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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260607T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260607T160000
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SUMMARY:Approaching the Limit: Panel 2\, Extremities
DESCRIPTION:Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture\nBoundary\, border\, threshold\, edge—to approach the limit is to look beyond the familiar landmarks of cultural studies. From geographical borders to epistemological categories\, limits and edges initiate the dialectical moment of thought\, overturning or transcending the axioms and foundations from which it has sprung. Setting limits to the working day (minimums\, then maximums) or to wages (maximums\, then minimums\, as Marx describes in Capital‘s chapters on primitive accumulation’s legislative efforts) are only the tip of the iceberg. So where do we experience the limits—or limitlessness—of our worlds? \nIn two linked panels\, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture explores the limits and limitations of our world—sensory\, spatial\, temporal\, social\, cultural\, political. In their geographical and methodological variety\, our papers collectively map out the terrain of this keyword\, and seek to determine the bounds\, so to speak\, of studying\, theorizing and making culture at the limit. \nIn this our second panel we question the socio-spatial manifestations of the limit and its political and property avatars: the border the boundary\, and the zone. Across these contributions\, to think at the extremity is to reevaluate the whole\, querying how limits animate entire systems of thought and distinction. (Panel 1 details here) \nNathaniel LaCelle-Peterson examines the function of infrastructure in the thought of Louis Althusser\, where it appears as substitute for “base” as the opposing category of “superstructure” in his structuralist articulation of the mode of production. Alan J. Alaniz analyzes the built and unbuilt architectural projects of the midcentury Mexico-United States borderlands to illuminate the spatial consequences of geopolitics at the international divide.  Madeleine Han examines the role of contemporary art in the transformation of Korea’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)—a geographical and imagined ‘limit’ marked by dreams of deferred reunification—into a visitation site. Javier Porras Madero explores how combined and uneven development along the Mexico-Guatemala borderlands produced newly alienated subjects who became the central social components of twentieth-century nationalisms. \nThe Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture is an interdisciplinary cultural studies research group that has been practicing at Yale University since 2003 Over the years\, we have presented our collective work at Crossroads in Cultural Studies the Irish Association for American Studies\, the Cultural Studies Association\, Historical Materialism\, the Marxist Education Project\, and the World Social Forum. Past projects have appeared as “Going into Debt\,” online in Social Text’s Periscope\, and as “Space and Times of Occupation” in Transforming Anthropology; a collective interview regarding “Matters of Life and Death” was published in Revue Française d’Études Américaines. Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson is a doctoral researcher in Film & Media Studies and Comparative Literature at Yale University. Alan J. Alaniz is a doctoral researcher in the Yale School of Architecture. Madeleine Han is a doctoral researcher in the Yale American Studies program. Javier Porras Madero is a doctoral researcher in the history department at Yale University.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/yale-wggc-extremities/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:_Panel Discussion,Critical Theory,Cultural Resistance,featured,Globalization,historical materialism,History,Immigration,Latin America,Modernity,Political Economy,Present Moment,Race and Class,Seminars and Talks,Special Event,Spring 2026
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260606T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260606T160000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20260429T191328Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260515T145511Z
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SUMMARY:Approaching the Limit: Panel 1\, Thresholds
DESCRIPTION:Panel Presentation by the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture\nBoundary\, border\, threshold\, edge—to approach the limit is to look beyond the familiar landmarks of cultural studies. From geographical borders to epistemological categories\, limits and edges initiate the dialectical moment of thought\, overturning or transcending the axioms and foundations from which it has sprung. Setting limits to the working day (minimums\, then maximums) or to wages (maximums\, then minimums\, as Marx describes in Capital‘s chapters on primitive accumulation’s legislative efforts) are only the tip of the iceberg. So where do we experience the limits—or limitlessness—of our worlds? \nIn two linked panels\, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture explores the limits and limitations of our world—sensory\, spatial\, temporal\, social\, cultural\, political. In their geographical and methodological variety\, our papers collectively map out the terrain of this keyword\, and seek to determine the bounds\, so to speak\, of studying\, theorizing and making culture at the limit. \nThe first panel\, Thresholds: Limit Cases\,  takes on the exceptions that determine the rule. These limit cases of sound\, shock\, spirit\, and symbol problematize and contest the generic and ideological frames they operate within. Probing the thresholds of perception\, we address experience that re-taxonomizes the social and sensorial order. (Panel 2 details here) \nSuvij Sudershan asks why the qawwal (a traditional Sufi devotional form that often puts written poetry to music) came to enjoy uniquely prominent position within the global meta-genre of “World