*** FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT ***
An Alternative, International Summer School
on Discourse and Social Justice
Invited guests:
Anabela Carvalho, University of Minho, Portugal
Lawrence Frey, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Shi-xu, Zhejiang University, China
Thomas Tufte, Roskilde University, Denmark
TBA
Dates:
17th – 22nd August, 2009
Location:
Centre for Discourse Studies
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Web site:
http://diskurs.hum.aau.dk/dxc2009
The recent emergence of a set of interlocking global crises — including climate, energy, food, water, finance — demands a renewed interdisciplinary effort to understand how to mediate the future, the past and the present in ways that attend to equity, justice and rights. The aim of this summer school is to bring together people investigating and promoting social change and transformation with an explicit focus on the role of discourse in shaping a just future (and the past). Discourse is understood as encompassing an interdisciplinary perspective on text, talk, discourse, genre, narrative, archive, document, image and rhetoric in all their modal, social and cultural forms, not only in terms of representation but also action and practice.
Themes within the interdisciplinary focus of the summer school will include the following clusters:
* Discourse/Style/Genre/Semiotics/Rhetorics
* Mediation/Modality/Action/Practice
* History/Narrative/Memory/Experience
* Change/Intervention/Critique/Social Justice
* Rights/Ethics/Care/Hope
* Suffering/Risk
* Identity/Gender/’Race’/Ethnicity/Kinship
* Belonging/Citizenship/Linking/Relationality
* Nature/Environment/Habitus/Context
* Interaction/Technology/Artefact
* Structure/Ordering/Organisation/Governance
* Space/Movement/Mobility/Flow/Scale
DeXusChange will interest students and scholars who work in the diverse fields of discourse studies, communication studies, development studies, globalisation studies, media studies, political science, sociology, history, anthropology, international studies, social movement studies, communication activism, participatory communication, critical journalism studies, action research, and human-centred communication and informatics.
DeXusChange 2009 draws upon the innovative pedagogical tradition at Aalborg University to experiment with a problem-based, project-centred research summer school for doctoral students and scholars who are engaged in interdisciplinary studies. Following on from the successful “DeXus:
Discourse Nexus” summer school series 2003-2006, the core concept in DeXusChange is the free play of ideas within the thematic context of group-derived problems and reflexive project work developed during the six fruitful days of the summer school.
Following the first two days of lectures and workshops by the invited guests, which will establish a common ground work, we concentrate over the following days on group project work. On the last day, all groups will come together to report on their findings, solutions and applications, with commentary and discussion from the guests and wayfinders. A poster session will take place during the first day for those who wish to present their research publicly. More details on the DeXusChange web site:
http://diskurs.hum.aau.dk/dxc2009.
The summer school is international and open to researchers, doctoral and graduate students. Please apply online at
http://diskurs.hum.aau.dk/dxc2009
For more academic information, contact the organisers:
DeXusChange Collective – dxc2009 (at) hum (dot) aau (dot) dk
The deadline for applying is 29th May 2009. The participation fee payment deadline is 15th June 2009.
The participation fee is 3500 Danish kroner (approx. 450 Euros), which covers administrative costs, tea/coffee and lunches every working day, one evening drinks reception (Monday) and one evening dinner (Thursday). More information on the web site. If you are enrolled as a doctoral student at a Danish University, then please see the web site for specific instructions. One free scholarship will be given to a qualified student from the Global South. Please see the website for more information about how to apply.
Warm regards, DeXusChange Collective
Ben Dorfman
Oscar Garcia
Inger Lassen
Paul McIlvenny
Pirkko Raudaskoski
The DeXusChange summer school is supported by the Centre for Discourse Studies, the Doctoral Programme in Discourse and Contemporary Culture, the Human-Centred Communication and Informatics Doctoral Programme, and the Department of Language and Culture at Aalborg University.