RIW Proposal (what we imagine)
How can academics contribute to abolitionist theory and practice? How does abolitionism present as a politics in activist work, in scholarly work, or in practical/service work? What does it mean for one’s work to be anti-carceral, and is that the same thing as being “an abolitionist”? What makes Black feminist work foundational to the theories and ideas behind anti-carceral and abolitionist thought? Why is it important to fight for and theorize the absence of something rather than conceptualizing its replacement?
These are some of the questions that we wish to explore in the Abolitionist Praxis Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop. This workshop aims to center praxis by considering the full cycle of action, reflexivity, and theory through interdisciplinary readings in Black feminist thought, radical education, histories of the new left and labor movements, political theories of racial capitalism, and contemporary narratives of abolitionist activism.
The goal of this workshop is to enable emerging scholars to incorporate theories and politics of abolitionist and anti-carceral thought into their ongoing work. This goal is primarily an activist one, and secondarily a scholarly one. We believe that scholarship should always aim to be publicly accessible and relevant to contemporary grassroots struggles. As academics, our contribution to social movements can be in the development of rigorous theoretical and empirical work that bolsters the legitimacy and credibility of movements. Critique is also a powerful tool central to academic and intellectual pursuits: In this workshop we will interrogate the political motivations of self-proclaimed “objective” or “apolitical” scholarship and discuss how and why all work not only has embedded politics, but also subscribes to theories and values, regardless of any open acknowledgement of those values.
In its inaugural year, the Abolitionist Praxis RIW was run by graduate students in the Social Work and Social Sciences joint program. This year, it will be run by graduate students in Higher Education, Anthropology, & Social Work. As such, the workshop will tend to focus on issues pertaining to various forms practice, including the ways education, anthropology, and social work engages with carceral logics that discipline, punish, contain, and control communities in lieu of offering resources and services based in frameworks of care. We invite and encourage graduate students from all disciplines to attend.
Our workshop will meet four (4) times each semester during the 2024-25 academic year. At each session, we will be discussing a single text, typically a full-length manuscript. See our schedule for more information!
Interested in joining? Fill out this form to be included in emails about meetings!
Literature!
We will post links to the works we are reading, as well as other suggestions of pertinent lit that we gather throughout our time together, here!