Music”? Michelle Chow explores Asian/American transnational ecopoetics\, an the literary\, philosophic\, cultural\, and botanical attempts to contend with the post-nuclear environment\, by centering around one tree\, the gingko. Jane Zhang links the origins of the first aid kit in railway surgery to the broader exchange between emergency protocol and industrial management. Michael Denning takes up Fredric Jameson’s challenge to “political” readings of Marx in the context of recent “republican” re-readings of the political dimension of “Citizen Marx\,” reconsidering the limits of and barriers to\, the political. And Sam Levin charts the shifting limits of belonging on the global far right as it coalesced in the last quarter of the 20th century. \nThe Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture is an interdisciplinary cultural studies research group that has been practicing at Yale University since 2003 Over the years\, we have presented our collective work at Crossroads in Cultural Studies the Irish Association for American Studies\, the Cultural Studies Association\, Historical Materialism\, the Marxist Education Project\, and the World Social Forum. Past projects have appeared as “Going into Debt\,” online in Social Text’s Periscope\, and as “Space and Times of Occupation” in Transforming Anthropology. A collective interview regarding “Matters of Life and Death” was published in Revue Française d’Études Américaines. Suvij Sudershan is a doctoral researcher at Yale’s Department of English. His dissertation is on the representation of ground-rent and class-formation in 19th and early-20th century novels from Ireland\, England\, India\, and South Africa. Michelle Chow is a doctoral researcher in Yale’s English Literature and Film & Media Studies program\, and a Graduate Fellow of Yale’s Center for the Study of Race Indigeneity\, & Transnational Migration (RITM). Jane Zhang is a doctoral researcher in Yale’s Combined Program in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies. Her research focuses on the intersecting histories of popular literature and vernacular medicine from the 19th century onwards. Michael Denning teaches cultural studies in the American Studies program at Yale University; among his books are Culture in the Age of Three Worlds and Noise Uprising. The Twofold Labors of Marx is forthcoming from Verso. Sam Levin is a doctoral researcher in the American studies program at Yale University. He studies religion and the global far right in the 20th century.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/yale-wggc-thresholds/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:_Panel Discussion,Critical Theory,Cultural Resistance,featured,Globalization,historical materialism,History,Marx,Media Criticism,Modernity,Political Strategy,Republicanism,Seminars and Talks,Special Event,Spring 2026
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/WGGC-Image1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260502T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260502T153000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20260403T142245Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260502T223333Z
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SUMMARY:'Black History Is for Everyone' with Brian Jones
DESCRIPTION:A video of this May 2\, 2026\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nLongtime educator Brian Jones explores how the study of Black history challenges our understanding of race\, nation\, and the stories we tell about who we are. In Black History Is for Everyone\, Jones offers a meditation on the power of Black history\, using his own experiences as a lifelong learner and classroom teacher to question everything — from the radicalism of the American Revolution to the meaning of “race” and “nation.” With warmth and immersive storytelling\, Jones encourages us to delve deeper into our collective history\, explores how curiosity about our world is essential—and reminds us that with stakes so high\, the effort is worth it. \nBrian Jones has taught many ages and grades in New York City’s public schools and the City University of New York. He served as the inaugural director of the Center for Educators and Schools at the New York Public Library and was the associate director of education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The author of The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History\, his writing has also appeared in The New York Times\, the Guardian\, and Jacobin.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-history-jones/
LOCATION:See link above to watch the recording on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Africa,African American History,Book talks,Civil War,Colonialism,Du Bois,featured,History,Labor History,Race and Class,Special Event,Spring 2026,US History,Working Class History
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/JonesBlackHistory-WebImage.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260208T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260208T173000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20251119T160315Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260202T145354Z
UID:10008383-1770566400-1770571800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Marxist Psychology: Vygotsky’s Cultural-Historical Theory
