In 1990-1991, former IU faculty members Barbara Klinger and Christopher Anderson convened a year-long multi-disciplinary faculty seminar on “The Cultural Studies Movement in the Humanities and Social Sciences,” funded by the then Office of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculties. From that auspicious workshop, Patrick Brantlinger and Jim Naremore drafted a proposal to establish a Cultural Studies Program at IU that would promote interdisciplinary dialogue and debate for both faculty and graduate students.
The 22nd Annual Cultural studies Conference on October 6-7, 2017 will celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of our program. The two-day event will reflect on institutional histories and the futures of the field, as well as celebrate the work that we all do here. It will also be an occasion to chart a path forward for Cultural Studies at IU in the face of the perpetual institutional reorganizations, ongoing reductions in resources for the study of the humanities and social sciences, and the increasing legitimation of xenophobia, ethnonationalism, and strains of illiberalism in the United States and Europe.
The conference will feature:
- an opening keynote address from Roderick Ferguson, Professor of African American and Gender and Women’s Studies at University of Illinois, Chicago and the author of (among other books) The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference (Minnesota 2012)
- a closing keynote address by Lauren Goodlad, Professor of English and immediate past Director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- a roundtable discussion with previous IU Cultural Studies Program Directors Barbara Klinger (IU emeritus),Tom Foster (University of Washington), and Purnima Bose (IU), and founding faculty members Patrick Brantlinger and Jim Naremore (IU emerita).
- panels featuring research by current graduate student minors and faculty