2015 ACS Institute: updates, Early Bird registration deadline approaching

Register now to secure a spot at the 2015 ACS Institute!

This is a reminder that early-bird registration for the third Association for Cultural Studies Institute ends on the 30th of July 2015. The Institute will be held from 7-12 December 2015 at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The theme of the 2015 Institute is “Precarious Futures.” For details regarding this important event, including an updated list of keynote and seminar abstracts, please check out our website at http://www.acssibloemfontein2015.co.za

The ACS Institute will be a forum for critical discussions of important perspectives on cultural studies today. Our theme is intended to forge productive and provocative conversations about how cultural studies might help to chart less precarious and more equitable futures. As a field that has, since its inception, been centrally concerned with the relationship between culture and power, cultural studies can offer unique perspectives on precariousness as not only an endemic experience of contemporary life, but as a state increasingly anticipated for human and non-human planetary futures. This Institute will provide a sustained opportunity for critical reflection on the cultural, economic and political trajectories that point to, or might alter, such futures.

The Institute will provide an intense and rewarding pedagogical experience for postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers (established scholars are also welcome) who will have the opportunity to spend the week learning from lectures and seminars delivered by five keynote speakers and a faculty staff of leading cultural studies scholars from around the world. The following keynote speakers have been confirmed:

  • Jean Comaroff (Harvard University, USA)
  • John Erni (Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)
  • Jo Littler (City University London, UK)
  • Zethu Matebeni (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
  • Handel Kashope Wright (University of British Columbia, Canada)

Following on the great successes of the previous ACS Institutes — 2011 at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and 2013 at the Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt (Austria) — the 2015 edition of the Institute will bring together people from a wide range of disciplines to explore what it means to conduct cultural studies. We invite and encourage participation from researchers who work in disciplines such as cultural studies, film studies, media studies, cultural sociology, cultural anthropology, literary theory and criticism, discourse analysis, new literacy studies, philosophy, educational studies, rhetorical criticism, and so forth.

Those interested in participating are invited to take notice of the above-mentioned dates. Email inquiries can be addressed to the local organisers at: acsinstitute2015@gmail.com

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