Creativity and Academic Activism: Instituting Cultural Studies

Description

This work explores in detail how innovative academic activism can transform our everyday workplaces in contexts of considerable adversity. Personal essays by prominent scholars provide critical reflections on their institution-building triumphs and setbacks across a range of cultural institutions. Often adopting narrative approaches, the contributors examine how effective programs and activities are built in varying local and national contexts within a common global regime of university management policy. Here they share experiences based on developing new undergraduate degrees, setting up research centers and postgraduate schools, editing field-shaping book series and journals, establishing international artist-in-residence programs, and founding social activist networks. This book also investigates the impact of managerialism, marketization, and globalization on university cultures, asking what critical cultural scholarship can do in such increasingly adversarial conditions. Experiments in Asian universities are emphasized as exemplary of what can or could be achieved in other contexts of globalized university policy. Contributors. Tony Bennett, Stephen Ching-Kiu Chan, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Douglas Crimp, Dai Jinhua, John Nguyet Erni, Mette Hjort, Josephine Ho, Koichi Iwabuchi, Meaghan Morris, Tejaswini Niranjana, Wang Xiaoming, Audrey Yue Cover Contents Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Institutional Culture 1: The Desire for Cultural Studies 2: Social Movements, Cultural Studies,and Institutions 3: Life of a Parasite 4: The Assessment Game 5: Three Tough Questions of Cultural Studies 6: Doing Cultural Studies 7: Coordinates, Confusions, and Cultural Studies 8: Uses of Media Culture, Usefulness of Media Culture Studies 9: Way Out on a Nut 10: Who Needs Human Rights? 11: From Gatekeepers to Gateways 12: Culture, Institution, Conduct Notes Bibliography Index