How We Make a Disorientation Guide to Our University, lead by Local University Activists followed by How We Engage, lead by Anne Elizabeth Moore and Chralie Vinz.

In recent years many students and professors have turned their research interests towards the university itself. They have considered how to translate the activism and critique that is generally encouraged and supported when projected outward on the world, into a more inward practice that identifies the particular political economy of today’s university system. What role and responsibilities do universities have in the urban spaces they inhabit, in the knowledge economies they facilitate, in the concepts about which they produce research, and the contracts they receive and provide? Today we will work with students from several local universities, including Northwestern and University of Chicago, to talk about one of the works in the Pedagogical Factory exhibit which displays such self-critical research about the US academic system in the form of a “Disorientation Guide” to UNC Chapel Hill. We will use this work as a starting point to discuss the possibilities of creating similar initiatives in Chicago academic contexts.