Sarah Amsler
My blogs
| Introduction | I am a lecturer in Sociology at Aston University, Birmingham (UK). Long interested in the politics of culture, my academic work explores how repressive power works by legitimising itself through affect, knowledge, language, education and cultural media. From museums and sites of public history in the United States to philosophies of science in the former Soviet Union, and now straight into the heart of the academy and public intellectual life in the UK, my work aims, following Michel Foucault's advice, to 'reveal and undermine power where it is most invisible and insidious'. Because this is often in the ideas and practices we hold dear, I also study the conditions for the development of the critical attitude. I am especially interested in the transformative potential of critical theory and pedagogy, and understanding how they can develop as public knowledge outside formal education to expand possibilities for social freedom in everyday life and more capital-p Political spaces. When I'm not playing at academics, I'm playing with kids, for whose presents and futures I believe all this work must matter most of all. You can contact me at: s.s.amsler@aston.ac.uk. |
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