Convenors:

Peer Zumbansen, Director CURL, Osgoode Hall Law School
Academic Director, CURL: Gregory Smith, Osgoode Hall
Concept and Program: Peer Zumbansen & Gregory Smith

The Reading Laboratory is the regular research seminar for the Critical Research Laboratory at York University. It brings together researchers from different departments in and outside of York focusing on urban studies, media theory and globalization. The Reading Lab will discuss seminal readings in the methodology and theory of urban studies at the intersection of sociology, history, geography, law and media studies. At various seminar meetings, guest researchers and artists will be present to introduce their work. The Reading Lab schedule beginning in October 2009 will be announced shortly and will take place in the Computer Methods Building on the Keele Campus –

Computer Methods Building. Suite 208, 4850 Keele Street

Participation in the Reading Lab is limited: to sign-up, write to gregorysmith@osgoode.yorku.ca and state your departmental affiliation, year of study and/or areas of teaching and your currently related project(s).

FALL 2009 TIMETABLE COMING SOON!

Motivation:
Akin to the way that cities have traditionally functioned both spatially and socially as the convergence of independent trajectories (be it the junction of trading routes or cultural communities), the city facilitates and inspires a convergence of different disciplines to exchange and cross pollinate.  Mirroring the complexity of intersections created and made possible by the city, the starting point of this reading group is to bring together researchers from a wide variety of disciplines – geography, law, film, media studies, political science, sociology – and provide a space for productive exchange.

Central to the theme of interdisciplinary exchange is the notion of comparison and collaboration.  When engaging a topic from different disciplinary perspectives, the exposure to different approaches and methodologies can reinforce the strengths and differences between these approaches, and yet also offers the possibility of new permutations through the blending and sharing of knowledge, and the creation of something more substantial and significant to each perspective. The reading lab therefore aims to foster the simultaneous process of comparison and collaboration, strengthening each perspective while also opening up the space for something new.

Finally, because the city is such a complex topic of study, embodying intricate and overlapping tensions and processes, there is an express recognition that no single medium can adequately investigate, capture, or communicate these complexities – for example, how can one research urban decay in Detroit without watching Robocop, how can one fully understand the social effects of post-industrial decline in Manchester without listening to New Order, and finally how can one fully appreciate urban poverty in Victorian London without reading Dickens? This recognition underpins the framework of the reading lab and is reflected in both the approach to the course, where material and content will is collected and presented in a number of different media, and also to the output that the course wishes to advance, sewing the seeds for future collaboration and research in variety of text-based and visual-based media.