[GEOG MAJORS] Today at 6pm: “The University in Abolitionist Perspective, 1945-1968” with Nick Mitchell

[Nell Gross]

“The University in Abolitionist Perspective, 1945-1968” with Nick Mitchell
Monday, November 6 @6pm, Communications Building (CMU) 120, UW Seattle

[cid:ii_lom1w8ir0]


Description: “Education, not incarceration,” the saying goes. This talk seeks to complicate the premise on which this statement relies. Mitchell’s aim is to offer an abolitionist approach to university history. Recent abolitionist scholarship has emphasized the dual character of mass institutions in US capitalism: institutions must harness population surpluses so as to leverage labor surpluses. A paradox thus emerges: institutions increasingly central to the organization of labor become so by way of the mass production of nonwork, and of nonworkers. Mitchell argues that it is this function–the mass production and absorption of nonworkers–that education and incarceration have work in common. From this perspective, an essential prequel to the emergence of mass incarceration came in the postwar era of the twentieth century. There, US state makers sought to avert the looming crisis of mass unemployment by way of the mass production of students. And in attending to this moment, the aspiration to fashion mass education as an alternative to mass incarceration faces a challenge: the development of the latter may belong, troublingly, to the historicity of the former.

Nick Mitchell<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/cres.ucsc.edu/faculty/regular-faculty.php?uid=nmitchel__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!grvST5qT1mfxmCjaHAGizwep2rNGxoW9l9J5tVaD04f6H3flAgAMfUe1HGOqpphOwSP9pqgeKALj$> (she/her) works in the Department of Feminist Studies and the Department of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz. As a researcher, Mitchell is principally engaged with the status of higher education in the U.S. as a problem for historical and theoretical inquiry. As a writer, Mitchell aims to make better sense of university life-worlds by developing scales, vocabularies, and categories to reframe and rethink its rhythms and textures.


Event Co-Sponsors: the Minoritarian Performance Research Cluster @ UW Seattle, the UW Bothell Labor Colloquium, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences (UW Bothell), the Program on the Environment @ UW Seattle, the Departments of Geography, GWSS, History, Comparative History of Ideas, the Harry Bridges Labor Center, and the Jackson School of International Studies.

Please contact jmurr at uw.edu<mailto:jmurr at uw.edu> with any questions.

Megan Ybarra
she/her/hers
Associate Professor of Geography
Faculty Coordinator, Sustainability & Environmental Justice Minor initiative
University of Washington
Website: www.meganybarra.com<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.meganybarra.com/__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!mih6M7lxB2VW9b8rqPMxK41HmbBAwgwxSjTH2y44JVKG-4ZAhTnsw_8T4xhm62MMuRbPQLcGXhavUw$>
Office Hours: https://meet.boomerangapp.com/mybarra.uw.edu/15mins<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/meet.boomerangapp.com/mybarra.uw.edu/15mins__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!mih6M7lxB2VW9b8rqPMxK41HmbBAwgwxSjTH2y44JVKG-4ZAhTnsw_8T4xhm62MMuRbPQLcfEKg-Cw$>
Latest publication: Ybarra, M (2023) "Indigenous to where? Homelands and nation (pueblo) in Indigenous Latinx studies.<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/rdcu.be/cZZt7__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!jGyY3sNd6ri1dB5AL6pbOZ2o3nGSbfG-r6QygMMh75hrhNQL50_GV7_XxcUBkSdfb9Qn3VoEole5fNSp_ss8h8dHynQPBufZ$>" Latino Studies 21: 22 - 41.

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