Crossroads in Cultural Studies 2004 Conf., Urbana-Champagne
I love college towns. A great set of papers in a town oddly deserted like a Cronenberg film. Unfortunately I got the impression that the organizers booked the venue and then left for a party. Everything stopped at 4:30 each day without even a map or directions to restaurants, leaving about 400 cultural studies scholars to forage for themselves and debate the merits of food over theory. No email followup addresses in the program always pisses me off too.
Of course the conference was too dominated by the Anglo-American, mostly American, version of cultural studies, marking the 25th anniversary of a key U.S. text - the ‘passeur‘ (ferry-man) moment I guess. I’m not sure it was an obit, but my sense is that the energy is now in Asian, African and Transnational approaches. Excellent Space and Culture: Everyday Life session, some of which we will make a cool theme issue out of I hope. Got to meet Sonjah Stanley-Niaah (Issue 7.1) who presented the ethnographic detail of a Kingston (Jamaica) dancehall. Amazing paper.
Good representation of Canadians, doing some of the only aboriginal material, but I can never get over the arrogance of the Central Canadian view of themselves as the centre of the world and their lament when no one else cares. Regionalism is an important but fickle marker of identity. Nonetheless, in the context of the move of the Canadian Assoc. of Cultural Studies to University of Alberta in Edmonton (just to the right of Rocky Mountains on the map, guys), I was informed that everyone there are all ex-Torontonians, ’same people, same politics’. That pasting of its ‘just us’ onto others riles. So maybe there is an academic diaspora that reflects the decline of Central Canadian universities but there is no way that there aren’t a significant number of new voices, disciplines and, damn, just new people who have never been part of the central Canadian cultural studies and communication studies establishment and its internal bickering - like yours truly.
So I’m moving out there too, but that’s another post on my Henry Marshall Tory Chair in the Arts and my research on Urban Cultures. A view of Edmonton:
