The Right to the City and the Politics of Space
University of California at Berkeley
The Geballe Room – Townsend Center for the Humanities
220 Stephens Hall
Friday, April 14 (8:30 am – 5:00 pm) and Saturday, April 15 (9:00 am -- 2:00 pm)
The Breslauer Graduate Student Symposium is an annual conference comprised primarily of U. C. Berkeley graduate students on an internationally relevant theme. The goal of the symposium is to support graduate student research on international issues related to the pursuit of solutions to real-world problems. The symposium was established in 2001, and is made possible by a campus donor in honor of George Breslauer, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost of the University of California at Berkeley.
The focus of the 2006 Breslauer Symposium is on the Right to the City and the Politics of Space. This interdisciplinary conference brings together graduate students who are researching struggles for shelter and livelihood, competing claims to land, and politics of space from a range of disciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches. It also seeks to cut across the often-divided analytical and geopolitical domains of First and Third Worlds, bringing together those working within the Global South and those working within the Euro-American context.
We are pleased to announce that this year’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Don Mitchell, Chair of the Geography Department at Syracuse University. Professor Mitchell is well known for his work on the historical production of landscapes as they relate to workers and the working class, the relationship between culture and power, and the production and meaning of public space. His groundbreaking book, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (2003), explores the struggles over public space in American cities and the modes of control that have led to the marginalization of the homeless.
The 2006 Breslauer Symposium will take place on Friday, April 14th and Saturday, April 15th in The Geballe Room of the Townsend Center for the Humanities, located at 220 Stephens Hall on the University of California at Berkeley Campus. The symposium is free and open to the public.