Academic reading group: autumn season of meetings 2009
Below are the Academic Reading Group session dates and texts for the autumn term 2009. All sessions occur on Thursdays, 12.30-1.30pm, more or less fortnightly, in Group room 2, ground floor of the LRC at Ormskirk. Lunch is provided. The reading group will convene for a new season on Thursday 22nd October 12.30 – 1.30. All welcome.
The academic reading group is for staff and research students who enjoy reading and who would like to share their thoughts with others. It is intended to encourage and support new thinking and writing for publication and research. People from all subjects and faculties are welcome, and nothing more will be expected than the pleasure of debating a text as a group. Last year saw our first series of meetings and it has proved to be especially helpful for becoming familiar with authors and theorists in a supportive group atmosphere.
One text is chosen for each meeting and it will usually be contemporary and relevant in some way; it will also be short, in the form of an excerpt, journal paper, chapter or short story. Hopefully people will be inspired to read further should they find the text useful or interesting. There is no requirement for all texts to be overtly ‘academic’, and some texts chosen for past sessions have been extracts from novels, web pages or graphic novels. Members of the group nominate the texts for future sessions.
Where the texts do not already exist in digital form through the electronic library collection, the LRC have helpfully agreed to digitise copies of the texts for you to download and read, and are usually available from the library catalogue by performing a module code search for REA101. Staff will have to log in with their library number and pin, whilst students log in with their student number and password.
Look forward to seeing you there.
Jeff Adams
Dates and Texts
22.10.09
Donna Haraway: ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’
In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.
Available at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
Clare is currently wrestling with this text into her PhD thesis and would love to hear about other people’s readings of it.
Proposer: Clare Woolhouse
12.11.09
Lev Vygotsky: Play and its role in the mental development of the child
First Published: 1933; Source: Voprosy psikhologii, 1966, No. 6; Translated: Catherine Mulholland; Transcription/Markup: Nate Schmolze; Online Version: Psychology and Marxism Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2002. Available at:
http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/Courses/Psy225/Classic%203%20Vygotsky.pdf
I’m always keen to create an opportunity to read classics that still keep cropping up in contemporary research, and Vygotsky’s is one of these, especially with the government’s renewed promotion of play for learning and creativity in education.
Proposer: Jeff Adams
19.11.09
Jean-Luc Nancy: L’Intrus
Jean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher who wrote a stunning piece about his own heart transplant L’Intrus. It’s a 14 page essay – part philosophical mediation, part literary testimonial – that Claire Denis ‘adopted’ as the basis for her feature film of the same name. (One of the finest European films of the last 20 years.)
Proposer: David Jackson
3.12.09
Nicholas Bourriaud: Relational Aesthetics (1998/2002). Les presses du reel.
Chapter 1, pp. 3-24. This can be found at: http://wiki.mediamind.org/images/3/38/Bourriaud.pdf
I’ve chosen this short extract from Bourriaud’s work for the following reasons: although written ten years ago it’s Bourriaud’s seminal work; Bourriaud has since moved to London to be director of Tate Britain, where he curated and wrote the catalogue introduction to the important ‘Altermodern’ exhibition, which purported to replace ‘Postmodern’ as a dominant paradigm in the cultural world; as director of Tate Britain Bourriaud is now a key figure in the Turner prize, now showing; given this context I think its worth discussing Bourriaud’s thinking for an insight into the contemporary art world.
Proposer: Jeff Adams
17.12.09
Slavoj Zizek: Tolerance as an Ideological Category
Available at: http://www.lacan.com/zizek-inquiry.html
A chance to read and discuss the controversial philosopher through this chapter on tolerance and ideology.
Proposer: David Jackson