Where Is Academic Work?

In-person Conference

Friday May 5th, 2023

The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, NY

You know what work is—if you’re

old enough to read this you know what

work is, although you may not do it.

–  Philip Levine, “What Work Is”

The room changes but the work continues. This conference seeks contributions to a day-long process of consensus-building and new ideas around the subject of location in intellectual work in all of its many contexts.

Places of work are physical as well as figurative; the ‘field’ itself is shaped by those in the network. We return to libraries, laboratories, offices and studios, yet the work that takes place also happens elsewhere: on the street, onstage, in government or judicial hearings, in servers and databases, at the genetic and molecular level, between the worlds of institutional and muscle memory. A school of ancient philosophy was founded on walking, or peripatētikos, and in 2020 nearly every classroom in the US was emptied, meanwhile the work continued. We gather in uniform lecture theaters with a fixed schedule, and yet we know that we have some of our best ideas outside of those spaces.

The format for this conference will attempt to build conversation over the course of a single day, where all presentations and discussions will take place in the same room. Proposals for 10 minute informal roundtable papers, or 20 minute panel talks are welcome– please specify when submitting. Full panels will also be considered. Papers should be detailed, accurate, and jargon-free. Paper abstract submissions should be no longer than 250 words, and full panel abstract submissions no longer than 1000 words.

All disciplines warmly welcomed. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Speculations on the origin and future of academic fields

• Dispatches from sites of work:performances, fieldwork, labs, exhibitions, residencies, archives

• Testimony on technology & teaching: efficiency, surveillance & autonomy

• Architectures of the academy: what are college buildings for?

• Opportunity and precarity in work outside higher education

• Tenure: cultivated leisure with a lifetime of bureaucracy.

• The characteristics or qualities that make academic work academic

Deadline for submission: February 20, 2023

Please send all submissions to whereisacademicwork@gmail.com