Pedagogy of and for the Public: Imaginingthe Intersection of Public Humanitiesand Community Literacy

As a graduate student in the humanities, I am often fearful that my labor is performed for the sake of performing labor. Exacerbated by academia’s in- creasingly precarious landscape, this fear requires a hopeful antidote: a new pedagogy of and for the public. Constructed through empathic conversa- tions between universities and communities, this new approach to pub- lic scholarship and teaching relies on the aims and practices of community literacy (e.g. sustainable models of multimodal learning, social justice, and community listening) in order to refocus the humanist’s work – particularly the disjointed labors undertaken by graduate students – around the cultiva- tion of publics and counterpublics. In turn, a pedagogy of and for the public also implements the digital frameworks and organizational tools of public humanities projects to enliven community literacy praxis. Graduate student conferences are one site where we could enact this jointly constructed ap- proach. By rearticulating these conferences’ capacity for professionalization, by expanding their audience, and by reimagining their form beyond the uni- versity context, I argue that we can establish sustainable programs aimed at expanding community literacies

Incendiary Devices: Imagining E-Waste Frontiers and Africa’s Digital Futures

In her article, “Incendiary Devices: Imagining E-Waste Frontiers and Africa’s Digital Futures,” Treasa De Loughry focuses on different visual responses to e-waste in West Africa, from eco-documentary film and photography responses to the infamous Agbogbloshie e-waste yard in Ghana; to techno-utopian visions of e-waste bricoleurs, and e-waste as a signifier and artefact of the neocolonial nature of the capitalist world-ecology. The first half of this article focuses on Florian Weigensamer and Christian Krönes’ documentary film, Welcome to Sodom (2018), grounding it in critiques of the transmedial influence of the documentary form, while attending to the film’s pyrotechnical “optical regime” (Schoonover). The second half of the article moves from the archaic and exceptionalizing nature of Weigensamer and Krönes’ work to a consideration of futurist digital narratives of “rising Africa,” among them the periodic re-emergence of the post-SAP era (e-waste) bricoleur, contrasted with Francois Knoetze’s experimental visual art films Core Dump (2018-2019), and its richly historicized approach to the longue durée of African resource extraction. High-tech waste, as demonstrated by these examples, is a resource opportunity and toxic hazard, a result of rapid obsolescence, and a signifier of future resource depletion. It requires consideration not just of its “techno-fossil” materiality, but how it draws on key aspects of the transformation of the world-ecology, among them the neoliberal intensification of precarious labor, the expansion of specialized peripheral mega-dumps, and the recursive nature of waste’s value in an era of ecological scarcity. It is within this broader framework that this article seeks to place and interrogate contemporary e-waste depictions

The “New Spirit of Academic Capitalism”: Can Scientists Create Generative Critique From Within?

The 21st-century university is a contested site of neoliberal transformation. Its role is moving away from that of a hub of culture, knowledge and critique to that of a provider of skills and employability for the market. The move towards a lean business model in the management of knowledge production is not an isolated phenomenon, but integral to the shifting economic, political and moral landscapes of global capitalism and the knowledge society. The literature discussing the changes in higher education, which could be collectively termed "critical studies of academia", remains fragmented and is yet to yield tangible resistance or envision viable alternative models of academic governance. This article discusses the possibility of generating constructive critique of "the new spirit of academic capitalism" from within. French Convention Theory is employed as a conceptual toolbox for unpacking the worlds of worth, conventions and justifications which operate beneath the surface of the marketisation, acceleration and casualisation of scientific labour - and suggested as a potential tool for building a generative sociology of critique

Review of Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory

In Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory, editors Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight compile thirteen essays, as well as three introductions by scholars that discuss how Critical Race Theory tenets can and are being used by information professionals to challenge systems that harm marginalized communities. Authors in this volume share personal narratives interspersed with analysis and critique to provide an enlightening and enriching view of how CRT can be used to advance the profession

Precarious Academic Labor in Germany: Termed Contracts and New Berufsverbot

The authors examines how precarity is produced in German academia and explores how labour activists are trying to combat it. The focus is on mid-level faculty. In the first part, the mechanics of precarisation are explained; in the second part, the institutional supports of the status quo blocking change in favour of labour are identified, and in the third part, the demands and strategies of two organisations are analyzed that have made headlines in recent years by exposing the proliferation of precarity in German academia: the Education and Science Workers’ Union (GEW) and the Network for Decent Work in Academia (NGAWiss)

