Disseminating information in the Internet age

What does it mean to write and publish in the age of the Internet? Are we experiencing an over accumulation crisis in academic publishing with the encyclopedias, handbooks, readers, companions, dictionaries, keywords and short introductions? Is this proliferation related to the emergence of new forms of writing and publishing on the Internet such as blogs, Wikipedia, and forums?


Left: York’s Canada Research Chair in Citizenship Studies Engin Isin


As part of Calumet College Speaker’s Series, social sciences Professor Engin Isin will address these questions, in his presentation “On Dissemination, Collaboration and Sharing”. Isin will explore how the instantaneity and spontaneity of Internet publishing compares to the slowness and deliberation of academic publishing, questioning how blogs and forums will change certain academic norms of dissemination, diffusion and collaboration. He will also launch a new Web site he has created for the collaboration and dissemination of knowledge for politics, aesthetics and ethics.


As York’s Canada Research Chair in Citizenship Studies, Professor Isin is an internationally recognized scholar. His research, the bulk of which takes place within the Citizenship Studies Media Lab at Calumet College, is concerned primarily with the relationship between cities and citizenship. It advances the thesis (now widely regarded as significant) that citizenship is not only an abstract legal status, but also a social practice that unfolds primarily in the city.


Isin is noted as North American editor and managing editor of the journal Citizenship Studies. He has published a number of articles, anthologies and books, including Cities Without Citizens (1992), Citizenship and Identity (co-author) (1999), Democracy, Citizenship and the Global City (editor) (2000) and Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship (2002).


The presentation is open to all members of the York community and will take place Thursday, Nov. 30, in Room 214 Calumet College, 3:30-5pm.


For more information or to RSVP, contact Susan Miceli at ext. 55098 or by e-mail at smiceli@calumet.yorku.ca.