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It is important to address the key social and cultural theorisations around issues such as freedom, democracy, knowledge and instrumentalism that impact the university and its relationship with and to the arts. This book maps out various ways in which the arts and creative practices are manifest in contemporary university-based adult education work, be it the classroom, in research or in the community. It is divided into three sections that reflect the normative structure or 'three pillars' of the contemporary university: teaching, research and service. The focus is on a programme that stems from the university's mission and commitment to encouraging its graduates to become more engaged citizens, willing to think critically and creatively about issues of global import, social justice and inequality. The Storefront 101 course, a free University of Calgary literature course for 'non-traditional' adult learners, aims to involve students in active dialogic processes of learning and civic and cultural engagement. Using the concept of pop-up galleries, teacher education is discussed. The book contextualises the place and role of the arts in society, adult education, higher education and knowledge creation, and outlines current arts-based theories and methodologies. It provides examples of visual and performing arts practices to critically and creatively see, explore, represent, learn and discover the potential of the human aesthetic dimension in higher education teaching and research. A more holistic and organic approach to lifelong learning is facilitated by a 'knowing-through-doing' approach, which became foregrounded as a defining feature of this project.
Lawrence speaks of in the above quotation. They also reflect the work shared in this volume – Lifelong learning, the arts and community cultural engagement in the contemporary university: international perspectives – by adult educators from North America, Europe and Africa who, within or through their universities, engage with aesthetic pedagogical practices that aim to critically and creatively communicate, teach, make meaning, uncover and involve. We do recognise, however, that these concepts do not necessarily come readily to mind when one thinks of the arts and the
Anti-racist scholar-activism raises urgent questions about the role of contemporary universities and the academics who work within them. As profound socio-racial crises collide with mass anti-racist mobilisations, this book focuses on the praxes of academics working within, and against, their institutions in pursuit of anti-racist social justice.
Amidst a searing critique of the university’s neoliberal and imperial character, Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly situate the university as a contested space, full of contradictions and tensions.
Drawing upon original empirical data, the book considers how anti-racist scholar-activists navigate barriers and backlash in order to leverage the opportunities and resources of the university in service to communities of resistance.
Showing praxes of anti-racist scholar-activism to be complex, diverse, and multifaceted, and paying particular attention to how scholar-activists grapple with their own complicities in the harms perpetrated and perpetuated by higher education institutions, this book is a call to arms for academics who are, or would like to be, committed to social justice.
tensions and leaves you, the reader, with questions around teaching, learning, research, knowledge and community cultural engagement in the contemporary university to explore. Our discussion is not intended to be an exhaustive summary – and we ourselves do not always have the answers to our own questions – but rather to provide a sketchmap of query, reflection and meaning-making that interacts with the contributors’ ideas and endeavours, as well as with past and contemporary aesthetic, adult education, lifelong learning and higher education discourses. 175 Clover
In this broad sweep, Mayo explores dominant European discourses of higher education, in the contexts of different globalisations and neoliberalism, and examines its extension to a specific region. It explores alternatives in thinking and practice including those at the grassroots, also providing a situationally grounded project of university–community engagement. Signposts for further directions for higher education lifelong learning, with a social justice purpose, are provided.
Nationalism has reasserted itself today as the political force of our times, remaking European politics wherever one looks. Britain is no exception, and in the midst of Brexit, it has even become a vanguard of nationalism's confident return to the mainstream. Brexit, in the course of generating a historically unique standard of sociopolitical uncertainty and constitutional intrigue, tore apart the two-party compact that had defined the parameters of political contestation for much of twentieth-century Britain. This book offers a wide-ranging picture of the different theoretical accounts relevant to addressing nationalism. It briefly repudiates the increasingly common attempts to read contemporary politics through the lens of populism. The book explores the assertion of 'muscular liberalism' and civic nationalism. It examines more traditional, conservative appeals to racialised notions of blood, territory, purity and tradition as a means of reclaiming the nation. The book also examines how neoliberalism, through its recourse to discourses of meritocracy, entrepreneurial self and individual will, alongside its exaltation of a 'points-system' approach to the ills of immigration, engineers its own unique rendition of the nationalist crisis. There are a number of important themes through which the process of liberal nationalism can be documented - what Arun Kundnani captured, simply and concisely, as the entrenchment of 'values racism'. These include the 'faux-feminist' demonisation of Muslims.
119 Postscript Rosemary Deem P eter Mayo’s book raises many significant questions about the effects of different types of globalisation under capitalism, especially hegemonic globalisation and what Mayo terms ‘globalisation from below’ on contemporary universities but with attention to sometimes somewhat less examined in educational contexts forms of globalisation such as globalisation of human rights or globalisation of the war on terror. Globalisation is indeed often referred to in contemporary analyses of higher education (King et al., 2013; Nerad and
Titles and entitlements: why ‘University’?55 2 Titles and entitlements: why ‘University’? Imagine having the power, freedom, and responsibility to organize an entire people into some kind of social, political, ethical, and cultural arrangement. Where might you begin? Almost certainly, you would not begin by suggesting that the first thing we would need is an institution like our contemporary University. Plato, in Republic, for example, starts his consideration of civic and social life with a different question, the question of justice. Fairly quickly, however
Orwellian undertone here should alert us to the political dangers of such inflation: it is consistent with an incipiently totalitarian political system, or at the very least with a profoundly authoritarian system and social structure. This, sadly, can describe many contemporary Universities, at least in terms of their internal governance. The older view of a University as a more or less democratic ‘collegium’ of scholars and students has now given way to a position in which ‘the University’ becomes identified as ‘senior management’ within each institution. The scholars
contemporary university, 2 of which we, as academics, are affiliates. Given the importance of such resources in determining the successes or failures of social movements, 3 opportunities for anti-racist scholar-activism lie in this stark contrast. Our access to resources within our institutions and the wider academy, and our orientation towards communities of resistance and anti-racism, make it incumbent upon us to redirect resources out of the university and into communities