InterPhil: CFA: Summer School on Endangered Theories
__ Call for Applications Theme: Endangered Theories Subtitle: Standing by Critical Race Theory in the Age of Ultraviolence Type: CES Summer School Institution: Centre for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra Location: Coimbra (Portugal) Date: 26.–30.6.2022 Deadline: 15.1.2023 __ As the concerted ideological campaign against Critical Race Theory continues to gain momentum, the summer school Endangered Theories. Standing by Critical Race Theory in the Age of Ultraviolence strives to provide participants with the space and tools necessary to reflect upon the current proliferation of anti-anti racism stances across dramatically different national contexts in conjunction with state failure to halt police violence, migrant criminalisation, imprisonment of racialized minorities and Indigenous people, and the assault against LGBTQI+ rights. The summer school, thus, introduces participants to the following anti-racist theoretical paradigms: anti-colonialism, racial capitalism, abolitionism, intersectionality, and queer settler colonial studies. Besides reflecting the expertise of invited guest speakers, these paradigms will afford prospective participants the opportunity to approach standing debates with new theoretical lenses. Neither abolitionism and queer settler colonial studies, for instance, have yet been employed to examine Fortress Europe and the rapid diffusion of anti-gender sentiments in the aftermath of homonationalism. Nor racial capitalism has been applied to explain the intersectional extraction of value in the age of humanitarian and environmental catastrophes. Lastly, the school will provide participants with a wide array of case-studies (e.g. Portugal, Italy, US, Brasil, UK, Dominican Republic, and Palestine), enriching their understanding of colonial, settler colonial and postcolonial matrices of power. School Format: Face to face, in accordance with Covid-19 restrictions. Guest lecturers will adopt an interactive teaching style, facilitating transversal knowledge exchange between prospective participants and themselves. Guest lecturers will employ the same style for the workshops run in the afternoon to build upon the research experience of prospective participants and help them with the theoretical, methodological, and practical challenges that researchers usually encounter when undertaking anti- racist research work. In the afternoon sessions, guest lecturers will moreover provide feedback on the research work submitted to their attention and presented during the summer school by prospective participants. In the evening sessions, guest lecturers and prospective participants will be given the opportunity to socialise outside the classroom and network with the researchers and post-graduate students of CES. Target participants: Post-graduate students in the social sciences and humanities, political activists and members of NGOs in the field of anti-racism and human rights, school teachers in the fields of sociology, history and geography, journalists, social workers and policymakers. Selection process: Is competitive. Participants will be selected by the School’s co-organisers on the basis of: 1) their application; 2) relevance of their research work; and 3) activism. During the selection of participants, a waiting list will be concurrently created. Prospective participants who want to present either their research or their work have to first apply to the summer school and then contact the organisers to express their interests. In the email, please attach a brief abstract (maximum 250 words), short bio (maximum 150 words), and full name of the speakers and/or artists you would like to engage with your work. On the basis of this information, the organisers will schedule participant presentations and inform them accordingly. Deadlines: Application: January 15, 2023. Communication of Selection Results: February 21, 2023. Submission of Abstracts: May 15, 2023. Submission of full papers: June 14, 2023. Registration: Early Bird Registration (March 30, 2023) Paid staff members: 180 euros. Self-financed/students: 150 euros. Regular Registration (May 15, 2023) Paid staff members: 210 euros. Self-financed/students: 180 euros. The registration fee includes participation in seminars, workshops, keynotes, art talks, and social events, reading materials, coffee-breaks and School’s dinner. The organisers endeavoured to keep the school as accessible as possible. Invited guest lecturers do not receive honoraria. PhD students are encouraged to apply for funding at their institution and present their work at the school. We also encourage prospective participants to apply for the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) Scholarship - People of African Descent to cover their registration and travel expenses (application deadline November 20, 2022). Fee waiver: three registration fee waivers will be
InterPhil: CFA: Summer School on Endangered Theories
__ Call for Papers Theme: Endangered Theories Subtitle: Standing by Critical Race Theory in the Age of Ultra-Violence Type: CES Summer School Institution: Centre for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra Location: Coimbra (Portugal) Date: 18.–22.7.2022 Deadline: 30.4.2022 __ The idea of proposing the summer school ‘Endangered Theories’ stems from three concurrences. The first one has been unfolding worldwide, from the United States to Europe and Australia, right-wingers’ desire to restore a conservative social order has manifested in a concerted attack against what they purport Critical Race Theory (CRT) is. By positing what is defacto a niche of critical legal theory as either a harmful pedagogy for white pupils, or a form of anti-white racism, or, at best, as a highly divisive ideology, a disparate array of enraged right-wing parents, pundits and politicians, have successfully leveraged the latest salvo against anti-racist social movements, Black Lives Matter (BLM) in primis. In the USA, no less than twenty-two states have sought to pass legislation banning or limiting the teaching of race and racism in schools or universities. In Australia, where the attack against CRT was mounted by the same politician who rallied against the teaching of gender in schools, it renewed the legitimacy of the white hegemonic status quo. In France, it has lent a new rationale for state representatives to oppose scrutinizing its national history, political values and identity. In Italy, where the far right and radical right politicians have been rallying against migrants and no-border activists for years, it re-asserted that the ‘nation’ is ‘white and ‘in danger.’ The second occurrence has taken place in Europe, where both the Black Lives Matter movement and racial inequities that the Covid-19 global pandemic brought in sharp relief led to the launch of the Action Plan Against Racism (APAR) in the spring of 2020. As the chair of The European Network Against Racism (ENAR), Karen Taylor, stated in the wake of its launch, APAR constitutes the very first European normative document that ‘explicitly acknowledges the existence of structural, institutional and historical dimensions of racism in Europe’ as well as the necessity of addressing them by adopting a critical race and intersectional approach. Not incidentally, the attacks against CRT are taking place at the same time as anti-racist organisations put renewed pressure on the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to enforce the recommendations of APAR, including involving racial and ethnic minorities in European policymaking, and redressing European national histories of colonialism, enslavement and genocide. The third occurrence has unfolded in Portugal. Following a string of racially motivated crimes that culminated in the murder of Bruno Candé in July 2020, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatović, issued the Memorandum on combating racism and violence against women in Portugal. In this document, Mijatović urged the Portuguese government to ‘acknowledge the legacy of the repressive structures put in place by past colonial policies’ and to identify and correct ‘ingrained racist biases and their present-day ramifications’. Heeding this request, the National Plan Against Racism and Discrimination (NPARD) was launched in 2021 presenting ‘intersectionality’ and deconstruction of ‘stereotypes’ as its guiding principles. Albeit nowhere in the NPARD is clarified how exactly CRT will inform the anti-racist interventions of the state, well-known right-wing pundits have systematically attacked CRT inspired scholarship and activism. Because of these occurrences, CRT has been in the public eye, at the same time, as a dangerous political ideology and as a suitable tool to redress racism. In the first instance, CRT has operated as an empty signifier, by which right-wingers have conflated affirmative actions with multiculturalism, wokeism, identity politics, political correctness, and cancel culture. In the second instance, CRT has worked as an anti-racism tool, by which activists have advanced their demands for social justice. Either way, no comprehensive explanation has been offered about what CRT is, how it distinguishes itself from and/ or relates with other theoretical paradigms concerned with race and racism and, more importantly, if and how it accounts for the various ways in which racialized minorities have been oppressed from country to country in Europe. The summer school ‘Endangered Theories’ addresses these questions through a programme that mixes introductory lectures on relevant theoretical paradigms concerned with the intersections of power relations and social divisions that are structured by race, gender, class, and nationality with lectures that illustrate their application in European nations (e.g.,
