ACADEMIC BRANDS pt 6: "Academics and Sports: Bridging Sacred and Profane"

ACADEMIC BRANDS: GLOBALIZING, PRIVATIZING AND QUANTIFYING THE UNIVERSITY UC Davis School of Law King Hall room 1301 March 22-23, 2019 This conference explores how the modern university perceives, represents, and remakes itself through the artifact of the brand. We will explore such topics as the turn to measuring academic "excellence" through metrics, university merchandising, sports, and the transformation of the university's brand when it is forced to confront changing social and political mores, from #MeToo to traumatic histories of slavery and racism DAY 2: Saturday, March 23, Part SIx "Academics and Sports: Bridging Sacred and Profane" Top sport teams may be the best way for universities to gain national and global visibility. This panel critically explores the relationship of sports branding and merchandizing to the overall brand identity of today’s universities. How do universities manage identity when corporations like Nike literally sponsor the university? How do universities recruit women students when their successful sports teams inadvertently create a macho, exclusive brand? How secure are sports merchandising rights for universities? How can we understand the ironic use of low brand sports team names and mascots (“Bulldogs”) alongside the high-brow ambitions of the university? Are universities “brand bullies”? Panel: Joshua Hunt (Journalist); Gaye Tuchman (University of Connecticut, Sociology) Commentator: Tim Lenoir (UC Davis, Cinema & Digital Media and Science & Technology Studies) ----------------------------------------------------------- Supported by the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Academic Brands For more information and directions, please visit our website (http://academicbrands.ucdavis.edu/)