[-empyre-] Engineering the University, Week Two : Wellmon and Prutzer

[Prutzer, Edward S]

Thanks for the introduction, Kevin! It’s a fantastic opportunity for our group to discuss some of the themes we’re concerned with on empyre leading up to our upcoming workshop, so I also want to thank empyre for inviting us to do so.

As Kevin mentioned, this week features Chad Wellmon and his thoughts on the month’s broader conversation, specifically in light of his forthcoming book Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University. In the book, Chad contends that the idea of the research university was born out of the perceived information overload of the late Enlightenment. Particularly, to briefly summarize, Organizing Enlightenment investigates disciplinarity both in terms of when it emerged in eighteenth-century Germany as a technology of the Enlightenment and in the present with anxieties of the digital as a perceived threat to the stability of the research university. As an example, he investigates the history of the encyclopedia and traces their rise to a central Enlightenment ideal: that the means for learning should be accessible by all, lessening the stature of scholars with the rise of print. 

Chad’s perspective resonates with our group’s themes on several levels. First, his work pertains to different conceptions surrounding the diversifying applications of academic training. His rightful focus on the historical trajectories of disciplinarity as a technology of knowledge recognizes the evolving nature of how knowledge work is organized within the academy and how that organization gets extended outward. The relationship between society and the academy can then be seen as reciprocal, contrasting popular notions of the university and scholarly work as somehow operating separate from society. 

Relatedly, his work speaks directly to our focus on knowledge infrastructures and how they affect the manner in which universities justify their continued existence. Overall, Chad positions the modern research university as a watchdog over knowledge, one that can continually justify its own existence by reproducing the very conditions in which it thrives. Disciplinarity, then, becomes an organizing principle of the perceived excess of knowledge. Such perceptions of an overabundance of print, books, or links (depending on the historical epoch of analysis) constitute in part the knowledge infrastructure of a given moment.

Given these resonances, the questions I’ll pose to Chad will often reflect the questions that Kevin posted in his broader introduction for our topic here this month. For those following along, of course, feel free to chime in with your own questions for Chad or to comment on the ensuing discussion!

Chad, I want to first ask about the construction of newness within the crises of information that you trace historically. Your section titles for the book (Too Much Print, Too Many Books, Too Many Links) show this: the excess of information is often seen as “new” and as presenting a “new” crisis of legitimacy for the research university when they’re emblematic of long-standing rather than novel issues. After all, one of the big take-home points of the book is its identification of the research university’s ability to continually justify its own existence and reproduce itself amidst such constructed crises. This in itself counters the notions of “newness” that people invest in such moments. So, to set up our discussion, what broader patterns do you see behind the “new” crises universities face in justifying their existence at each of the historical turns in Organizing Enlightenment? I know that Kevin also brought up the notion of the crisis in specific relation to the University of Virginia in his last message, so feel free to tie that in as you see fit too.
________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Hamilton, Kevin [kham at illinois.edu]
Sent: Monday, March 09, 2015 11:45 AM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] Engineering the University, Week Two : Wellmon and Prutzer

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
March on empyre : Engineering the University

WEEK TWO :
Information & Enlightenment: The Roots of the Modern University


GUESTS:

Ned Prutzer
Doctoral candidate, Institute for Communications Research
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Chad Wellmon
Associate Professor of German Studies
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
University of Virginia

A TURN TO HISTORY

Today we're starting our second of four weeks of conversations about the
changing shape of academic labor in research settings. Each week, one of
the grad students in our Seeing Systems
(http://seeingsystems.illinois.edu/) cohort here at Illinois will lead a
conversation with a scholar whose work and path lends some possible
examples, models or theories to reflective engagement or critique of
existing academic structures.

This week we'll be led by Ned Prutzer, a second-year student in the
Communications and Media doctoral program here at the Institute for
Communications Research at Illinois. Ned arrived here via Georgetown
University and University of Maryland, and currently works on locative art
and media, with attention to ideological critique and cultural semiotics.
Among our cohort Ned is the scholar most focussed on New Media Art (a
mainstay of empyre), and so I'm especially glad to see him introduced to
this list. For a taste of his work, you can see his essay "Google
Infrastructure and Geolocative Representation" in last Spring's issue of
Media-N, the Journal of the New Media Caucus.
http://median.newmediacaucus.org/art-infrastructures-hardware/google-infras
tructure-and-geolocative-representation/

Ned invited Chad Wellmon to the conversation this week, whose work our
group first encountered last year, when the first Seeing Systems seminar
read work from his new book, "Organizing Enlightenment: Information
Overload and the Invention of the Modern University" (Johns Hopkins,
2015). Chad's work, about which you'll learn more shortly, brings a
uniquely historical perspective to critical analyses of contemporary
media, with an emphasis on sensation, mediation, and subjectivity. Since
learning about his work I've particularly appreciated his leadership as
editor of The Infernal Machine, a very active and engaged blog component
of The Hedgehog Review.
(http://iasc-culture.org/THR/channels/Infernal_Machine/)

In light of our month's topic, I'll also note for those outside the news
loops of higher education in America that University of Virginia, Chad's
home institution, has been at the center of a few high-profile
controversies within American higher education. Whole new campus regimes
and techniques have recently emerged in response to both the 2012 ouster
of President Teresa Sullivan and 2014's Rolling Stone (later partially
retracted) article on UVa fraternities and rape culture. Certainly many of
us who are following developing transformations in everything from shared
governance to "self-care" and safety are paying attention to UVa's next
steps. Of course that institution is leading in many other ways as well -
not least in the area of interdisciplinary work, through the efforts of
Chad and his colleagues at the IASC but also through great projects like
Beth Nowviskie's Scholars Lab (http://scholarslab.org) or Hepler and
Sherman's Open Grounds (http://opengrounds.virginia.edu/) - but I thought
a little context might serve be worth noting in the interest of
"situatedness."

THE HANDOFF TO NED:

Ned, I'll ask you to lead us off as I did elizaBeth last week. Could you
start us off by telling us what made you think of Chad's work in relation
to our month's theme, and our group's efforts?

Thank you all, and I hope others will feel free to join in, as they did
last week.

Kevin Hamilton

_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu