Bridging the Ivory Tower and the Streets: Academia and Activism in Times of Crisis Ordinariness

The colloquium of Prof. Klaus Benesch is pleased to announce a new iteration of its annual workshop to take place June 8-10, 2023 at Ca’ Foscari University and Venice International University.

Titled “Bridging the Ivory Tower and the Streets: Academia and Activism in Times of Crisis Ordinariness,” the workshop takes Noam Chomsky’s seminal 1967 essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” as a starting point and seeks to interrogate the relationship between academics and activism as well as the particular relevance of the resulting questions to American Studies and the humanities at large.

Within the current international political, economic, social, and environmental climate, Chomsky’s questions have lost nothing of their urgency: Which kind of “intellectuals” are we? Are we “responsible” in upholding current systems of power, or do we rather become “wild men in the wings”? Contrarily, scholars have also argued that scholar-activism undermines academia’s credibility. If “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” as Audre Lorde famously stipulated, can we as academics engage in dismantling work from our privileged position within the ivory tower at all? And if so, how?

We are thrilled to be joined by our guest speakers Burcu Toğral Koca (Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION), Maryna Shevtsova (University of Ljubljana), and Michael Wutz (Weber State University). Presentations will further be held by faculty and students from the Amerika-Institute, members of Klaus Benesch’s colloquium, and students from Ca’ Foscari University. We sincerely thank Prof. Simone Francescato and Prof. Mena Mitrano from Ca’ Foscari University for co-organizing and for their continued support in making this workshop possible.

For more information, please contact Steph Berens at berens@amerikanistik.uni-muenchen.de and Carole Martin at carole.martin@amerikanistik.uni-muenchen.de.