Cultural Studies Association Conference to Examine Issues of Ecology, the Environment and Culture

Top Quote International and national cultural studies scholars, activists and artists meet in Salt Lake City to discuss and change the politics and cultures of ecology and the environment. End Quote
  • Salt Lake City-Ogden, UT (1888PressRelease) March 21, 2014 - The Twelfth Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Conference, entitled "Ecologies: Relations of Culture, Matter, and Power," will bring together leading and emerging scholars, artists, and activists in the field of cultural studies for a comprehensive, critical conversation on this rapidly expanding area of study and research. The Conference will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah from May 28-31, 2014 at the Historic Fort Douglas on the University of Utah campus, The University Guesthouse and Convention Center at 110 Ft Douglas Blvd, Salt Lake City, UT 84113.

    This conference is a meeting of scholars, researchers, educators, practitioners, activists, artists in the emerging field of contemporary cultural studies. This year's conference will include several hundred delegates, representing more than two dozen countries and 190 institutions.

    Founded in 2003, the CSA is largest network of Cultural Studies scholars, educators and practitioners in North America. It is a non-profit association for scholarly purposes in the field of Cultural Studies. Its primary objectives are to create and promote an effective community of cultural studies practitioners and scholars and to produce and disseminate useful knowledges about important cultural, political and social issues of the day.

    "The conference is a tremendously creative and dynamic site of exchange. This year it focuses on ecology and the environment as topics of concern, and also as metaphors to help us think about the complex cultural and knowledge systems in which we all are actors and agents," said CSA President Bruce Burgett, a dean and professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington Bothell.

    "This year's conference is particularly important," said CSA Vice President and President Elect Jaafar Aksikas, an associate professor of cultural studies at Columbia College. "The theme of this year's meeting prompts all of us ask some important and hard questions about how environmental factors and ecological discourses shape our conceptions of culture, nature, and politics, and how these factors and discourses are shaped by larger forces of history, capital and globalization."

    "I'm excited to bring the CSA to Salt Lake City," said Robert W. Gehl, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Utah and the chair of the conference's host committee. "Utah is an incredibly fascinating place to think through ecologies, including environmental, social, and technological ecologies. Utah has a range of natural ecologies, a unique history, and a place in contemporary social struggles for equality and economic justice. And the theme of this year's conference invites us to imagine our gathering in Salt Lake City as an ecology in its own right: an assemblage of cultural critics and producers."

    The conference will cover a plethora of topics relevant to ecology and the environment and aims to provide spaces for the cross-pollination of art, activism, pedagogy, design, and research by bringing together delegates from a variety of positions and institutions, from all over the world.

    This year's plenary speakers will include Larry Grossberg, Paul Smith, and Danielle Endres.

    Additional Information Available on the Web:
    For more information on the conference, please see the conference Web page at: http://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/conference
    For more information about the CSA, please visit http://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/.

    Media Contact:
    Michelle Fehsenfeld
    Cultural Studies Association
    117 E Crescent Avenue
    Elmhurst, IL 60126
    contact ( @ ) csalateral dot org
    Phone: 630-999-1711
    Fax: 1-800-519-6057

    ###
space
space
  • FB Icon Twitter Icon In-Icon
Contact Information