First, on the weekend right before May Day, the Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture at York and Ryerson Universities is hosting their annual conference, which is going to be almost exclusively about the Occupy Movement this year.
Check it out: http://thecomcult.wordpress.com/intersections-2012/
April 27–29, 2012 at the Ryerson university.
Just to give you a sens of how cool this confrence sounds, here’s the descripton of the first keynote speaker (check the rest out at the website above!)
“Because the Night Belongs to Lovers: Occupying the Time of Precarity
Sarah Sharma, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
While much of Occupy’s political power is rooted in its spatial tactic, the movement’s temporal realities are also key to understanding its complexities. This talk considers those realities, specifically turning to the night: a time when the spatial practice of occupying and the temporality of precarity find each other in a strange embrace. In the dark, new and unheard of demands emerge for the first time. At night, the faultiness of the movement ruptures to the surface in new ways. It is also at night, that those outside the camps, from the police, journalists and the public, fix their gaze upon Occupy. Night also reflects the lived experience of precarity that Occupy and other activists and theorists have long mobilized against. To be precarious means to be unsure, uncertain and exposed to forces beyond one’s control. It means to live and work without a sense of a guaranteed future. As Judith Butler offers, precarity is not just an economic reality, it is a characteristic of the lives of those who “do not qualify as recognizable, readable or grievable. And in this way, precarity is a rubric that brings together women, queers, transgender people, the poor, and the stateless (2009).” To be precarious means to live in something akin to a permanent state of night with no guarantee of dawn. In these darknesses, what is revealed about the conceptual vitality and political possibility of ‘generalized precarity’?”
Yes, it’s very academic, but speaking for myself, I can’t wait to go check it out!
Next is the yearly conference organized by the International Socialists, also at the Ryerson University.
“Marxism 2012 is a three-day political conference of more than 30 talks and panels from May 25-27 at Ryerson University in Toronto.
2011 was a historic year of revolt. There have been revolutions across the Arab world, general strikes in Europe, a massive campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, student strikes in Chile and huge working class fightbacks in Wisconsin and Ohio. The #Occupy movement shook the world, spreading to over 1,700 cities worldwide.
In 2012, the ruling class shows no sign of straying from its austerity agenda, but people are continuing to fight back. From the deepening revolution in Egypt to the Quebec student strike, resistance is challenging the logic of the status quo and posing alternatives to the crisis and cruelty of the capitalist system.
Join the discussion about how to build a better world. Topics include the Arab Spring, the #Occupy movement, rank-and-file rebellion, anti-imperialism, environmental justice, disability rights, anti-oppression and much more.”
For more information, check out : www.marxism2012.com