DESCRIPTION:A six-week workshop with Carl Ratner\, in which we will seek to solve the riddle Marx posed in his first thesis on Feuerbach: “in contradistinction to materialism\, the active side [the subjective side of human behavior] was developed abstractly by idealism – which\, of course\, does not know real\, sensuous activity as such.” Exploring a materialist theory of subjectivity which does know sensuous activity\, we will see how historical materialism can be extended to reveal how it is compatible with psychology and how human psychology is itself a historical-materialist phenomenon. \nBridging political economy and psychology\, we will review Marx’s writings on the structure of social systems that encompass cultural emergents such as religion. As emphasized by Wendy Brown in her Foreword to the Reitter-North translation of Capital\, “Marx developed an understanding of political economy as the distinctive mode through which we build entire worlds through our singular cooperative powers—transforming nature\, elaborating divisions of labor and organizations of ownership\, producing wealth\, creating ways of life\, institutions\, social forms\, subjects\, and subjectivities… Capital brings into being not only particular kinds of markets\, technologies\, and industries\, but classes\, families\, and political structures; race and gender orders; relations with ‘nature’; new formations of space and time; and legal codes and conflicts.” \nTurning to the field of cultural psychology\, we will explore how cultural forms stimulate and organize human psychology. Here we will focus on the work of the Russian psychologist\, Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)\, who formulated a “cultural-historical psychological theory.” Vygotsky was a dedicated Marxist who was active in efforts during the revolutionary period to develop socialist cultural institutions and social sciences. Vygotsky said\, “We must learn from Marx’s whole method how to build a science\, how to approach the investigation of the mind.” Read more… \nCarl Ratner went through college and graduate school in the 1960s. He was a professor of social psychology in the California State University system for 31 years. He adopted Vygotsky’s work when it was first translated in the 1980s\, writing extensively on Vygotsky and authoring the Preface to vol. 5 of his Collected Works. Ratner was one of the few followers of Vygotsky who emphasized his Marxist orientation and developed it. Ratner is the author of Macro Cultural Psychology: A Political Philosophy of Mind (Oxford\, 2012); his most recent book is Cultural Psychology\, Racism\, and Social Justice (Springer\, 2022). Carl has been active in the cooperative movement and served on the board of directors of California’s largest food coop in the 1970s and 80s. He lived in China from 1981-1983 and taught the first course on social psychology in Peking University since it had been banned after the Revolution. \nRegistration for this series is now closed.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/marxist-psychology-ratner/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Critical Theory,featured,historical materialism,Intro to Marxism,Marx,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Philosophy,Political Economy,Psychology,Reading Group,Science and Method,Winter 2026
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251217T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251217T203000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20251117T153043Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251224T170853Z
UID:10008382-1765998000-1766003400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Hegel\, Marx\, and Capital
DESCRIPTION:A video of this December 17\, 2025 event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nAndy Blunden presents insights from two new books on Marx’s use of Hegel’s Logic in the writing of Capital. The Capital/Logic Debate offers a critique of the discourse around the relation between the two thinkers. Previous writers have looked for homologies between the Logic and Capital\, despite the fact that the Logic has no definite content\, while any positive science\, political economy included\, does have definite content originating from some problem or phenomenon with its own logic. In Marx’s Capital: Hegelian Sources\, Blunden explores the three-layered structure of Capital\, where each layer has a basis in Hegel. The distinct ethical strata of Capital – bourgeois society\, productive capitalism\, and finance capital –  parallel Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Marx applies a Hegelian syllogism in which the immediate production of capital (volume 1) and the circulation of capital (volume 2) combine to yield capitalist production as a whole (volume 3). These two synthetic processes are built on 15 “units” – unique products of analysis\, as detailed in the penultimate chapter of Hegel’s Logic\, “The Idea of Cognition.” \nAndy Blunden has long been active on the Left as an activist and educator. Since the early 2000s he has been Secretary of the Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org). Andy has presented courses on Activity Theory\, Marx and Hegel at summer schools at Melbourne University. currently retired from waged work\, he has worked as a teacher\, a technician\, or an engineer\, and has been an active trade unionist throughout. Among his other books are Hegel for Social Movements; Hegel\, Marx\, and Vygotsky; and Concepts: A Critical Approach. All are available from Haymarket Books.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/hegel-marx-blunden/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Capital Studies,Critical Theory,Das Kapital,Fall 25,featured,Hegelianism,historical materialism,Marx,Marx and Hegel,Philosophy,Political Economy,Science and Method,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/HegelMarx.jpeg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251216T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251216T133000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20251023T193359Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251212T184309Z
UID:10008377-1765886400-1765891800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Animals and Capitalism: Metabolic Labor
