ICS Seminar Series

This is the second week in which the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney is focusing on discussions of the social and cultural effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the spirit of thinking in common attempts to situate the virus, to subordinate it to analytical grids and curves, to discern what COVID-19 is ‘trying to tell us’ and in the spirit of thinking in common, the ICS discussion this week invites us to collectively deliberate on the ideas presented in three chosen readings, all of which mobilise a range of provocative arguments addressing the logic of social responses to other pandemics in history; questions of control and their very real devastations of already-vulnerable lives and livelihoods, and how governments are beginning to act in ways that contradict the neoliberal crisis management strategies arresting the ensuing global financial crisis.

Please join us on Zoom at 11.30am on April 16 to continue this conversation. After opening statements from the Chair, participants will be distributed into smaller break out groups for roughly 30 minutes to discuss (one or all of) these selected readings. Members of the Seminar Committee will act as small group discussion facilitators. We will reconvene into a plenary discussion for the last 25 minutes to consider how the emergence and impacts of the coronavirus intersect other pressing crises that currently wrack our delicate and diverse worlds.

For links to the readings that will be discussed, please visit: https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/events/ics_seminar_series/