<div dir="ltr"><div style><font face="arial, sans-serif">Dear Keith and all,</font></div><div style><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style><font face="arial, sans-serif">My apologies for being slow to respond! A series of family events and visitors has kept me from focusing on this. I am enthusiastic about almost all of the topics and themes, but I'll pick a few that would have priority for me:</font></div>
<ul style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><li style="margin-left:15px"> Legacies of the imperial archive in post-colonial history, museums and performance</li><li style="margin-left:15px"> Textual analysis, visual culture and the state in the making of African publics</li>
<li style="margin-left:15px"> The politics of literacy, legibility and expert knowledges in Africa</li><li style="margin-left:15px"> Public spaces, informality and infrastructures in the desegregating city</li><li style="margin-left:15px">
Vernacular literatures in the making of transnational movements and subjects</li></ul><ul style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><li style="font-size:13px;margin-left:15px">The politics of heritage</li><li style="font-size:13px;margin-left:15px">
The cultural politics of performance and media</li></ul><div style><font face="arial, sans-serif">All best,</font></div><div style><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div style><font face="arial, sans-serif">Judy</font></div>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 12:37 PM, Geoff Eley <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ghe@umich.edu" target="_blank">ghe@umich.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Dear all,<div><br></div><div>My apologies for some slowness in being able to respond. I'm currently away in the UK and getting to email only unevenly. Aside from wholeheartedly supporting the general goals and purposes of this terrific collaboration, I'm something of an outsider to the collective conversation given my fields and areas of specialization, and I suspect that I'm on the list because of the accident of being UM History Chair, which is now at an end!</div>
<div><br></div><div>However, I'll be delighted to be involved in the project as it continues to move forward, if you're interested in having me. Among the proposed themes, I can claim a strong set of theoretical and historiographical interests relating to <b>Legacies of the Imperial Archive</b>, <b>Interrogating Neoliberalism</b>, and the <b>Global South as an Idea and Source of Theory</b>. But the one particular theme mentioned in the subsidiary list that connects with what I'm doing, going back now over many years, would be <b>Social History after Edward Thompson</b>. E.g. I've been heavily in demand during the past couple of years for panels and workshops prompted by the 50th anniversary of <i>The Making of the English Working Class</i>, the next of which will be a conference on the subject in November at Urbana-Champaign.</div>
<div><br></div><div>It's really fabulous that the project will be up and running. Thanks and congratulations to all those whose work and ideas helped it to happen!</div><div><br></div><div>All best wishes,</div>
<div><br></div><div>Geoff</div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 5:11 AM, Keith Breckenridge <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:keith@breckenridge.org.za" target="_blank">keith@breckenridge.org.za</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div class="h5"><div dir="ltr"><div>Dear friends,<br><br></div><div>We should now begin to assemble the people, ideas
and projects that will carry this collaboration project for the next five years. Our
proposal is clear about the themes we have in mind, and we had to
adjust theme to meet Mellon's objections, so we should try, very hard,
to stick to them. It might be necessary, and interesting, to set up
subsets within each of these themes, narrow or expand them, but let's
see how far we can get before we do that. <br>
<br><div>To begin with we have in mind workshops in Johannesburg
in our late Summer (timed to coincide with the Michigan Spring Break),
and workshops in Ann Arbor in the Fall, probably in September. (The
exact dates will have to be worked out by the workshop committees). <br>
<br></div>Our first object should be to assemble committees around the
themes we have selected, and to do that the easiest way to begin will be
for people to indicate in which of the themes (at the bottom of this
message) they'd be interested to participate. <br>
<br><div>Please reply to the list (yes, that will generate a bit
of mail) explaining your interests. For many people at both
institutions this will be a useful way to meet potential collaborators.
WISER and the ASC will use those replies to assemble the committees.<br>
</div><div><br>WISER will support the project vigorously throughout,
intellectually and politically, but the committees will be responsible
for at least the following things (and I'm sure that there will be
more):<br>
<br></div>1) Assembling a group of thirty interesting people, including
about a dozen who will fly from one side of the world to the other.
Most of those people, but not all, should come from (or have very close
links with) Wits or Michigan. <br>
<br>2) Chose readings, and works in progress from participants,
to ensure that the workshops produce new kinds of arguments and advance
what we know and think about each of the problems. <br><div><br></div><div>3) Plan for publication of some of the work, ideally as a special edition in one of the journals well matched to the problems. <br>
</div><div><br></div><div>4) Think carefully
through a program of events -- workshops, lectures, exhibitions, visits
-- that will (again) produce new and stronger insights in to each
problem area. <br>
<br></div><div>The proposed themes include:<br></div><ul><li> Legacies of the imperial archive in post-colonial history, museums and performance</li><li> Textual analysis, visual culture and the state in the making of African publics</li>
<li> Interrogating Neoliberalism as idea and explanation</li><li> The politics of literacy, legibility and expert knowledges in Africa</li><li> Narrative, visual forms and biopolitics in the medical humanities</li>
<li> Cultural studies of science and technology in Africa</li><li> Intellectual property and curatorship in the digital humanities</li><li> Public spaces, informality and infrastructures in the desegregating city</li>
<li> Vernacular literatures in the making of transnational movements and subjects</li><li> The Global South as an idea and a source of theory</li></ul><div>In addition, we have six themes mentioned in the proposal which we might reasonably adapt or (ideally) join to the list above.<br>
</div><div><ul><li>The perils and possibilities of the digital humanities in Africa</li><li>Social History after Edward Thompson</li><li>The politics of heritage</li><li> Province and diaspora in African intellectual history</li>
<li>The cultural politics of science and technology</li><li>The cultural politics of performance and media</li></ul></div>Many thanks, Keith<span><font color="#888888"><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr">
<div style="text-align:left">Keith Breckenridge <b><span style="color:rgb(153,0,0)">W I S E R</span></b><span style="color:rgb(102,102,102)"> - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: <a href="tel:%2B27117174272" value="+27117174272" target="_blank">+27117174272</a> | Fax: 0867654213 </span>| <span style="color:rgb(102,102,102)">Web</span>: <font><a href="http://wiser.wits.ac.za" target="_blank">wiser.wits.ac.za</a></font></div>
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<br></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><font style="color:rgb(153,0,0);font-family:garamond,serif" size="1">Geoff Eley<br>Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History<br>
Professor of History and German Studies<br>Chair, Department of History<br>*********************************************<br>Department of History<br>University of Michigan<br>1029 Tisch Hall<br>435 South State Street<br>
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