Critical Genealogies Workshop Held at University of Utah

Over the weekend of September 15, communication, media studies, political science and philosophy scholars gathered at the Tanner Humanities Center for the annual Critical Genealogies Workshop. Communication Associate Professor Robert W. Gehl was the local host.

The scholarship at the 2017 CGW included a wide range of topics, including maroon counterpublics and colonial newspapers, human capital theory, Gloria Anzaldúa's reading of Nietzsche, designerly thinking and communication in the U.S. Army, Deleuze and Foucault, the implementation of birth certificates, OPSEC on the Dark Web, the rise of individualism, the role of curiosity in disability studies, Clostridium Dificile, how to speak truth as a philosopher, and methods of theoretical inquiry.

While these topics vary wildly, they were all tied together by the CGW's mission to of elaborating Foucauldian genealogy as a method. Foucault's genealogical method that pays a lot of attention to changes and ruptures in both how we talk about the world as well as our practices as we live in it. The CGW workshop is a collaborative environment to help scholars engage with this method. Senior faculty, junior faculty, and PhD students all offered each other feedback on each other's papers.

The CGW was sponsored through generous grants from Communication Institute and the Tanner Humanities Center. For more information, see criticalgenealogies.weebly.com.