{"id":932,"date":"2020-02-29T21:39:42","date_gmt":"2020-02-29T21:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/englitpostgrad\/?p=932"},"modified":"2020-04-22T08:20:08","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T07:20:08","slug":"ctrg-teach-out-sessions-march-3rd-and-march-10th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/englitpostgrad\/2020\/02\/29\/ctrg-teach-out-sessions-march-3rd-and-march-10th\/","title":{"rendered":"CTRG Teach Out Sessions (March 3rd, and March 10th)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In support of the UCU Industrial Action<\/a>, we have rearranged two of our forthcoming sessions as Teach-Outs. This means that these sessions will now be held in different locations to what was previously advertised.<\/p>\n

Non-Places, Simulacra and Simulation (March 3rd, The Bristol Pear)<\/h3>\n

The first of our sessions will follow a break-out format<\/strong>, and will focus on extracts from Marc Aug\u00e9’s Non-Places<\/em>, alongside Jean Baudrillard’s writing on Disneyland and the Watergate Scandal in Simulacra and Simulation. <\/em> In Non-Places<\/em>, Marc Aug\u00e9 considers spaces symptomatic of modernity; locations where we spend large portions of our time, but with only a partial awareness of their affects, such as: supermarkets, shopping centres, motorways, airports, and hotels. In the second work, and in slight contrast to the first, Baudrillard reads Disneyland as the “real” America. That is to say as a sort of fantasy waste-plant that allows the rest of America (explicitly Los Angeles) to present itself as if it were the “real” America, when it is no less imaginary than Disneyland itself.<\/p>\n

There will be no preparatory reading for this session. Instead, a handout will be provided and we invite participants to think about their own encounters with Non-Places. As this is a strike themed teach-out, we are particularly interested in considering University space as both a non-place, and an environment that acts as a microcosm for the “reality” of the workspace, and the “outer world”. There is also room for wider discussion, which may be instigated through the relation Baudrillard’s writing has to recent Tweets made by Donald Trump about the Russian interference with the Democratic Primaries.<\/p>\n