2013 – 14 Conferences

This year, the Thought and Culture Seminar is split into three parts:

Colloquium

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Laurentian University’s Thought and Culture Seminar, we have organized a colloquium around the following theme:

The entrepreneurial university in neoliberal times

Abstract

As an institution firmly embedded in society, the university has always suffered the social, cultural, and political tension of its times. What most characterizes the university of today is perhaps the great influence exerted on it by economic considerations. In fact, we could characterise the university of today—that we call the neoliberal university—by its explicit intension to bend to the demands of the neoliberal economy. This new conception of the university which behaves like a business, is guided, effectively, by the effort to bring forth solutions to the problems posed by this economic system; it carries the values that this economy favours (for example, individualism, efficiency, the technologisation of human action, etc.).

However, has the university not always been at the service of society? Has it not always been at the center of the western project of a rational civilization? What social dimensions seem to be sidelined by the mandate it sets for itself? How does it foresee the synthesis of the over-production of knowledge with which it blissfully engages itself? How does it respond, for example, to the great demands surounding the problem of multiculturalism? How does it adress the problems of poverty, of the equitable distribution of wealth, and issues of social justice?

Schedule

Friday, March 7, 2014
From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Room C-309

Sessions

The Academy’s Sword of Damocles in the Early 21st Century
Dominic Giroux Dominic Giroux
President
Laurentian University
L’Université actuelle, produit sociohistorique d’un processus civilisationnel complexe, controversé et ambigu
Yves Lenoir Yves Lenoir
Commandeur de l’Ordre de la Couronne
Professeur titulaire
Titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada sur l’intervention éducative (CRCIE)
Faculté d’éducation
Université de Sherbrooke
The Decline of the Knowledge Society
Gilles Gagné Gilles Gagné
Professeur titulaire
Département de sociologie
Université Laval

Regular Sessions

All of the regular sessions are held in room C-205 from 4:30 – 6 p.m. To find the room, please click here.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Carl Ratner
Emotions and psychological development as political, civilized, cultural phenomena

 
Carl Ratner
Director
Institute for Cultural Research and Education
California, USA

Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Daniel Dagenais
Reprendre la question du genre au lieu de défaire le genre

 
Daniel Dagenais
Professeur agrégé
Département de sociologie et d’anthropologie
Université Concordia à Montréal

Extra Session

The extra session is held in the Willet Green Miller Centre auditorium from 5 – 7 p.m. To find the room, please click here.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Daniel Dagenais
Le suicide des jeunes: une pathologie du devenir adulte contemporain

 
Daniel Dagenais
Professeur agrégé
Département de sociologie et d’anthropologie
Université Concordia à Montréal