CartBuilding Intellectual Communities Beyond the Academic Bubble Instructor: Matthew DonovanProgram: WorkshopCredit(s): 1Date: June 29th, July 13th, 27th, August 10th, 24th.Time: 14:00-16:30 ET
DESCRIPTION: In a world governed by what the Oxford Internet Institute has described as “epistemic bubbles,” where the architecture of visibility turns every thought into a commodity and every dissenter into an echo, the scholar is faced with an agonizing paradox. To think rigorously is to risk irrelevance; to think publicly is to flirt with flattening. Beyond the bubble, however, one can operate in a space of tension, taking inspiration not just from contemporary theorists but from the less-tread pathways of intellectual history. This is a Workshop for those who want to think without becoming caricatures, to build without succumbing to collapse, to inhabit the fractures of a decaying landscape as if they were, in fact, an invitation.
Consider the work of early Enlightenment polymath Pierre Bayle, who wrote amidst the aftermath of Cartesian metaphysics; or the spiritualist theories of Hildegard von Bingen, who saw thought as a radiant emanation between body, earth, and divinity; or Gabriel Tarde, whose late-19th-century theories of social imitation prefigured the meme before it had a name; or even the deeply eccentric autodidacts of the Viennese coffeehouse scene. What might their divergent modes of inquiry teach us about scholarship today, caught as it is between disciplinary isolation and the hyper-connected glut of new media? Their idiosyncrasies—so resistant to containment—offer a blueprint for navigating what remains possible when systems of knowledge seem to ossify into self-parody.
What would an intellectual practice look like now, in the age of the TikTok essay and the algorithmic scroll? How do we construct scholarship that holds its form as it leaks into public life? How can we examine intellectual life not as a refuge but as a tactic—a way of dwelling within platforms, institutions, and communities without becoming their object? Drawing on neglected thinkers, participants of this Workshop will learn to see research as not just a body of work but a way of living among others. In this spirit, the Workshop will offer tools for building porous intellectual communities: writing groups that outlast trend cycles, collaborative projects that critique rather than capitulate to institutional norms, and public engagement that resists both insularity and superficiality. This is not a Workshop in personal branding, nor a utopian call to “”save”” intellectual life from its supposed decline. Instead, it is a practice of detour, borrowing from traditions that refuse clean categorization—a provocation into what it means to think today, to build without infrastructures, and to find vitality in the gaps.
Session 0 (Open Session): Contemporary Landscapes and the Contingency of Scholarship: Historical and contemporary roles of public intellectuals, heterodoxy, and disciplines; Understanding the shifting terrains of online culture and intellectual ecosystems; Rethinking the “”core tenets”” of scholarship; How to embrace contingency without sacrificing rigor; Writing routines and strategies for developing your intellectual voice.
Session 1: Intellectual Communities in Practice: Building and sustaining reading and writing groups; Lessons from international reading groups and focus groups; Finding collaborators who challenge your thinking beyond your epistemic bubble.
Session 2: Digital & Cultural Strategies: The limits of academic publishing and the potential of new media; How to position yourself publicly without flattening your work into “content”; Case studies from successful projects that found balance between intellectual depth and public accessibility.
Session 3: Critique and Perspectives: Analysing cultural currents while avoiding myopia and general pessimism; Lessons from the downtown New York cultural scenes through online and in-person ethnographic perspectives; How to resist cooptation by algorithms and superficial trends.
Session 4: Building for the Future: Tools for long-term sustainability in scholarship beyond academia; Final project presentations outlining a new intellectual project that incorporates the strategies discussed.
IMAGE: Vintage Microphones
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