The Second Annual Radical Imagination Conference is now accepting applications until December 5, 2018.
Conference location is Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon
“Healing and Collective Transformation”
We strive to challenge the standard model of an academic conference, which often mimics rigid teaching styles with a “professional” lecturer speaking at a passive audience. Instead, we invite participants to create a common space for what we call the “radical imagination.” We wish to promote skill-shares and workshops, and go beyond such one-off activities by exploring possibilities for a revolutionary transformation of everything.
Opening Space for the Radical Imagination invites us to engage in a profound critique of what seems obvious (radical = that goes to the roots of something) and to explore alternative ways of living together – producing, loving, shaping spaces and time, inhabiting the land, working, using, struggling. It is an appeal to decolonize social relations and the dominant imaginaries that justify oppression and injustice. Radical Imagination is not just about dreaming alternative futures. It lures us into embodying alternatives in practices, actions, and thinking.
We are a group of professors, students, and community organizers from Oregon State University and the community of Corvallis, OR, who are dedicated to creating, facilitating, and protecting spaces that nurture the power of imagining alternatives. We imagine this conference to be an opportunity for people to begin lasting relationships with one another. To enable this, we will be making food together, dancing, singing, and hosting fun activities throughout the weekend while also holding workshops, presentations, and discussions on using our radical imagination for organizing toward social justice.
Presentation panels, workshops, art interventions, and group discussions may touch on but are not limited to the following topics and actions (NOTE: We will be limiting the number of lectures/panels given at this conference as these are readily available wherever a university is located):
Networking techniques
Theories, strategies, and ideologies behind social movements
Connecting theory and practice
Direct Action (thoughts and workshops) (theory and practice)
Practical Skills
Anti-Imperialism/Anti-War
Autonomous Communities
Class
Anti-Racism
Immigrant Rights
Indigenous Rights
Globalization and Neoliberalism
Gentrification and Housing
Labor Movements
Art and Visual Culture
Radicalism in Academia
Religion
Radical History
The analysis of past movements
Use of technology in social movements
Anarchist Processes and Models
Queer Theory
Feminism
Wellness and self-care
Anti-colonialism/post-colonial theory
Radical/social justice education
Student and Youth Movements
Deep/social ecology
Anti-Consumerism/Freeganism
Food sovereignty
Artivism
Poetry
Collective living
Relational organizing
Short Film Walk
Alternative transportation
For our second year of this conference, we explicitly encourage submissions addressing the theme of “healing and collective transformation” from a non-western perspective.
Sessions will be 1-2 hours long each
Tabling: During the whole conference we will have a Mercato of Alternatives. You can use the submission form for tabling as well
Please submit your proposal for any of the categories by December 5th, 2018 by using the online form you can find here: Presenter Application
Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 31, 2019