Wednesday 16 February 2011

Strathclyde Centre for the Study of Working Class Lives conference

The University of Strathclyde now has a Centre for the Study of Working-Class Lives, with a very impressive team of Colm Breathnach, Neil Davidson and Patricia McCafferty. Something like this is badly needed in "these islands" as witness the Irish interest in the Youngstown Center for Working-Class Studies.

They're launching it on Friday March 11th. The programme's as follows:

09.00–09.45 Registration and Coffee

09.45-09.50 Welcome

Professor Jim McDonald (University of Strathclyde)

09.50-10.00 Introduction

Neil Davidson (University of Strathclyde)

10.00-11.15 Session 1: Why a Centre for the Study of Working Class Lives?

Professor Michael Zweig (Stony Brook University)

11.15–11.30 Refreshment Break

11.30–12.45 Session 2: Class, Work and Deindustrialisation

Dr Tim Strangleman (University of Kent)

12.45–13.45 Buffet Lunch

13.45–15.00 Session 3: The Power of Class: Inequalities, Injuries and Actions in the History of Advanced Capitalism

Professor Michael J. Haynes (University of Wolverhampton)

15.00–16.15 Session 4: Panel Discussion

Geographies of Social Class in 21st Century Britain

Professor Danny Dorling (University of Sheffield)

Where is the Working Class? Class Agency and Resistance in British Cities

Dr Andrew Cumbers (University of Glasgow)

16.15–16.30 Refreshment Break

16.30–17.45 Session 5: Representations of the Working Class in Contemporary Art and Culture

Gail Day (University of Leeds) and Steve Edwards (The Open University)

17.45-18.00 Reflections on the Conference

Professor Michael Zweig (Stony Brook University)

18.00–19.00 Wine Reception/Informal discussion


Registration is £40 to academics, free to students and non-academics. Email claire.mcconnell AT strath.ac.uk to book.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

New religion in Ireland

Religion is not simply an individual matter of "changing yourself": it is also one of the ways in which people either maintain or challenge the status quo. Ireland's new religious movements, just published, looks at the many different ways in which people have done this over time. Within Ireland, alternative religions go back far longer than the 1970s, migrant communities develop complex internal structures and feminism exerts all sorts of unexpected influences; abroad, the island stands as a "global homeland" for a wide range of Celtic and pagan religious groups. Reality is suddener and more strange than we sometimes fancy it...