Carceral Cultures Conference 2018

Since its inaugural conference at McMaster University in 2003, The Canadian Association of Cultural Studies has established itself as a critical hub for the interdisciplinary study of culture in Canada and beyond. From its inception, the association has striven to bring together scholars, community-based activists and cultural producers to cultivate their areas of practice and scholarship, interrogate cultural practices, and engage politically. This year’s meeting amply addresses the association’s commitment to scholarship, cultural production and political practice in support of intersectional critiques of the effects of racial capitalism, white settler-state colonialism, and dispossession. The response to this year’s conference has been overwhelming; we are thrilled to be welcoming twice the number of delegates that we had anticipated.

The 2017–2018 on-site organizing committee adopted the theme of carceral cultures as a way to focus attention on the global lockdown that is steadily taking place against social and political movements that challenge land dispossession of Indigenous communities, the ever-expanding mass incarceration of Black and and Indigenous communities across North America, and the increased policing and surveillance of marginalized communities. Cultural studies has led the way in the interdisciplinary study of the dynamics of power in all facets of social, political and economic life. By bringing together the concepts of ‘carcerality’ and ‘culture’ we hope to engage in a conversation that has been led by many activist communities and scholar-activists in response to an increasing assault on the day to day lives of people particularly affected by poverty, racialization, colonialism, and dispossession in order to critically examine the expansion of state power over marginalized communities.

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