Anderson’s discusses nations as imagined, political communities inherently constrained and autonomous that also involve deeply rooted comradery. (I think of the World Cup this past summer or the US in the Olympics.) While I started to wondered if his concept is just another example of how we, as humans, constantly and (at times) desperately seek connections to other humans, I can also see how imagined communities could be a usefully way to think about the affordances and limits of academic (and other) communities, their mediating tools of discourse, and the in/exclusiveness of language.
In this post, I aim to explore the idea academic disciplines (or fields) as imagined communities and a faculty professional development project that I am currently considering as a space to reinforce the sovereignty of academic institutions or as a way to disrupt and open up the dominant disciplinary discourses and the values they represent and reinforce.
If we dare to broaden the scope of imagined communities just a smidge, I start to see the outlines of what are also know as communities of interest or affinity groups, one can start to bring into focus academic disciplines as imagined communities. Members of imagined communities and academic disciplines both (currently or at some point) share similar schemas, behaviors/practices, journeys/rites of passage, discourses, and languages-of-states. Considering academic communities as imagined communities opens up opportunities (re)consider, and possibly (re)script, how we frame our identities in relation to various politics and priorities.
Content Curation Projects (CCPs) are an avenue to support faculty in their articulation of the genres and thinking processes behind the genres of their disciplines, transforming what was once private, exclusively only for members of a discipline, into what can become accessible to those attempting to be a part of or simply understand it.
In this post, I aim to explore the idea academic disciplines (or fields) as imagined communities and a faculty professional development project that I am currently considering as a space to reinforce the sovereignty of academic institutions or as a way to disrupt and open up the dominant disciplinary discourses and the values they represent and reinforce.
If we dare to broaden the scope of imagined communities just a smidge, I start to see the outlines of what are also know as communities of interest or affinity groups, one can start to bring into focus academic disciplines as imagined communities. Members of imagined communities and academic disciplines both (currently or at some point) share similar schemas, behaviors/practices, journeys/rites of passage, discourses, and languages-of-states. Considering academic communities as imagined communities opens up opportunities (re)consider, and possibly (re)script, how we frame our identities in relation to various politics and priorities.
Content Curation Projects (CCPs) are an avenue to support faculty in their articulation of the genres and thinking processes behind the genres of their disciplines, transforming what was once private, exclusively only for members of a discipline, into what can become accessible to those attempting to be a part of or simply understand it.