Our first public lecture, held on June 10th, 2009 featured the renowned postcolonial theorist and cultural critic Homi K. Bhabha, Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at University College London. Video excerpts from Professor Bhaba’s lecture, ‘Time, Agency & The Banality of Evil’ will be available on this site in the near future.
Monthly Archives: June 2010
Hold On To Your Dreams
CCSR committee member Tim Lawrence read from and spoke about his new biography of Arthur Russell, Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92, on 3 June at the Glasgow Film Theatre. Organised by the Modern Institute, the event began with a screening of Wild Combination and was followed by music from invited DJs. Tim also presented a keynote paper (on Arthur Russell and queer musicianship) at the Sounds Queer conference, King’s College London, on 4 June.
Politics of Consumption Seminar
The Politics of Consumption, a seminar organised by CCSR and held at UEL on May 18th, 2010 was an event intended to bring together experts and early-career researchers from both within and beyond the academy in order to discuss political and ethical issues around changing patterns of consumption in the 21st century economy.
The event featured a number of leading academics in the field – including anthropologist Daniel Miller from UCL, political philosopher Kate Soper from London Met and cultural historian Mica Nava from UEL – as well as the prominent Member of Parliament, Jon Cruddas, and Neal Lawson, the chair of Compass, a prominent organisation which has taken a leading role in social and political campaigns against, for example, ‘the commercialisation of childhood’.
The day was well-attended with over 100 attendees from across the UK as well as a number from overseas, and produced a very lively and engaged debate between proponents of a number of theoretical and political perspectives on the role of consumption and ‘consumerism’.