The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research: Spring and Summer 2016 Courses

The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research: Spring and Summer 2016 Courses

The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research: Spring and Summer 2016 Courses

By : Jadaliyya Reports

As The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research`s Winter 2016 term comes to an end, we want to thank all the students and faculty who have participated in BISR seminars in the past three months. Conversations have been lively, instructive, challenging, and we wouldn`t have it any other way. Looking ahead to Summer 2016, we`d like to highlight three of our upcoming courses, which will begin during the first week of May.

At a time when the United States has the world`s highest incarceration rate, and one in three African-American men can expect to spend some time in jail during his lifetime, Discipline, Punish, and Revolt: Foucault and Prison Abolitionism will scrutinize the contemporary prison industrial complex in light of Michel Foucault`s theoretical and activist work on the topic. Beginning with Discipline and Punish, students will read Foucault`s work alongside more recent scholars and ponder the following questions: How do prisons operate? What kind of disciplining techniques do they employ? What effect does the penal system have on civil society? What would it mean to abolish the penal system as we`ve come to know it?

Approaching our society from a different angle, The Politics of Infrastructure 
will critically examine the economic, political, and systemic role of infrastructure in the contemporary era by focusing on the complex logistical systems underpinning modern life and the ways in which they circulate power and allocate resources. What kind of norms do infrastructural systems encode and what happens when they break down? How do they intersect with our cultural and political ideas, as complex systems come to permeate our everyday lives? Readings will include selection from Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault and James Scott, along with contemporary scholars from science and technology studies.

Finally, in Edward Said: Culture and Empire
students will read the work of Edward Said, author of Orientalism (1978) and founding figure of post-colonial studies. The course will consider Said`s major works and trace their influence on post-colonial studies, political advocacy, the Israel/Palestine debate, and postmodern notions of the intellectual. Students will also study key figures, including Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Antonio Gramsci, who helped to shape Said`s particular vision of the relationship between knowledge production and colonial power, and will explore the method of contrapuntal reading he used to re-inscribe literary works into their imperial context.

Initial course readings will be sent out early next week and courses are filling up, so make sure to enroll soon to secure your spot. The second summer session will feature a number of other courses that are sure to be of interest, including Introduction to Political Islam, Risk: Finance and Neoliberalism, and Digital EmbodimentFor a complete list of courses and more information, please click here.

Inaugural Issue of Journal on Postcolonial Directions in Education

Postcolonial Directions in Education is a peer-reviewed open access journal produced twice a year. It is a scholarly journal intended to foster further understanding, advancement and reshaping of the field of postcolonial education. We welcome articles that contriute to advancing the field. As indicated in the editorial for the inaugural issue, the purview of this journal is broad enough to encompass a variety of disciplinary approaches, including but not confined to the following: sociological, anthropological, historical and social psychological approaches. The areas embraced include anti-racist education, decolonizing education, critical multiculturalism, critical racism theory, direct colonial experiences in education and their legacies for present day educational structures and practice, educational experiences reflecting the culture and "imagination" of empire, the impact of neoliberalism/globalization/structural adjustment programs on education, colonial curricula and subaltern alternatives, education and liberation movements, challenging hegemonic languages, the promotion of local literacies and linguistic diversity, neocolonial education and identity construction, colonialism and the construction of patriarchy, canon and canonicity, indigenous knowledges, supranational bodies and their educational frameworks, north-south and east-west relations in education, the politics of representation, unlearning colonial stereotypes, internal colonialism and education, cultural hybridity and learning  in  postcolonial contexts, education and the politics of dislocation, biographies or autobiographies reflecting the above themes, and deconstruction of colonial narratives of civilization within educational contexts. Once again, the field cannot be exhausted.

Table of Contents

  • Furthering the Discourse in Postcolonial Education, by Anne Hickling Hudson & Peter Mayo
  • Resisting the Inner Plantation: Decolonization and the Practice of Education in the Work of Eric Williams, by Jennifer Lavia
  • Neocolonialism, Higher Education and Student Union Activism in Zimbabwe, by Munyaradzi Hwami & Dip Kapoor
  • Reframing Anti-Colonial Theory for the Diasporic Context, by Marlon Simmons & George Dei 
  • Review of The Politics of Postcolonialism: Empire, Nation and Resistance, by Tejwant Chana
  • Review of Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education, by Joseph Zanoni
  • AERA Postcolonial Studies and Education SIG: Business Meeting, by Joseph Zanoni 

[Click here to access the articles of the issue.]