From keith at breckenridge.org.za Fri Nov 1 07:56:37 2013 From: keith at breckenridge.org.za (Keith Breckenridge) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 07:56:37 +0200 Subject: [Sugarman] November 21, 12:00 Planning Meeting at WISER In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear colleagues, The Doodle poll suggests that the best time for a meeting is Thursday November 21 at Noon. I hope to see many of the Joburg people then. Yours, Keith -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131101/83e9795f/attachment.html From jawenzel at umich.edu Fri Nov 1 18:32:19 2013 From: jawenzel at umich.edu (Jennifer Wenzel) Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 12:32:19 -0400 Subject: [Sugarman] Summary of Ann Arbor meeting Message-ID: Hi, Hope you all have a great meeting in Joburg. Is there a summary of the outcome of the Ann Arbor meeting last month? Or a link to a recording of the conversation? Many thanks, Jennifer -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131101/c5b9d35b/attachment.html From keith at breckenridge.org.za Sat Nov 2 11:45:50 2013 From: keith at breckenridge.org.za (Keith Breckenridge) Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 11:45:50 +0200 Subject: [Sugarman] dates Message-ID: This message is primarily for the Wits people (as ever including Stephen and Nafisa). (I know that I need to post a summary of the meeting in Ann Arbor -- I'll get to that next). We've agreed that the first workshops will be held in Johannesburg, and I hope also Acornhoek, *between May 5 and 21* next year. We need, also, to narrow down a good time for the return match to be held in Ann Arbor (where football makes almost all other activities very complicated in the Fall term). The theme for this second session is around the Digital Humanities, and it will be hosted by Danny Herwitz and Derek Peterson. I would like to propose that we do it for two weeks after October 27 before it gets very cold, and after teaching ends here. If you have objections to those dates, please let's hear them. Many thanks, k -- Keith Breckenridge *W I S E R* - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131102/96f09628/attachment.html From keith at breckenridge.org.za Tue Nov 5 13:41:36 2013 From: keith at breckenridge.org.za (Keith Breckenridge) Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 13:41:36 +0200 Subject: [Sugarman] Report on Oct 8 Meeting in Ann Arbor Message-ID: The meeting was held in Tisch Hall, in the History Department Seminar Room. I did not take a register, but the meeting was attended by about a dozen people from several disciplines. Originally I had intended to take careful notes but I was very distracted by the discussion so this account may be missing something important. Please do remind me if that's the case. We began with short introductions and then moved quickly on to the question of the dates for the first meeting in South Africa. *We agreed that May 5 to May 19 would work.* Some people were surprised -- and a little concerned -- at the length of time involved in these workshops. Future workshop organisers may need to mix-up the events, locations and people in the workshops. All those present were keen to attend the first workshop. There was a widely expressed worry that the problem -- The Global South as a Source of Theory -- was very close to the Comaroffs' existing scholarship -- Writing Theory from the South -- and that *the topic should be broadened and problematized*. *Martin Murray and Anne Pitcher volunteered to be the Michigan organisers of the workshop. They will work with Gabrielle Hecht, Keith Breckenridge and Achille Mbembe to assemble a bibliography and a program of events.* We agreed that a significant part of the first workshop should be focused on intellectual biographies of the participants using short written pieces. These *biographies and research agenda will be posted to a web site (Keith will do this off the WISER web site)*. We agreed that the program should be experimental and mindful of the fact that two weeks is a long time for concentrated academic work. We agreed that it would be good to allow generous time for writing and collaboration activities, and that some time at Wits Rural would be useful. There was general agreement to make the next workshop -- in Ann Arbor -- on the *Digital Humanities in the US Fall of 2014. Derek Peterson and Danny Herwitz agreed to coordinate from the UM side. * There was considerable discussion of the difficulties of securing accommodation during the football season in Ann Arbor. Danny memorably observing that the US has football but no government. Devon kept us all attentive to the importance of nailing dates down so that we can nail housing down. If I've forgotten anything simply reply to the list with your correction. Many thanks, Keith -- Keith Breckenridge *W I S E R* - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131105/91f62922/attachment-0001.html From keith at breckenridge.org.za Mon Nov 18 11:26:04 2013 From: keith at breckenridge.org.za (Keith Breckenridge) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 11:26:04 +0200 Subject: [Sugarman] November 21, 12:00 Planning Meeting at WISER In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Just a reminder of the meeting at WISER on Thursday this week (November 21) at noon, in the WISER seminar room. This is to report on the Michigan meetings in October, discuss the arrangements for