The Political Classroom Amid Austerity

Academy and Polity: The Political Classroom in the Era of Austerity, to be held on Thursday, November 12 and Friday, November 13, 2015, is a conference held at our campus in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This conference is supported by the Proseminar in Social, Political, and Humanistic Inquiry here at Simon's Rock, now in its eighth year. Academy and Polity is also the broad theme for the Proseminar’s year-long investigation with students and visiting scholars for the year 2015-16.

The conference will kick-off on Thursday, Nov 12, 2015, at 5 pm, with a student symposium on the politics of austerity in higher education, engaging students from different institutions. On Friday, Nov 13, our sessions across the day will bring together scholars and practitioners from various disciplines to explore some questions at the intersection of the history and future of secondary and higher education and also the specific manner in which their work inside and outside the classroom responds to and is shaped by what they consider “politics.” Indeed, our questions probe both  “Academy” and “Polity” with regard to how each has historically shaped the other, and what has led to our particular conundra, struggles, and challenges, in this moment, as individuals, communities, and institutions. The specific intent of the day-long conference is to provide an opportunity to actively interpret and place our pedagogies, our work in the classroom and inside institutions, within a world from which they emerge and to which they are accountable. We hope to speak from and across various instantiations of the relationship between being a teacher, scholar, and political actor, within institutions of secondary and higher education, and to see how that shapes our understanding of the student in these threshold and transitional spaces within high school and college. 

Registration is FREE, but required for all attendees, so we can have an accurate count for coffee breaks and lunch (which will be provided). Dinner is NOT included for attendees. To attend, please register at academyandpolityatsr@gmail.com. For details of the conference programme and presenters, please follow us on this website:  https://sites.google.com/site/academypolityatsr/.