Academic Life, Public Spheres and Political Cultures in Western Europe and the United States

In what ways – and to what extent – did academic life change in Western Europe and the United States during the Cold War era? Why did it change the way it did? These are the leading questions of a workshop that will examine the evolution of scholarly life within the context of far-reaching transformations of public spheres and political cultures. Both the changing fabric of the mass media and the shifting landscape of political ideas are at the heart of this workshop, which is primarily interested in professors who time and again intervened in the political sphere – the latter being defined as a space of communication in which collectively binding decisions relevant to larger social entities were negotiated. Indeed, the workshop is not concerned with scholars who were largely confined to the proverbial ‘ivory tower’, writing books and articles that only their closest colleagues would read. Rather, it is focused on professors who frequently transformed themselves into intellectuals, political advisers or expert commentators for the media, continuously transcending the realm of the university.

Weitere Informationen unter: http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=184845