DESCRIPTION:Final session\, December 16 \nA study group on nonhuman animals’ relationship with capital as living\, breathing\, “commodified” beings. What differentiates nonhuman animals from non-living commodified objects is the way their metabolic and reproductive capacities are harnessed in production. A vibrant discourse is currently emerging around the question of nonhuman labor and the ways in which non-waged forms of labor contribute to value accumulation under capitalism. In this study group\, we will focus on how metabolic labor has been theorized in feminist studies and contemporary Marxist environmental and animal studies\, with a specific focus on the particular function of nonhuman animals for capitalism. We will consider how harnessing and enhancing the metabolic labor of nonhuman animals is connected to fields such as waste management\, biomedical research\, big data\, and the reproduction of the human labor force. \nConvened by Gizem Haspolat and Terike Haapoja. Gizem holds a PhD in Anthropology and specializes in critical animal studies\, animal geographies\, and human-nonhuman animal relations. In her dissertation research\, she explored live animal trade as a site that intensifies the translations between ‘animal’ and capital\, through an investigation of live cattle imports in Turkey. Her current research project examines the application of ‘smart’ technologies and artificial intelligence in industrial agricultural settings. Terike is a visual artist based in Berlin. Her interdisciplinary practice includes installations\, videos\, writings\, and collaborative projects that explore our relationship with the more-than-human world. Her current research on animal labor and multispecies anticapitalist struggle\, with an extensive open bibliography\, can be found on animalcapitalism.org.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/metabolic-labor/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Agribusiness,Animals and Capital,Capital Studies,Fall 25,featured,Labor Process,Marxisms,Multi-session Classes,Science and Technology,Social Reproduction
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/pigs-piglets.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251129T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251129T160000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20251025T171850Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251130T213211Z
UID:10008378-1764424800-1764432000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Slavery and Capitalism: A Book Talk by David McNally
DESCRIPTION:A video of this November 29\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nA book talk by David McNally on Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History. McNally injects new life into Karl Marx’s writings on enslavement and labor\, presenting a new\, systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery—using colonial travel literature\, planter records and diaries\, and slave narratives—to support the provocative claim that enslaved labor in the plantation system is a form of capitalist commodity production. Weaving together history\, political economy\, and radical abolitionism\, McNally demonstrates that plantation slaves formed a modern working class and highlights the self-activity of enslaved people fighting for their freedom. He reframes their resistance as labor struggles over production and reproduction\, with significant implications for US and Atlantic history and for understanding the roots of racial capitalism. \n“David McNally’s deft application of Marx’s theory and method not only unearths the hidden dynamics of slavery’s political economy but radically broadens our understanding of modern capitalism and its class struggles. The result: a new history of slavery that centers the enslaved—the chattel proletariat—not as ‘constant capital’ or fungible cogs in the machine but as its gravediggers.”—Robin D. G. Kelley\, author of Race Rebels: Culture\, Politics\, and the Black Working Class \nDavid McNally is the author of many works of Marxist analysis and history\, including Blood and Money: War\, Slavery\, Finance and Empire; Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance; and Monsters of the Market: Zombies\, Vampires and Global Capitalism. David is Cullen Distinguished Professor of History and Business at the University of Houston (UH) and Director of the Center for the Study of Capitalism. Earlier he taught political economy at York University Toronto for over thirty years. David is the editor-in-chief of Spectre\, a biannual and online journal of Marxist theory\, strategy\, and analysis. \nJoin our five-week reading group on Slavery and Capitalism starting December 1.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/mcnally-slavery-capitalism/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:African American History,Anti-colonialism,British Imperialism,Capital vs. Labor,Caribbean Studies,Colonialism,Du Bois,Emancipation,Fall 25,featured,historical materialism,History,Labor History,Marx,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Race and Class,Seminars and Talks,Slavery
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/McNallySlavery_WebBanner.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251101T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251101T153000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20251008T150407Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251103T183706Z
UID:10008376-1762005600-1762011000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary\, with Mitchell Abidor
DESCRIPTION:A video of this November 1\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nMitchell Abidor\, author of Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary presents the book in conversation with Jacob Plitman\, former publisher of Jewish Currents. \nToday\, thanks to his classic memoirs and novels\, Victor Serge is highly esteemed by virtually all segments of the left. But who was this man\, who led such a thrilling life on the frontlines of history? An anarchist? A Bolshevik? A Trotskyist? Or did he evolve into something else entirely? In this comprehensive account of Serge’s life\, work\, and political evolution\, Mitchell Abidor rescues his subject\, in all his complexity\, from the constraints of any single label. Painting a portrait of a man whose political ideas shifted continually in response to the major events of his life\, we are introduced to several Victor Serges: the youthful anarchist in Belgium and France; the leading Bolshevik in Moscow; the anti-Stalinist who faced imprisonment and expulsion from the Soviet Union. Examining the lacunae and errors of fact in his memoirs\, Abidor reveals the hidden Serge for what he ultimately was: an unruly revolutionary of both great courage and contradictions. \nMitchell Abidor is a writer and translator living in Brooklyn\, New York. In addition to his many translation works\, he is the author of May Made Me and I’ll Forget It When I Die!: The Bisbee Deportation of 1917. Abidor is the translator and editor of Victor Serge’s anarchist writings\, Anarchists Never Surrender\, and translated with Richard Greeman Serge’s Notebooks (1936-1947). \nA 30% discount code for Victor Serge and other Pluto Press books by Mitchell Abidor will be provided to all ticket purchasers.