the first workshop next year and begin planning for the long term. Thanks, k On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 7:56 AM, Keith Breckenridge < keith at breckenridge.org.za> wrote: > Dear colleagues, > > The Doodle poll suggests that the best time for a meeting is Thursday > November 21 at Noon. I hope to see many of the Joburg people then. > > Yours, Keith > -- Keith Breckenridge *W I S E R* - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131118/3cddfd5b/attachment.html From keith at breckenridge.org.za Thu Nov 21 10:59:59 2013 From: keith at breckenridge.org.za (Keith Breckenridge) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 10:59:59 +0200 Subject: [Sugarman] Reminder: Wits Meeting Message-ID: Dear colleagues, This is reminder that there will be a meeting at WISER at noon today to discuss the first round of workshops. Thanks, k -- Keith Breckenridge *W I S E R* - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131121/69cef8b5/attachment.html From keith at breckenridge.org.za Thu Nov 21 14:36:16 2013 From: keith at breckenridge.org.za (Keith Breckenridge) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 14:36:16 +0200 Subject: [Sugarman] Minutes of Wits Meeting : 21 November 2013 Message-ID: The meeting was held at WISER between 12 and 1pm; about a dozen people attended. We discussed the arrangements for the overall project and the specific plans that emerged from the Michigan meeting (most of which are explained in my earlier email.) We reviewed the topics covered by the proposal, and there was general agreement that the themes were wide ranging and usefully interwoven. (The proposal is available here: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/2013-October/000055.html) Chris Lee, Dilip Menon and Eric Worby agreed to be co-opted on to the organising committee for the first workshop on producing theory from the South. Their involvements will differ -- some purely bibliographical, others more administrative on the Wits side. Laura Phillips was also co-opted to assist in linking this collaboration with other institutions and people. In the open discussion, Dilip Menon expressed an interest in exploring the intellectual ground that isn't well investigated by the different fields of Area Studies, looking for gaps between African Studies and South Asian Studies. He has a particular interest in pushing our scholarly enquiry beyond the short temporal frame provided by the colonial and the post-colonial. Mehita Iqani expressed a strong interest in the "interrogating neo-liberalism" theme, and pointed out that there is an interesting body of work in Media Studies on this issue (I forget the journal you had in mInd, Mehita, please remind me). Eric Worby is keen to involve Wits Post-Grads in the Humanities in the events of the workshop, and we agreed that he should be involved in the programming committee. And there was widespread agreement -- from Catherine Burns, Nafisa Essop Sheik, Dilip Menon -- that the proposal allows us to think very broadly about participants, in South Africa, the US and elsewhere. I will send another email pointing people to the online archives of this list (which already has many useful resources) and encouraging people on both sides of the collaboration to invite people who may have an interest in the problems we will be pursuing. If I've missed something important, please let me know. Keith -- Keith Breckenridge *W I S E R* - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131121/dee2ba49/attachment.html From keith at breckenridge.org.za Thu Nov 21 14:47:45 2013 From: keith at breckenridge.org.za (Keith Breckenridge) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 14:47:45 +0200 Subject: [Sugarman] Archives and Participants Message-ID: I won't have time until early next year to put together a web site for this project, so in the meantime I want to remind people that the archives of this list contains many useful documents. The list archives is at http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/ You can see also the full list of the current participants at http://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/roster/sugarman Please do take a minute to think about other people who should be included. This is especially the case on the Michigan side where we are keen to include people who are not Africanists. Thanks, k -- Keith Breckenridge *W I S E R* - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131121/7e97d66c/attachment.html From Mehita.Iqani at wits.ac.za Thu Nov 21 14:56:00 2013 From: Mehita.Iqani at wits.ac.za (Mehita Iqani) Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 12:56:00 +0000 Subject: [Sugarman] Minutes of Wits Meeting : 21 November 2013 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks to Keith for the summary and to everyone for the meeting earlier. My two-cents: I work on "consumer culture and the media" and would be keen to get involved in the "interrogating neoliberalism" theme from that perspective. The journal I mentioned is 'Consumption, Markets & Culture', which is an interdisciplinary, not a media studies, journal. I've already discussed with the editor a potential special issue on media and consumption in/and the global south, so there is some possibility for dovetailing Sugarman activities into that possibility later on. Definitely not next year though, I think 2015 would be more realistic. I also mentioned that there might be an