Cynthia Franklin-- Academic Lives: Memoir, Cultural Theory, & University Today

Spring 2008 Speaker Series
International Cultural Studies Certificate Program

“Academic Lives: Memoir, Cultural Theory, and the University Today”

Cynthia Franklin
Department of English, University of Hawaii at Manoa

In "Academic Lives: Memoir, Cultural Theory, and the University Today," I consider the role that academic memoir can play during a period in which critical dissent is becoming increasingly difficult, both in the academy and in the wider culture. As I consider the role that stories about individual people play in the post-9/11 era, I consider the enormous power that attaches to these personal stories. I begin the paper by analyzing recent visits to the UH campus by Ward Churchill and David Horowitz for the insights they provide into the important role that personal narrative plays in institutionalizing attacks on academic freedom and in implementing other neoconservative agendas. Given the current crisis in the academy and in the wider culture, interventions on both academic and broader playing fields seem not only important, but also necessary. I therefore suggest that academics can bring together memoir and a critical humanism to capitalize on a cultural obsession with individual personalities in order to creatively combat, if not overturn, post-9/11 attempts to eradicate an anti-imperialist politics in the academy and beyond.

Date: Wednesday, April 2nd
Time: 12 pm – 1:20pm
Place: Burns Hall Room 2118

Sponsored by:
The UHM/EWC International Cultural Studies Program
Telephone: 808-944-7593
Fax: 808-944-7070
Office: Burns Hall #2069
Email:culture@hawaii.edu
Website: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~culture

Event Sponsor
International Cultural Studies, Manoa and East-West Center

More Information
Patty Harris, ICS Program Manager, 944-7593, culture@hawaii.edu, www2.hawaii.edu/~culture

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