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/serge-unruly-revolutionary/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Anarchism,Anti-capitalist Literature,Anti-fascism,Art and politics,Bolshevism,Book talks,communism,Fall 25,featured,France,History,Literature,Marxisms,Poetry,Radical Literature,Russia,Russian Revolution,Seminars and Talks,Video Available,War,Working Class History
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251026T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251026T160000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250827T165124Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251028T134216Z
UID:10008360-1761487200-1761494400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Karl Marx in America with Andrew Hartman
DESCRIPTION:A video of this October 26\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nHistorian Andrew Hartman introduces his new book\, Karl Marx in America. To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation\, but Marx’s ideas have inspired a wide range of people to formulate a more precise sense of the stakes of the American project. Historians have highlighted the imprint made on the United States by Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Smith\, John Locke\, and Thomas Paine. Marx is rarely considered alongside these figures\, yet his ideas are the most relevant today because of capitalism’s centrality to American life. Karl Marx in America argues that even though Marx never visited America\, the country has been infused\, shaped\, and transformed by him. \nAndrew Hartman is professor of history at Illinois State University. He is the author of Karl Marx in America (2025) and A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (2015)\, both published by the University of Chicago Press\, and Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (2008). He is also the coeditor of American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times (2018). Hartman has been published in a host of academic and popular venues\, including the Washington Post\, The Baffler\, Chronicle of Higher Education\, American Historian\, Journal of American Studies\, Reviews in American History\, Journal of Policy History\, Salon\, Jacobin\, Bookforum\, and In These Times.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/marx-in-america/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:African American History,American Imperialism,Book talks,Civil War,Das Kapital,Fall 25,featured,historical materialism,History,Intro to Marxism,Marx,Political Economy,Political Strategy,Race and Class,Republicanism,Revolutions,Seminars and Talks,Socialism,US History,Video Available,War
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Hartman-webimage-ok.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250929T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250929T183000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250725T190734Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250917T141011Z
UID:10008355-1759165200-1759170600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Resisting Oppression: Reading Science Fiction Politically
DESCRIPTION:Next on Monday September 29\, 5:00 pm \nWe will begin Ryka Aoki’s\, Light From Uncommon Stars\, our third in a set of three novels of oppression and resistance perfect for times like these. We also read Woman on the Edge of Time and Rosewater\, each featuring protagonists living and struggling on the margins of their societies. Each comes to envision a better world for themselves and their communities. Each draws on usual strengths\, makes use of new technologies\, and finds unusual allies. \n\nRyka Aoki’s In Light from Uncommon Stars\, Katrina Nguyen\, a runaway teen\, trans violinist\, finds her life entangled with world-famous violin teacher Shizuka Satomi and Lan Tran\, retired starship captain\, interstellar war refugee\, mother of four\, and California donut shop entrepreneur. All three address the complexity of technology in oppressive societies\, alienation and true aliens\, choice and unfreedom in contemporary capitalist social orders. This is a story for our challenging political and social times\, a wild and fun read to challenge what it means to create political science fiction.\nIn Tade Thompson’s award-winning Rosewater\, government agent and former thief Kaaro contends with social and class contradictions in contemporary Nigerian society\, the government and alien powers for a positive\, freer future for the city of Rosewater and beyond. The first-person novel features mesmerizing collages of scenes and conversations\, mirroring perhaps the mysteries of the “Xenosphere” which frames the story. Join us to read this debut novel which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.\nMarge Piercy’s classic Woman on the Edge of Time tells the story of Connie\, a working class Latina of the 1970s Los Angeles who envisions and pursues a utopian future from with involuntary institutionalization in the oppressive mental health system.\n\nBook covers for current reading list\nWritten in different eras of our modern times\, exploring different communities and peoples\, and ultimately defining radical reimagining in unique ways\, the three novels together will provide powerful reference points for our own dilemmas and choices. \nOur format: we meet every other Monday; we give each monthly selection two takes; we all share responsibilities for shaping the discussion on each work as literature\, each writer as a contributor to social change\, and each vision as a reflection of and an intervention in our aspirations for a better world.  Drop to read one novel that interests you with us\, stay and while if it suits you\, and always help shape our course. Our long term reading list. \nAlso watch for our next selection\, Susana Morris’ new biography of Octavia Butler. \nConvened by Steve Backman\, reading visionary fiction since introduced to the liberating power of Alice in Wonderland and Jules Verne at a very young age.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/resistance-to-oppression-reading-science-fiction-politically/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Africanfuturism,Classes/Events,Fall 25,featured,Literature,Multi-session Classes,Science Fiction,Visionary Fiction
