Master Class With Professor Sharon Zukin (11-12 July 2007)

MASTER CLASS WITH PROFESSOR SHARON ZUKIN

Urban Cultural Economy in an Age of Globalisation

The Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney is seeking expressions of interest from postgraduate research students interested in participating in a master class with eminent urban scholar Professor Sharon Zukin of Brooklyn College and the City University of New York. Details of Professor Zukin's Achievements are listed below.

The master class will commence on the morning of the 11th July and run until lunchtime on the 12th. It will include a presentation by Professor Zukin and participants will be given the opportunity to discuss their own research. Some readings will be supplied. The event will be held at the UWS Parramatta campus with a maximum of 23 participants. There will be a $30 registration charge to cover the cost of lunch and morning and afternoon teas. There will also be a dinner arranged the evening of the 11th that is not covered in the registration charge.

We invite expressions of interest from those who are working in the fields of sociology, geography, cultural studies, and urban studies. Please send a brief summary of your research and its relevance to the title of the master class (200 words maximum) to george.morgan@uws.edu.au by June 22nd (extended deadline).

Sharon Zukin, the Broeklundian Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, is one of the world’s foremost observers and theorists of the contemporary city. The author of five books, including Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), for which she won the prestigious C. Wright Mills Award, her work sits at the intersection of sociology, geography, cultural studies, and political economy. Loft Living (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) tracked the cultural and economic processes through which parts of New York were transformed into gentrified residential spaces. The Culture of Cities (Blackwell, Oxford, 1996) examines the regeneration of central urban areas, and how vernacular cultures are often marginalised in the process of establishing new symbolic economies based on tourism and cultural industries. Her most recent book Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture (2004) critically examines urban spaces of consumption. Although the United States and specifically New York, have provided the empirical focus for much of her work, Zukin's work has great relevance to Australian cities. Broadly, her work examines the cultural economy of the contemporary city, including themes such as culture-led urban regeneration; spaces of consumption; urban development, art and real estate; racialised ghettoes; public space; and the transformation of urban life and form under globalisation.