Submitted by Adria on July 23, 2008 - 2:25am
As I mentioned before, the British Sociological Association's Theory Study Group hosted a conference in London almost three weeks ago on the events of May 1968.
The conference was truly excellent. Here are a couple of brief mentions from my graduate student perspective:
1) The keynote addresses were an honor to witness: Patricia Hill Collins, Paul Gilroy, Juliet Mitchell, and William Outhwaite. You can read the papers of each speaker HERE.
2) The conference was much smaller than the conferences I have attended here in the states (RSA, WSCA, NCA). It was really interesting to experience an atmosphere where I had the opportunity to go to attend almost everything (minus the panels that were occurring simultaneously to a panel I was attending). Something cool that they did: The day was broken down into parallel sessions of an hour and a half: there were a total of 5 parallel sessions in one day, each with 6 panels. Tea breaks (and lunch) were woven between panels.
But here's the cool thing: the panel titles were the same for every parallel session. So if you attended the "Student Movements in Global Consideration" in parallel session 1, you may be interested in the same topic for each parallel session for the rest of the day---each session has different panelists. So for example, the panel I was on, Feminist Legacies of 1968 in parallel session 2 with Juliet Mitchell as respondent, occurred in parallel session 3 as well, with Mitchell still chairing but with different panelists.
This helped facilitate the discussion among a group of people throughout the day. I attended all the Feminist Legacies sessions, so I was discussing ideas with a larger number of the same folks throughout the day. Each panel had a large number of attendees, and there were lengthy discussion periods after each paper, and then collectively after the presentations. Similarly, seeing the same people for several days meant discussions were able to continue from one panel to the next, with people comfortable enough with one another to ask questions and get into some deeper issues.
3) It's interesting to consider this anniversary now, with so much activism brewing around the presidential campaigns. If this topic gets anyone's interest, please know UT is hosting a similar conference this Fall. Here are the details:
1968: A Global Perspective. The conference itself, organized by
Compative Literature faculty and graduate students and co-sponsored
by the College of Liberal Arts, the Humanities Institute, and other
interested campus units, is scheduled for October 10-12 but will be
preceded by a keynote speech by Daniel Ellsberg on October 7 and a
remarkable series of 20 or more documentary films pertaining to the
global contexts and impacts of 1968 that will be screened on campus
throughout September and early October. Other visiting keynoters
during the conference will include Kathleen Cleaver and Michael Hardt.
Graduate students from across the country as well as from UT have
submitted paper proposals for conference sessions, but the Comp. Lit.
faculty organizers (our colleagues Dolora Wojciehowski and Katie
Arens) also will welcome proposals from faculty for panels or
roundtables. In addition to introducing Ellsberg, I plan to moderate
a conversation on ³The American War in Vietnam: Unlearned Lessons.²
Please take a few moments to view the evolving conference websites at
the following links, one for the conference itself http://www.
1968conf.org/
and the other for the scheduled series of films, organized by Comp.
Lit. graduate student Margaret Woodruff-Wieding: http://www.
1968conf.org/filmfest.html
And contact Dolora or Katie by email if you would like to be involved
as a discussant, presenter, or panel organizer.
