Shannon Jackson

Panel Abstract: The global economic crisis has thrown the entire world for a loop. Yet the problems, contradictions, and even possible ways out of this crisis have perhaps been most clearly dramatized in the state of California. Here the missteps of the private sector aided by the decisions of public leaders have yielded disastrous consequences for public institutions. Educators and students at the ten campus of the University of California, for example, returned to class this fall only to find their operating budgets slashed, their staffs furloughed, and the future of affordable and accessible public education as we know it in serious jeopardy. In this roundtable, members of performance departments from the University of California system will present on the crisis in California and host a conversation on how this moment might offer possibilities for revivifying and strengthening the role of performance in the university.

Rather than privilege the crisis of the UC, we hope the California example can offer a point of entry for a larger conversation on the challenges facing education, particularly as it plays out in performance departments internationally. What might our particular canary in the public education coal mine reveal about the trends forming in the larger world of public and private education? What aspects of the crisis in the UC are ours alone, and what aspects impact universities in other states and nations? What challenges are universities elsewhere facing and how might we learn from one another’s struggles?

Of special concern in this roundtable will be to address how the crisis within education intersects with our practice as scholars, administrators, educators, and artists in the field of Performance Studies. In times of crisis, how can we negotiate our identities not only as researchers OF and WITHIN publics, but the connection between our identity as laborers and members of an academic public as employees and educators.