“Universities: Diagnosing the Present” – a virtual book talk for Questing Excellence in Academia

Virtual Book Talk on Questing Excellence in Academia

Thursday 9 May 2024: 9:00am-11:30am (PST)

Link to Open Access Book – Questing Excellence in Academia

A Conversation with Co-Authors of Questing Excellence in Academia: A Tale of Two Universities

Knut H. Sørensen, Professor Emeritus of Science and Technology Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim and Sharon Traweek, Assoc. Prof., Gender Studies, History, & Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, Disability Studies Affiliated Faculty, University of California, Los Angeles.  The conversation will be moderated by Kim Fortun, Professor of Anthropology, Director of EcoGovLab & PECE Labs, University of California, Irvine.

Opening Remarks by Safiya U. Noble, Professor of Gender Studies, African American Studies, and Information Studies, Interim Director of UCLA DataX Initiative, Director of Center on Race and Digital Justice, Co-Director of Minderoo Initiative on Tech & Power at Center for Critical Internet and Inquiry, University of California, Los Angeles

Book Abstract:

Unlike almost most  other  studies of neoliberal universities and academic capitalism this book ethnographically explores and interprets those trans-formations and their contradictions empirically in the everyday practices of students, faculty members, and  administrators at two public universities: NTNU in Norway and UCLA in California.

Differently situated in global political economies, both are ambitious, prosperous campuses.  The book reflexively examines their disturbing disputes about quality, competition, and innovation.  It argues that some academic, bureaucratic, and corporate university governance practices are both unsustainable and undermining what some university students and faculty already do well: circulate interdisciplinary knowledge and its making globally across the diasporic domains of academia, society, industry, and  government while addressing the world’s immediate challenges: power, inequities, and sustainability.

It shows the important, strategic work of domesticating, co-morphing, and meshworking at the faultlines of emerging knowledge. This book is for students, faculty, society members, and  policy makers who want to engage more effectively with contemporary universities that increasingly serve as busy crossroads for sharing ideas and how to make them. It will be of interest to workers and scholars in the interdisciplinary fields of higher education studies, critical university studies, and critical public infrastructure studies, plus science, technology, and society studies.

Event Co-sponsored by

UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry

UCLA Data X

UCLA Disability Studies Inclusion Labs

UCLA Gender Studies Department

UCLA History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

UCLA Barbra Streisand Center for the Study of Women

UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies