SEMINAR IN EXPERIMENTAL CRITICAL THEORY (SECT) V

SECT V: "Creative Societies/Cultural Industries/New Humanities?"

August 11-22, 2008

Extended Application Deadline: February 11, 2008

CONVENER:
Toby Miller, UC Riverside

PRESENTERS:
Paula Chakravartty, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
John Hartley, Queensland University of Technology
Dick Hebdige, UC Santa Barbara
Richard Maxwell, CUNY Queens
Angela McRobbie, Goldsmiths, University of London
Kate Oakley, Independent Scholar
Lisa Parks, UC Santa Barbara
Andrew Ross, New York University
George Yudice, University of Miami
Yuezhi Zhao, Simon Fraser University

From the mid-1950s to the 1980s cities, regions, and societies in the global north faced significant deindustrialization. Their long-term economic resurrection required redirection. As Governor of California through the second half of the 1960s, Ronald Reagan had already recognized this need. In response, he birthed the idea of a ‘Creative Society’, seeking to replace ‘The Great Society’ with the neoliberal idea of using technology to unlock the creativity lurking in individuals at the expense of collective dominance, whether corporate- or state- inspired. Social institutions quickly adopted uniquely identifying cultural activities as their brands.

Recreational spaces and practices sedimented into cultural industries which cities, regions, and societies began vigorously to promote and with which they increasingly came to be identified. Culture became more than a matter of social expression or an object of analysis. It became a major mode of production and consumption, of branding and identification, of investment and value, of merchandising and desire formation. This produced a class not just of cultural producers and promoters, but of experts and consultants, designers and disseminators, agents and boosters.

The study of culture—of the significance, meaning, and value of its various expressions and products—has traditionally been the domain of the humanities. With the elevation of culture to industry, and of creative institutions to the mainstay of economic activity and social arrangements in cities and across regions, it is time to ask whether the emergence of cultural industries generates a new humanities. What new modes of cultural comprehension and interdisciplinary tools of analysis are necessary to address the modes of conception, production, marketing and dissemination of cultural industries, their regional variety, the unequal cultural exchange across the globe and their reduction to consumer products, their impacts on cities and societies, and the working conditions facing those in the creative sector? What professional possibilities and responsibilities today face the humanities in engaging these recent developments? And what are the likely impacts on the humanities yet to come?

Application Fee: $20

Registration Fee: $1,750

Applicants are urged to seek funding from their home institutions. A limited number of scholarships may be available to full time registered students.

For additional information, please contact us at sect@hri.uci.edu or 949-824-8900.

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