Joanna Picciotto is Associate Professor of
English at the University of California, Berkeley.
She is the Local Host for SCRC 2023.
For our first in-person meeting in three years, the South Central Renaissance Conference is heading west! We will convene at Berkeley’s International House at the end of April.
After years of practice, we’ve become accustomed to continual disruption as the new normal, so it’s only fitting that the University of California is still reeling from the largest academic strike in U.S. history, one of many such strikes across the country. The strike’s resolution has in fact resolved little. The agreement touted by union leaders as a historic win was rejected by many of the rank and file, and lines are already being drawn for the next round of negotiations in 2024.
The upsurge of labor militancy in higher education is a response to the casualization of academic work. It is powerful evidence that the attack on tenured lines across the humanities has not eroded the commitment to a scholarly life, or a belief in its intrinsic worth. In many cases, it has strengthened both.
As we’re all aware, the upsurge of labor militancy in higher education is a response to the casualization of academic work. It is powerful evidence that the attack on tenured lines across the humanities has not eroded the commitment to a scholarly life, or a belief in its intrinsic worth. In many cases, it has strengthened both.
Many of us have been doing more with less for a long time. Making the trip to come together in person, to resume arguments and collaborations and enter into new ones, will give us a chance to remind ourselves and each other why we bother.
Katie Kadue, a former officer of the Andrew Marvell Society, recently observed in the Chronicle that the conversations sustained by these small gatherings, at their best, constitute “a shared world that puts everything else in temporary suspension.” These utopian conditions for collective intellection are ephemeral, but their fruits can last. As always, there will be a series of convivial gatherings on a more intimate scale than the mega-conferences can provide. I hope you will join us!
— Joanna Picciotto
