disOrientation Guide: Radical Mapping of Twin Cities Schools

Name of facilitator: Eli Meyerhoff
E-mail: eli.meyerhoff@gmail.com Phone: 763-607-7034
Course description:
Maps have often been utilized to reinforce power hierarchies, but they can also be used as tools for social change and resistance. Looking at the history of the University, we can see it as a battleground between competing political projects, such as civil rights, the inclusion of marginalized voices, organized labor, as well as military and corporate research, imperialism, and neoliberalism. Over the years, although the Universities have expanded they have also become more and more exclusionary and perpetuated class, racial, and other inequalities. Who gets admitted? Who and what gets funded? What kind of research, teaching, community relations, and labor practices are promoted? To what extent can this institution be seen as public and democratic?
In this project we will attempt to map historical changes, power hierarchies, political-economic relationships, and progressive institutions in and around the University of Minnesota, including sites of struggle over access, fair wages, tuition, as well as the compositions of the university’s power structure, public spaces and architecture, and social stratifications of class, gender, and race, among other issues. Our goal in this course is to assemble information that allows us to see today’s changes of the University in historical context. A map of power hierarchies, exclusionary politics, and corporatized education could serve as a tool for today’s and future struggles within and around the university, and introduce people to these struggles. Inspired by the Counter Cartographies Collective at the University of North Carolina, we would like to produce a map, in both physical and online versions. The map would include not only historical facts and visual representations of power, but also existing progressive organization within and outside the campus. For an example of a possible outcome, see UNC’s disOrientation Guide.
This is just a rough outline for the class. What we actually do will be determined collectively by all participants.
[This is a continuation of an exco class begun this summer. Check out our blog to see some of what we've talked about so far, and for helpful readings.]
Class Time: Saturdays, 12:30-2pm
Class Dates: beginning 10/4
Place: in Blegen Hall, room #115, on the west bank of the U of M campus - see map here.
Class size: Minimum ___5______ Maximum ____25_____
What experience do you bring to this class?
- Co-facilitated the “theorizing the University” EXCO class and co-organized the “Rethinking the University” conference.