Summer 2009 Newsletter
Dear Friends,
The editors would like to briefly draw your attention to our beautiful new Web site, some exciting globe-spanning events sponsored by the Sister Cities Project, and a fabulous new issue—read on!
The New Publicculture.org
After more than a year of active development, we are pleased to finally announce the launch of a brand new Publicculture.org. Completely rebuilt from the inside out, the new site sports a sleeker design and architecture, and major accessibility and usability enhancements. In addition, it’s packed with fresh content and features, and there are even more in the works. Here’s a peek at what’s new and notable:
- We’ve got tons of new photos and artwork. See the homepage for a dynamic feed of compelling images.
- There’s now a section for journal-related news and events.
- The site has more Web feeds so you can keep up with journal issues, site content, announcements, and more.
- New social and sharing tools enable you to share our content on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
We’ve also streamlined content browsing, created more powerful views for journal issues, articles, and contributors, and improved integration with the full journal archive at DukeJournals.org. We hope you’ll take a moment to explore the new site, and let us know your impressions.
The Sister Cities Project Presents “Self-rule and Non-violence: Hind Swaraj a Century After”
Public Culture’s Sister Cities Project seeks to identify pathways for the circulation and production of knowledge in the Global South through translation, electronic publication, and workshops. Convened by Faisal Devji and Ritu Birla, the Hind Swaraj initiative has identified three cities over the course of a year and a half for conversations designed to rethink Gandhi’s critique of modernity. These include:
- Johannesburg, August 16-18, 2009: "A Transnational History"
- Mumbai, December 17-19, 2009: "Imagining the Public Life of Nonviolence"
- New York, May 2010: "The Afterlives of Nonviolence: Ethical Principles and Political Consequences"
The Sister Cities Project is undertaken by the Society for Transnational Cultural Studies.
REMINDER: The Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, University of the Witwatersrand, July 5–15, 2009
Founded in 2008 as a place for experimenting with theory from the perspective of a Global South, the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism next month hosts “Rethinking the Political Under Late Capitalism,” a creative and critical event at the intersection of theory, politics, and aesthetics. The 2009 session will bring together a range of top scholars, artists, and activists including frequent Public Culture contributors Achille Mbembe, Jean and John Comaroff, Ackbar Abbas, and Sarah Nuttall. This summer’s program will span ten intensive days of lectures, seminars, public events, exhibitions, and performances, and include explorations of Afrometropolitan Johannesburg. The application deadlines for presenters has passed, but everyone is invited to attend. More information can be found here.
Release of Spring 2009 Issue
Just out this month, Public Culture 21.2 can be considered an untimely intervention in the best sense. In its pages today’s readers can find close cultural studies of the market by Caitlin Zaloom and Shameem Black; Daniel Monterescu’s critique of ethnogentrification in Jaffa, Israel; Gyanendra Pandey’s inquiry into how middle classes are raced; an argument for the contemporary valence of realism by Beatriz Jaguaribe; and more…
Table of Contents
- Editor’s Letter
- Claudio Lomnitz
DOXA AT LARGE
- Hijacked by Realism
- Beatriz Jaguaribe
- The Violence of the Real: A Conversation with Rogério Reis
- Beatriz Jaguaribe
AFFECTING THE MARKET
- How to Read the Future: The Yield Curve, Affect, and Financial Prediction
- Caitlin Zaloom
- Microloans and Micronarratives: Sentiment for a Small World
- Shameem Black
PHOTO-ESSAY
- The Color of Pain
- Andrew Irving
PLOTTING DISTINCTION AND EXCLUSION
- Can There Be a Subaltern Middle Class? Notes on African American and Dalit History
- Gyanendra Pandey
- “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp… with… a Whole Lot of Bitches Jumpin’ Ship”: Navigating Black Politics in the Wake of Katrina
- Michael Ralph
- The Wrench and the Ratchet: Cultural Mediation in a Contemporary Liberation Struggle
- Ken Seigneurie
- To Buy or Not to Be: Trespassing the Gated Community
- Daniel Monterescu
We’ll see you on the other side of summer—until then, all the best from everyone at Public Culture!