Suryamayi’s New Work
INSA Presentation & Fall Course at CIIS
Dr. Suryamayi Clarence-Smith, a well known and loved Aurovilian writer, academic, and instructor of Awareness through the Body, has new work offerings this Fall.
OCTOBER 14 – DECEMBER 16: A new course at CIIS’s East West Psychology program, Prefiguring Utopian Societies.
SATURDAY AUGUST 31: Presentation of her paper Evolving Prefigurative Politics in an Intentional Community: The Auroville Citizens’ Assembly Pilot, co-written with Lesley Branagan. The presentation is at the International Network of Sortition Advocates (INSA) – Free Registration, link below.
Suryamayi’s Presents New Work at INSA
August 31 | Online | Free Registration
17:00 CEST • 11AM US ET • 12:00 BUENOS AIRES • 8AM US PT
Suryamayi is looking forward to presenting the paper Evolving Prefigurative Politics in an Intentional Community: The Auroville Citizens’ Assembly Pilot, written with Lesley Branagan at the first conference of the International Network of Sortition Advocates (INSA), a volunteer organisation aimed at connecting pro-sortition academics, advocates, and activists around the world.
The conference will be held online, accessible to all with an internet connection, on August 31st.
See the link below for further information and how to attend:
Aurovilian academics Suryamayi Clarence Smith and Lesley Branagan recently published an academic article on Auroville – Evolving Prefigurative Politics in an Intentional Community: The Auroville Citizens’ Assembly Pilot in an American academic journal: New Political Science.
In this article, Suryamayi and Lesley explore how the Citizens’ Assembly pilot in Auroville (held in 2021) prefigured new practices in collective decision-making, shaped by the community’s foundational societal ideals of human unity and unending education.
Watch the clip below to learn more about the Citizen’s Assembly Auroville Pilot.
Prefiguring Utopian Societies
Suryamayi’s Course At CIIS
Auroville scholar Suryamayi Clarence-Smith will be teaching at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) starting this Fall, with a course of her design: Prefiguring Utopian Societies. The course brings together her doctoral research and involvement in alternative, utopian practice(s), in the Auroville community and beyond.
Enrolling for the Course
While part of the graduate programme at CIIS, anyone who wishes to participate can enroll for this course, by contacting the CIIS program manager, and AVI USA member, Judith Checo: jcheco@ciis.edu.
The course will be held online on Mondays, from October 14 to December 16, from 8-11AM PST.
Course Flier & Description:
“Prefiguring Utopian Societies examines a wide range of contemporary practices that seek to articulate diverse and inclusive forms of societal development, beyond the capitalist mainstream: from participatory democracy to cooperative economy to holistic education to ecological sustainability. Designed to bridge participants in both academic and activist contexts, the course uniquely offers a combination of scholarly analysis and experiential skill-building. In so doing, it articulates a prefigurative response to the ‘ivory tower’ critique of academia, and seeks to inspire participants to critically engage with and enact a ‘politics of hope’ in response to the multiple crises of our time.”