Department of Archaeology and Anthropology), Dr Silke Knippschild (Department of Classics & Ancient History), Dr Susan Porter (Norah Fry), Dr Ann Rippin (Department of Management), Professor Ros Sutherland (GSoE), Dr Rachel Sutton-Spence (School of Applied Community and Health Studies), Dr Donna West , (School of Applied Community and Health Studies), Dr Yvonne Whelan (School of Geographical Sciences) from the identities theme were successful in winning a Faculty of Social Sciences and Law Inter-faculty research award to plan a new project entitled:

Cities, Universities and Everyday Life Identities

The purpose of this exploratory project is to understand how contemporary British cities engage with the universities on their doorsteps. Faculty funding will enable the team to conduct literature searches and set up world cafe style consultative meetings with potential project partners and stakeholders.

New book launched - GSoE

New book on identity, subjectivity and collaborative writing launched. Ken Gale and Jonathan Wyatt produced the first collaboratively written doctoral thesis in the Social Sciences and Law Faculty last year and have subsequently published their work as a monograph. You are cordially invited to attend their book launch, jointly hosted with Cambridge Scholars Publishers - Friday March 26th, 6-7pm, 4th Floor Foyer, 35 Berkeley Square. RSVP to jane.speedy@bristol.ac.uk

Bronwyn Davies, Institute of Advanced Studies/ Benjamin Meaker Professor Spring-Summer 2010
Working with the Centre for Narratives and Transformative Learning (CeNTraL) in the Graduate School of Education and across the ‘Identities’ University Research theme

Pierre Riviere - workshops and writing project, March - April 2010 (see about this project, below, for further information)



March 18th, 2-5, Introductory Pierre Riviere Workshop:
Screening of the film ‘I Pierre Rivierre’ and discussion

March 26th 10-4 Pierre Riviere workshop two - AM: Paper by Bronwyn Davies, and discussion.
PM: Inter and crossdisciplinary contributions

April 15th 10-4 Pierre Riviere workshop three, AM: definitional ceremonies and PM: further interdisciplinary contributions

April 29th 2-5 Pierre Riviere Plenary session, concluding with a book plan

ABOUT THIS PROJECT:
Michel Foucault and team spent over a year researching the trial and circumstances of 'Pierre Riviere' the nineteenth century French author of the memoir: "I, Pierre Riviere, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century" and eventually published the memoir with accompanying case documents, followed by their own notes - in an attempt to explore the roots of our contemporary views of madness, justice and crime.
We are going to explore and write into the inquiry space of the original texts and Foucault's projects from our own, variously disciplined 21st cenrury positions and methodologies in order to generate our own accounts of knowledge and power then and now. This workshop will be open to a limited number of colleagues from a range of disciplines who are willing to engage with each other in a unique inquiry. Places in this project, which we anticipate will generate an edited book, will be limited and the workshop/project will demand considerable commitment. if you are interested please contact Jane Speedy: Jane.speedy@bristol.ac.uk

Bronwyn Davies, Institute of Advanced Studies/ Benjamin Meaker Professor Spring-Summer 2010, Working with the Centre for Narratives and Transformative Learning (CeNTraL) in the Graduate School of Education and across the ‘Identities’ University Research theme

Two public presentations:

Listening - a radical Pedagogy

23 March 2010 , 5 pm

To listen is to enter that spatiality by which, at the same time, I am penetrated, for it opens up in me as well as around me, and from me as well as toward me: it opens me inside me as well as outside, and it is through such a double, quadruple, or sextuple opening that a ‘self’ can take place.

Nancy (2007)

Organised in conjunction with the Identities research theme and Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Bristol

Speaker: Professor Bronwyn Davies

Room 4.10, 35 Berkeley Square, BS8 1JA

To book, contact: lucy.stephens@bristol.ac.uk

The struggle between the individualised subject of phenomenology and the multiplicities of the poststructuralist subject: the problem of agency

20 April 2010 , 5 pm

Organised by Institute of Advanced Studies and Centre for Narratives and Transformative Learning (CeNTraL)

Room 410, 35 Berkeley Square, BS8 1JA

Followed by a wine/cheese book launch for Davies, B and Gannon, S (2010) Pedagogical Encounters, Peter Lang in 4^th floor foyer. To book: contact: w.f.leung@bristol.ac.uk

Identities and Ethics Reading Group

Bronwyn Davies Institute of Advanced Studies/ Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor Spring-Summer 2010, Working with the Centre for Narratives and Transformative Learning (CeNTraL) in the Graduate School of Education and across the ‘Identities’ University Research theme

Identity and Ethics Reading Group

March - April 2010
Venue, room 408, Graduate School of Education, 35 Berkeley Square
Starts March 5th 2-4pm,
(also 3 more x 2 hour slots in weeks beginning March 8th, March 15th, March 22nd, March 29th - this group will close in week one and times weeks 2-4 will be negotiated within the group)

If you wish to take part in the Pierre Rivierre project the reading group is strongly recommended.


Weekly readings

1) Butler, J. Against ethical violence. In Butler, J. Giving an Account of oneself. Fordham University Press 2005
2) Badiou, A. Does man exist? and Does the other exist? In Ethics. An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Verso 2001.
3) Butler, J. Responsibility. In Butler, J. Giving an Account of oneself Fordham University Press 2005
4) Foucault, M. (2000). ‘An interview with Michel Foucault’. In Faubion, J. (Ed.). Essential works of Foucault 1954—1984, Volume 3, Michel Foucault: Power (pp. 239—297). London: Penguin Books.
5) Davies, B. et al Embodied women at work in neoliberal times and places, and Truly wild things: interruptions in the disciplinary regimes of neoliberalism in (female) academic work. In Davies and Gannon, Doing Collective Biography. Open University Press, 2006.

Please register with Fai Leung w.f.leung@bristol.ac.uk, if you wish to take part in the reading group. Places are limited. The readings will be made available.

BOOK LAUNCH DECEMBER 7TH 2009

Our identities theme end of year celebration will take the form of a book launch party to celebrate the publication of this important new text.

Published in November 2009 by Cambridge University Press, Material culture and social identities in the ancient world has been edited by by Shelley Hales (Department of Classics and Ancient History) and Tamar Hodos, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology).
This book is a celebration, in itself, of the interdisciplinary ideas and practices informing Bristol University's 'identities' research theme - encompassing as it does contemporary reflections on ancient identities; the diversity, complexity and plurality of identities in the ancient world and the dynamic role of material culture, not simply in reflecting those identities but in creating and transforming them.

Make a note of the date:

Monday December 7th, 2009, Room LR2, 43 Woodland Road, 5-6.30 pm

Drinks and nibbles provided, to book this event , co-sponsored by Cambridge University Press, please notify Fai Leung, research support officer, W.F.Leung@bristol.ac.uk