The heterologies blog, while serving a noble purpose as the primary information point for the Crossways programme, has also the potential to unite the Crossways community in more active and more meaningful ways. One of the best ways in which to achieve this goal is essentially to enable the blog to be a point of dialog, essentially the means of conversation between both Crossways students, past and present, and academics.
The creation of a virtual symposium which operates within the blog serves precisely this purpose, and while I have some ideas, the point of the symposium is participation and to that end I would like to invite any suggestions that you, current and previous mundus students might have.
Several key features of the proposed symposium include:
Brevity – individual submissions should not exceed 2000 words, this is for a variety of reasons, Crossways students are generally rather occupied, as are academics, and a shorter length invites a greater level of participation, in so far as it is easier to read and respond to a shorter academic article.
Round table style discussion – the symposium as I would like to propose it would be centred on a specific subject area and consist of a variety of responses and counter responses, a slightly more elaborated academic debate, if you will, that one might be likely to find in a conference. Each submission may respond to one or more of the previous submissions creating a network of academic consideration that is heterogeneous, if not explicitly heterological.
Outside Academic Participation – following discussions with Prof Girard, the symposium would invite academics both within and without the program to both contribute and to evaluate potential submissions in order to ensure that the symposium conforms to the high academic standards that are demanded within the Mundus Crossways program.
One of the key features of such a symposium is precisely the potential pool of participation and of expertise, being a ‘virtual’ symposium there is no question of time limit or of location, all past and present Mundus Crossways students would be invited to participate, along with academics from a variety of locations. Also, nothing the importance of publications in academic life and the difficulty new academics experience in breaking into journal publications, this symposium could offer vital experience and serve as a stepping stone in the creation of an academic career.
The salient point is that while such a symposium has a lot of potential to be both engaging, exciting and useful to current and past students, the success of such a symposium rests on community participation.
To this end, and to enable further organisation of the symposium the question of the topic needs to be addressed. Again, in order to ensure maximum participation the subject in question should be accessible – that is not too domain specific, while nevertheless retaining a level of academic rigor. So, in the comments section of this post, feel free to suggest a topic, or topics, either in the form of a title, or of a quote that would be a point of departure.
The creation of a virtual symposium which operates within the blog serves precisely this purpose, and while I have some ideas, the point of the symposium is participation and to that end I would like to invite any suggestions that you, current and previous mundus students might have.
Several key features of the proposed symposium include:
Brevity – individual submissions should not exceed 2000 words, this is for a variety of reasons, Crossways students are generally rather occupied, as are academics, and a shorter length invites a greater level of participation, in so far as it is easier to read and respond to a shorter academic article.
Round table style discussion – the symposium as I would like to propose it would be centred on a specific subject area and consist of a variety of responses and counter responses, a slightly more elaborated academic debate, if you will, that one might be likely to find in a conference. Each submission may respond to one or more of the previous submissions creating a network of academic consideration that is heterogeneous, if not explicitly heterological.
Outside Academic Participation – following discussions with Prof Girard, the symposium would invite academics both within and without the program to both contribute and to evaluate potential submissions in order to ensure that the symposium conforms to the high academic standards that are demanded within the Mundus Crossways program.
One of the key features of such a symposium is precisely the potential pool of participation and of expertise, being a ‘virtual’ symposium there is no question of time limit or of location, all past and present Mundus Crossways students would be invited to participate, along with academics from a variety of locations. Also, nothing the importance of publications in academic life and the difficulty new academics experience in breaking into journal publications, this symposium could offer vital experience and serve as a stepping stone in the creation of an academic career.
The salient point is that while such a symposium has a lot of potential to be both engaging, exciting and useful to current and past students, the success of such a symposium rests on community participation.
To this end, and to enable further organisation of the symposium the question of the topic needs to be addressed. Again, in order to ensure maximum participation the subject in question should be accessible – that is not too domain specific, while nevertheless retaining a level of academic rigor. So, in the comments section of this post, feel free to suggest a topic, or topics, either in the form of a title, or of a quote that would be a point of departure.
3 comments:
Dear Brendon,
The idea sounds fantastic! While my personal research interests lie on cinema, I understand this is not a very usual topic among the Crossways community. But perhaps Semiotics would be a nice start, as I am aware many Crossways students have studied it in Perpignan. It would be great to hear other ideas and suggestions.
Congratulations for the initiative!
Best wishes,
Roberta
PS- Gender does seem promising as well.
The idea sounds good, especially, as it aims, among other things, at the publication of works.
The choice of the topic which is common to everyone is not so important: it might hinder the students who are not interested from participating. It'd be more desirable to give possible topics for the students to choose from.
Then, the deadline for the submission of papers can be fixed. Once the works are received, the organizers could group them into sections, according to the topic affinities.
Thank you for your attention.
Iryna Sivertsava
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