For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside, that it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive…
I co-edited two collections that were published this academic year: Roll and Flow: the Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing and Live Theory: The Aronowitz Reader. They are both pretty fucking great if I do say so myself, so if you are interested in social and cultural theory and politics, check them both out!
Excellent article about us Birds in the New Yorker today: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/06/the-battle-for-attention
Very stoked to share a film that Josh Kolbo and I shot in Kasos in 2022… just in time for this year’s Marxist Summer School. What wonderful comrades. https://vimeo.com/932545166?share=copy
Thrilled to have an essay on Ellen Willis, Shulamith Firestone, Reich, and Marcuse included in this excellent volume edited by Christine Payne and Jeremiah Morelock. https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9789004686717
Very stoked to have gone on Jason Old’s fantastic podcast. We had a great conversation, here’s a teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Cag5XRFEc
The full episode is up on Apple and Spotify:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/16Oqvg2UMO9DytOqnEDNyd?si=28579c53cefa4af3
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-surfing-historian/id1552213360
There are tons of great interviews, and lots of other epic surf studies resources, on his website, The Surfing Historian. Check it out!
I feel super honored to be giving a talk at the UC Santa Cruz Center for Cultural Studies on April 19. Next stop after that is The Stoke Sessions, our conference on surf and skate studies at San Diego State from April 20-23. I fucking love California and I can’t wait for all of it!!! https://culturalstudies.ucsc.edu/2023/03/07/april-19-kristin-lawler-surfing-capitalism-and-the-refusal-of-work/
The Institute for the Radical Imagination put on a daylong conference on the work of Stanley Aronowitz at the Graduate Center on March 3. I spoke on the Labor and Power panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOklWBPx3BM but all the panels and talks are all up under the conference title. Cornel West’s brilliant and loving opening tribute to Stanley brought the house down, but I think that all the talks together formed an inspired, complex symphony that would have made our teacher proud.
I am so stoked and honored to be part of this rad new collaborative at SDSU… our conference in April is blowing up and is going to be truly epic. Our new book, Roll and Flow: the Cultural Politics of Surfing and Skateboarding, co-edited with Mike Roberts and David Cline, will be launched in conjunction with the conference. Stay tuned for updates and check out the call for papers if you study surf, skate, and social theory! https://surfskate.sdsu.edu/faculty
This spring, the Friends of Attention put on our first pair of Attention Labs and they were fantastic. We were lucky enough to have the brilliant Lane Stroud (who led the first one) make a series of shorts about them. If there is to be any hope at all, we have got to take back our attention from the algorithmic fracking it’s currently subject to. In this, working with young people is, as always, an inspiration. Check out the films here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/9518475
I joined my Institute for the Radical Imagination comrades on their pod for a loose conversation about the politics of libido and liberation today. Check it out, and add Prosperity Marxism to your podcast feed — it’s always a great conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9UaPt1dRX8&list=PLWN2ybxxVcsVegCM19dKO9THSbHod3ceE&index=20&t=3325s
slackerpolitics 