The social web and archaeology's restructuring: impact, exploitation, disciplinary change

From blogs to crowdfunding, YouTube to LinkedIn, online photo-sharing sites to open-source community-based software projects, the social web has been a meaningful player in the development of archaeological practice for two decades now. Yet despite its myriad applications, it is still often appreciated as little more than a tool for communication, rather than a paradigm-shifting system that also shapes the questions we ask in our research, the nature and spread of our data, and the state of skill and expertise in the profession. We see this failure to critically engage with its dimensions as one of the most profound challenges confronting archaeology today. The social web is bound up in relations of power, control, freedom, labour and exploitation, with consequences that portend real instability for the cultural sector and for social welfare overall. Only a handful of archaeologists, however, are seriously debating these matters, which suggests the discipline is setting itself up to be swept away by our unreflective investment in the cognitive capitalist enterprise that marks much current web-based work. Here we review the state of play of the archaeological social web, and reflect on various conscientious activities aimed both at challenging practitioners’ current online interactions, and at otherwise situating the discipline as a more informed innovator with the social web’s possibilities

Resilient scholarship in the digital age

This paper addresses the nature of digital scholarship and discusses the challenges for digitally engaged researchers in archaeology and elsewhere who find that the move to digital scholarship alters the terms of engagement in both the institutional and the personal context. For example, digital methods can counterintuitively lead to increased workloads and expectations of availability, and they are frequently linked to managerialism and marketisation of scholarship. Paradoxically, digital scholarship can entail both a tightening of control through forms of surveillance and an increase in freedom to work in places and at times of choice. This gives rise to a heightened experience of stress and insecurity, and so this paper will argue for the need for resilience in scholarship, not at the institutional level where business resilience approaches are already applied, but at the community and individual level, to benefit most those who experience the risks and downsides associated with digital scholarship

Low Theory, Review of Telesthesia: Communication, Culture & Class by McKenzie Wark

O ccupy Wall Street (OWS) is the new and enduring object of political and intellectual inquiry for the Left in the United States. Indeed, like the 1999 Seattle WTO protests before it, OWS is perhaps more momentous, more impactful, or even more ‘revolutionary’ in its after-eff ects and in its memorialization than it was in the time and space of its production. For some of us in academia that participated in local demonstrations or travelled to Zuccotti Park, OWS has become a thought experiment and a provocation as its physical manifestations have all but disappeared. Written in its wake, McKenzie Wark’s Telesthesia: Communication, Culture, and Class (2012) is an artifact of the occupation. It is simultaneously an attempt to rewrite the method through which radical thought is articulated in academic contexts and an attempt to surpass academic constraints on intellectual production given the event of OWS—in Wark’s words, Telesthesia is “a book about method […] but one that explains the method by performing it” (9). As a kind of action-oriented text, then, Telesthesia situates Occupy as both its launch pad and its medium, its provocation and its means of articulation

No time to read? how precarity is shaping learning and teaching in the humanities

Humanities educators are frequently frustrated by students’ poor engagement in reading. The contemporary student experience is characterised by disruption and precarity. Similarly, is that of teachers who work in casual employment. This discussion is located within broader conversations around the neoliberal university, but aims to make more visible ways that teaching and learning are increasingly shaped by precarity, and consequences for the humanities. It describes what precarity in higher education looks like and considers the kinds of strategies that students and their teachers are positioned to develop by virtue of engaging in education under such conditions, amid chaos, making these meaningful through the learning theory of connectivism. This discussion points to some examples of humanities-based pedagogical innovations that seek to strengthen reading skills, while also acknowledging the changing circumstances of students to point towards avenues for ongoing consideration, reflection, and innovation in the humanities

The Faculty Notebook, September 2017

The Faculty Notebook is published periodically by the Office of the Provost at Gettysburg College to bring to the attention of the campus community accomplishments and activities of academic interest. Faculty are encouraged to submit materials for consideration for publication to the Associate Provost for Faculty Development. Copies of this publication are available at the Office of the Provost