opportunity to dovetail a workshop (again, in 2015?) on the Neoliberalism theme with work done by the Critical Research in Consumer Culture network, which held a South-South Consumption Studies Workshop this year at Wits (and there might be a follow up in Sao Paulo in 2014). All the best Mehita From: Keith Breckenridge [mailto:keith at breckenridge.org.za] Sent: 21 November 2013 02:36 PM To: sugarman at lists.wits.ac.za Subject: [Sugarman] Minutes of Wits Meeting : 21 November 2013 The meeting was held at WISER between 12 and 1pm; about a dozen people attended. We discussed the arrangements for the overall project and the specific plans that emerged from the Michigan meeting (most of which are explained in my earlier email.) We reviewed the topics covered by the proposal, and there was general agreement that the themes were wide ranging and usefully interwoven. (The proposal is available here: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/2013-October/000055.html) Chris Lee, Dilip Menon and Eric Worby agreed to be co-opted on to the organising committee for the first workshop on producing theory from the South. Their involvements will differ -- some purely bibliographical, others more administrative on the Wits side. Laura Phillips was also co-opted to assist in linking this collaboration with other institutions and people. In the open discussion, Dilip Menon expressed an interest in exploring the intellectual ground that isn't well investigated by the different fields of Area Studies, looking for gaps between African Studies and South Asian Studies. He has a particular interest in pushing our scholarly enquiry beyond the short temporal frame provided by the colonial and the post-colonial. Mehita Iqani expressed a strong interest in the "interrogating neo-liberalism" theme, and pointed out that there is an interesting body of work in Media Studies on this issue (I forget the journal you had in mInd, Mehita, please remind me). Eric Worby is keen to involve Wits Post-Grads in the Humanities in the events of the workshop, and we agreed that he should be involved in the programming committee. And there was widespread agreement -- from Catherine Burns, Nafisa Essop Sheik, Dilip Menon -- that the proposal allows us to think very broadly about participants, in South Africa, the US and elsewhere. I will send another email pointing people to the online archives of this list (which already has many useful resources) and encouraging people on both sides of the collaboration to invite people who may have an interest in the problems we will be pursuing. If I've missed something important, please let me know. Keith -- Keith Breckenridge W I S E R - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131121/604fbbf5/attachment-0001.html From keith at breckenridge.org.za Mon Nov 25 09:13:20 2013 From: keith at breckenridge.org.za (Keith Breckenridge) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 09:13:20 +0200 Subject: [Sugarman] Workshop 2 in Ann Arbor Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Devon reminds me that we need to fix the dates for the second workshop, which will be held in Ann Arbor in the Fall. The theme for this session will be on the digital humanities broadly conceived, and on the Michigan side it will be coordinated by Danny Herwitz and Derek Peterson. We still need to assemble a Wits team for this, but I don't think that it will be difficult to do that. Given the constraints of teaching and accommodation the dates that seem to make the most sense would be for the two weeks between *October 23 and November 7*. Please let me know if there are insurmountable obstacles to those dates. Many thanks, keith -- Keith Breckenridge *W I S E R* - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131125/47d8353f/attachment.html From Raimi.Gbadamosi at wits.ac.za Mon Nov 25 12:37:31 2013 From: Raimi.Gbadamosi at wits.ac.za (Raimi Gbadamosi) Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 10:37:31 +0000 Subject: [Sugarman] Workshop 2 in Ann Arbor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Kieth, This is going to be in the middle of exams for most people. Can it be done earlier or later? Raimi @RGb Prof Raimi Gbadamosi President Academic Staff Association of Wits University (ASAWU) Wits School of Arts Johannesburg, South Africa 0798 488 351 On 25 Nov 2013, at 08:13, "Keith Breckenridge" > wrote: Dear colleagues, Devon reminds me that we need to fix the dates for the second workshop, which will be held in Ann Arbor in the Fall. The theme for this session will be on the digital humanities broadly conceived, and on the Michigan side it will be coordinated by Danny Herwitz and Derek Peterson. We still need to assemble a Wits team for this, but I don't think that it will be difficult to do that. Given the constraints of teaching and accommodation the dates that seem to make the most sense would be for the two weeks between October 23 and November 7. Please let me know if there are insurmountable obstacles to those dates. Many thanks, keith -- Keith Breckenridge W I S E R - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272 | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za _______________________________________________ Sugarman mailing list Sugarman at lists.wits.ac.za http://lists.wits.ac.za/mailman/listinfo/sugarman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wits.ac.za/pipermail/sugarman/attachments/20131125/7a607e92/attachment.html