I work @ The Centre for Cultural Studies (CCS).
2006: CCS incorporates theoretical and practical explorations in technological media and cultural difference in the geo-political context of global capitalism. Our commitment to theory involves enquiries into the most advanced paradigms of cultural thought. Our practical commitment involves us in cultural production and critical engagement with the culture industries. CCS research and graduate study is dedicated to such theoretical and practical investigation.
Update 2012: The Centre for Cultural Studies works by mixing possibly incongruent constituencies – what this means is that we have, for more than ten years, been bringing what may at first seem like incommensurate groups together to debate and research creatively, in teams, workshops and symposia: for example we ran a series of research conferences pairing neuropsychologists and artists together to examine new modes of representing the brain and its functions, innovating the new area of neuro-aesthetics; also we brought both London City and Chinese Finance modellers together with artists to rethink the portrayal of high finance and money; following the same convergence model, in a series of 6 workshops in London, Berlin, Copenhagen and Gothenburg we brought immigration activists and theatre, film, music and medical practitioners together to re-imagine the border. We continue to develop new projects along such lines, most recently historians and the Maritime Museum Greenwich, the Museum of London Docklands and activists in social and housing campaigns along the eastern end of the Thames in London (eg., ‘Proletarianisation and the River’ event for Museum of London Docklands Sept 2013). Our mode of operation is to intersect and interrupt in creative ways the protocols of disciplinarity, so as to inspire new work. This has a successful; track record reflected in our theory-practice research student projects.
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2008: I was asked for a summary of things happening in CCS over the past year or so (our tenth year). Here are the highlights as I see them (please add anything I’ve missed, or links I did not have handy):
As part of our tenth year, Goldsmiths CCS:
- bombed Warsaw with poems – see here;
- with funding from the AHRC Beyond Text program we have challenged the routines of border thinking in CCS workshops in Berlin and soon Copenhagen (here);
- held a lively month long CCS internal debate on new directions in cultural studies/what is CCS – called ‘Attack the Headquarters’ (see here);
- welcomed Professor Stiegler’s appointment as visiting professor [and endured Professor Hutnyk's inaugural lecture 'Pantomime Terror'];
- enjoyed visits from scholars such as Professors Gayatri Spivak, Celeste Olalquiaga, Walter Mignolo;
- saw the launch of a new postgraduate run Cultural Studies ‘Noctournal’ – a magazine a web presence that is fabulous – see “NYX, a Noctournal” – issue three due soon.
- initiated an annual walk across London visiting sites associated with the German theorist and revolutionary thinker Karl Marx, called ‘The Marx Trot’, reaching from Highgate Cemetery to the bars of Tottenham Court Rd (seehere);
- continued research work on economic flows in China (Prof Scott Lash has a major grant for work in China); we welcomed the publication of Jennifer Bajorek’s book ‘Counterfeit Capital: Poetic Labour and Revolutionary Irony’; we continued to be active in a number of social and political issues pertaining to cultural studies (Palestine solidarity, on immigration control and spurious visa restrictions, anti-racism and the G20 police crackdown…);
- ran four MA programs with good enrolments and attracted 13 new PhD students to our doctoral program, and more…. See HERE
Go here for the workplace: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/
Here for my staff page: http://www.gold.ac.uk/cultural-studies/staff/j-hutnyk/
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Update July 2010
In June we hosted a hugely successful kind of double event, taking place in two locations London and Gothenberg, Sweden. The first part was a discussion of race and politics with keynote speakers Professors Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Fred Moten in conversation. Over 300 attended, and the highlight was Gayatri Spivak’s three-hour examination of the 7 pages of Franz Fanon’s work where he discusses the philosopher George F. Hegel – what was stunning about this was a group of scholars consulting texts in three languages: the Hegel in German, the French translation Fanon used, Fanon’s own French text, and the English translations of both Fanon and Hegel. A seminar those there will not forget, or recover from, in a hurry (we are currently transcribing it for a book). The meeting then continued on the theme of Borders at a week long conference as part of the Clandestino Music Festival in Sweden, attended by over a dozen of the Centre’s PhDs, where Professor Spivak was again the keynote, but alongside other attractions such as DJ Watts Riot from Fun-da-mental and the immortal Caribbean sonic dub master Lee Scratch Perry.
This musical turn in the Centre for Cultural Studies may have hinted at new directions, since the Centre’s end of term party – always a hot ticket at Goldsmiths – also featured two bands – the local eccentric pop outfit ‘Diaphragm Failure’ and the Boston based Pakistani Punk band ‘The Kominas’ (famous for tracks like ‘Jihad in Amerikka’ and ‘Suicide Bomb the Gap’). A conference on Piracy and Pirate Radio is just one of the things in the making for the next year.
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update Aug 2011:
