Working Conference The Future of Minority Studies National Research Project: Reading Identity— Literature, Pedagogy, and Social Thought October 9-11, 2003 University of Wisconsin-Madison Organizers Roberta Hill, Professor of English and American Indian Studies Sean Teuton, Assistant Professor of English and American Indian Studies Craig Werner, Professor of African American Studies and Integrated Liberal Studies Background: Identity Politics, Theory, and the Classroom In the aftermath of 9/11, progressive scholars in the United States university, now more than ever, see the importance of developing a social vision that both handles global issues all of us face yet also gives meaning to our own local experiences that inform who we are. The recent events have taught that the deconstruction of identity, experience, and nation in scholarship presents limitations in fostering understanding in the university classroom and beyond. Social inventions, though invented, affect the globe in very real ways. We are finding that identities, for example, are no doubt socially produced, but are nonetheless enormously important, not only because they bar or grant us access to certain parts of society, but also because they are made from and make our world. Identities influence our readings of texts, our social and moral views. At this time, then, the challenge facing free thinkers is not to deconstruct such knowledge- granting concepts but rather to take them seriously as particular sources of insight with general human import from which scholars and students, activists and community members can benefit. In 2001, several scholars committed to developing this workable notion of identity politics began a nationwide research project called the Future of Minority Studies. Scholars from a variety of disciplines became attracted to this project out of a dissatisfaction with the use of contemporary theory in dismissing programs for identity politics as necessarily essentialist and in need of dismantling, at a time when the issues of race and the numbers of minority students and scholars are growing. Those involved in FMS gathered at major universities from coast to coast to explore the role of identity in ethnic/minority studies and its ramifications for diversity initiatives, multiculturalism, feminism, and internationalism. Project organizers use the term minority to refer broadly to members of subjugated social groups in the U.S. and abroad. From these meetings, scholars have mobilized a new social theory attendant to a wide range of theoretical and practical issues yet grounded in moral universal definitions of the self, human rights, dignity, and respect. Project participants have contributed to an entire volume of essays which develops and presents work in "post-positivist realism," Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism (University of California Press, 2000), as well as an anthology of essays on realist teaching, Twenty-First-Century Feminist Classrooms: Pedagogies of Identity and Difference (Palgrave, 2002). The research project has become international, with a conference held last year in India, and a recent retreat in the Dominican Republic. Scholars involved in FMS have contributed to a new anthology on realist theory and internationalism, The Future of Minority Studies: Redefining Identity Politics (Palgrave, September 2004). Last fall, here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the English Department funded the organization of the Minority Studies Reading Group, attended by graduate and faculty members who have been interested in the realist theory of identity. To build on the year's research findings, participants in the Project for the Future of Minority Studies now plan to move their work forward to explore three important areas in ethnic studies and theory: reading, teaching, and social ideas. The Proposal: Literature, Pedagogy, and Social Thought In order to advance the above research, we are proposing a working conference, "Reading Identity: Literature, Pedagogy, and Social Thought," an event to host the third stage in the Future of Minority Studies research project. On October 9-11, 2003, invited scholars and faculty and students of the university community will meet at UW-Madison to conduct this conference on reading and teaching identity. While scholars in the humanities hotly debate identity as a theoretical issue, we rarely consider the indispensable role of identity in the real acts of reading, teaching, and everyday living. All of us are socialized to read texts from a located viewpoint, what we might call a reading identity. One's reading history profoundly affects how one interprets, values, and appreciates narratives, especially when they represent unfamiliar and even threatening worlds. When imaginative students and scholars become aware of this location, they often reconsider their views, and thus guide their own intellectual and moral growth. In this regard, reading is perhaps the most socially transformational process one will ever undergo. Coming to a text from this socialization, we never read alone, but in question or defense of a community. And certainly in the university, we read as part of a collective social process. From this view of reading and identity, classrooms resemble social laboratories in which one may gain true cultural literacy. Organizers of "Reading Identity" wish to look closely at the ways we read various kinds of texts in and out of the classroom, and to imaginatively develop new ways of reading to accommodate a diverse twenty-first century classroom. Because reading is an unavoidably communal, social process, we wish to consider the theoretical relationship of literary analysis to pedagogy. Project organizers begin with the understanding that interpretation is a process deeply engaged with social conditions. An idea eminent to the creation of the American university, the protection of free thought enables the production of new knowledge among individual scholars in the academy. In a similar manner, "good" readings of literary and social texts rely not on the solitary, disinterested eye of the reading subject, but on creating the "right" classroom conditions for them to emerge. Out of this linkage of reading and teaching grows the best justification for multiculturalism in the classroom: the protection of student diversity guarantees we recover readings that perhaps have been historically suppressed, and create altogether new readings, as a dialogic classroom community. From this conception of reading as a social, knowledge-seeking process, project participants plan to consider how we may produce better readings, more objective social knowledge, to inform scholars' views of reading, teaching and identity politics. Through years of collaborative research among scholars in various disciplines and at various universities, organizers of the Project for the Future of Minority Studies have developed an alternative "realist" approach to such topics as social identity, experience, and objectivity, to benefit social programs for multiculturalism, feminism, and internationalism. This realist theory argues what is called identity politics is not only an aspect of social justice but also a producer of knowledge. Because identities help us interpret the world, they should be protected and developed in and out of the classroom. For this reason, realists argue, the recognition of minority identity should be viewed not as a temporary compensatory program, but as an ongoing commitment to producing better knowledge in the university and the world. In this way, the realist theory finds minority identity to support and complement a broader humanity we often associate with moral universalism and the protection of human rights, equality, and treaties. From this view of multiculturalism and objective knowledge, we can begin to foster understanding across differences. With the conference "Reading Identity," organizers hope to open a productive discussion about theories of identity in the humanities. We have seen increasing attacks on minority studies programs by conservative scholars, who claim that identity-based programs produce scholarship founded on social exclusions with little claim to the world, or that these programs risk dividing our democratic society. Among some progressive scholars, identity is also a troubled concept that inspires only critique, as if real subordinated people were not in need of practical solutions. With the above concerns, we organizers have set out to engage scholars in the humanities today on the role of identity in places that all of us value: the act of reading and the practice of teaching. Questions Scholars and graduate students attending "Reading Identity" should prepare responses to the following theoretical questions, which focus the conference on the central issues affecting minority scholarship today in ethnic studies, women's studies, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual studies, as well as within traditional departments like English, Comparative Literature, History, Philosophy, and Anthropology. Theoretical Questions 1) What is the social and political significance of literary analysis? 2) What is the epistemological relationship of literary analysis to pedagogy? 3) What is the role of literary analysis and pedagogy in the work for social justice? 4) Can moral universalism support literary analysis and pedagogy? Practical Questions Following on the above, participants should consider these consequent social questions. We encourage scholars and graduate students entering the profession to clarify the social vision that informs their research and scholarship, reading and teaching. 1) What conception of literary analysis and pedagogy would best support minority students, scholars, and their communities? 2) How can a progressive view of literary analysis and pedagogy serve minority studies programs, traditional departments, and diversity initiatives in the university? Book Project Reading Identity: Literature, Pedagogy, and Social Thought. 4