(via Mary Slebodnik, University of Arizona)
CFP: Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium (CLAPS)
The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, November 15-16, 2018
Theme: Power & Resistance in Library Pedagogy
**Registration will be free
This symposium is an effort to expand ongoing discourse surrounding critical pedagogy and higher education within academic libraries. Additionally, we hope to augment conversations on these topics between librarian educators, disciplinary faculty, and other campus instructors. Teaching information literacy is highly collaborative, often sharing space with supporting diversity and instilling awareness of inequality and privilege on our campuses, which allows educators to unpack the neoliberal influences over curriculum and the inner-workings of academia. Thus, by implementing our most effective teaching for learning that embodies the whole student, we explore critical pedagogy as a shared and ongoing conversation. With this symposium, we hope to make critical pedagogy more accessible to all, discussing a range of theory and practice (praxis), in order to have greater discourse.
This conference will include proposal-based sessions, keynotes, and workshops spread across two days. More details coming soon. We invite proposals for symposium sessions in any of the following formats.
- Presentations and/or panels, 50min.
- Facilitated roundtable discussions, 50min.
- Workshops, 50min.
- Lightning talk sessions, 10min. per person/group
The loose theme for this year is Power & Resistance in Library Pedagogy. However, topics within the broader realm of critical pedagogy won’t be excluded. Some suggested topics (expanding from the theme) include the following.
- Praxis: applying pedagogical theory to practice (related to critical theory, Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, feminist pedagogy, etc.)
- Problematizing neutrality in libraries
- Power and “empowerment” in the classroom
- Assessment and critical praxis
- Neoliberalism in higher education
- Criticism of critical pedagogy
- Identity and role of librarians as educators through a critical lens
- Emotional labor of librarianship
- How to engage in effective discourse with power structures when you have little power yourself
Please submit proposals at our Google form by Monday, April 16, with notification by April 30. For background on the first CLAPS in 2016, see http://claps2016.wixsite.com/home. Send questions to Nicole Pagowsky (on behalf of the planning committee) at nfp@email.arizona.edu.