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ryka-aoki.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250924T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250924T200000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250820T222913Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250926T163654Z
UID:10008358-1758740400-1758744000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:'Fake Work' with Leigh Claire La Berge
DESCRIPTION:A video of this September 24\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nUsing the most banal of office settings – corporate documentation – in the most extraordinary of circumstances – a looming Y2K apocalypse\, Leigh Claire La Berge‘s newly published Fake Work offers not only a unique experience of alienated labor\, but a novel type of Marxism: Marxist humor. The book recounts how a young white-collar worker discovers what capitalism is\, what it does\, and for whom. Described by the New York Times as a “memorable portrait of the mad hunger of corporate toil … superbly committed to its own beliefs — truthful\, dryly funny and often subtly moving\,” Fake Work is a story for anyone who has ever needed a job. \nLeigh Claire La Berge is Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College\, CUNY\, and author of Fake Work\, Marx for Cats\, and Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art. She was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Free University of Berlin in 2021-2023.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/fake-work-la-berge/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Book talks,Capital Studies,Fall 25,featured,humor,Intro to Marxism,Labor Process,Media Criticism,Political Economy,Seminars and Talks,Video Available
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/fakework-web.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250828T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250828T210000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250711T161922Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250827T152254Z
UID:10008354-1756407600-1756414800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Summer in France in the Shade of Noir
DESCRIPTION:The MEP Literature Group continues its tradition of easy summer reading focusing on the noir genre. Our two selections are both set in France and both deal with corruption in high places by right-wing politicians and corporations who manipulate inept investigators of low social standing and morals. \n\nCommand Performance\, by Jean Echenoz; translated by Mark Polizzotti (New York Review Books\, 2020).  A hapless unemployed flight attendant thinks he can solve his financial problems by becoming a private detective\, but he ends up in the employ of a fractious right-wing political party. Things do not go well.  Be prepared to discuss the entire book at our first session on August 6.\nCreation Lake\, by Rachel Kushner (Scribners\, 2024). Sadie Smith once worked as a government undercover operative within an environmental rights group. She got fired for entrapment and went to work in corporate espionage. Her summer assignment in France is to provoke an incident by an environmental rights group that will justify government action. Will Sadie’s honey trap tactics succeed? (August 13\, 20\, 24)\n\n\nConvened by Jacqueline Cantwell and the MEP Literature Group. Jacqueline became involved with the MEP’s Literature Group because of her love of Victor Serge’s novels. Participating in an MEP reading group led by Serge translator Richard Greeman eight years ago\, Jacqueline found a community of readers eager to be challenged by the ambitions of international writers devoted to the creative potential of political fiction. Since the death of Michael Lardner\, who hosted and organized the Literature Group for so many years\, Jacqueline has taken the lead in furthering the group’s goals of exploring international fiction and encouraging thoughtful conversation.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/shade-of-noir/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:_Seasons,Anti-capitalist Literature,Classes/Events,featured,France,Literary Studies,Literature,Multi-session Classes,Noir Fiction,Reading Group,Summer 25
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/noir-collage.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250714T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250714T183000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250707T135806Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250707T135806Z
UID:10008353-1752512400-1752517800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Reading Science Fiction Politically: Severance by Ling Ma
DESCRIPTION:Next\, Monday July 14\, 5:00 pm \n  \nGet started with the Science and Visionary Fiction book group with our July Book Selection: Severance\, by Ling Ma.  Severance combines two things. It offers a satirical\, sardonic look at 21st century lives\, loves and labor as experienced by Candace Chen. Candace has both the classic dilemmas of a first generation immigrant and the here and now reality of a millennial New Yorker setting out in today’s world. \nInto this world comes Shen Fever\, which brings an apocalypse not unlike what Covid 19 might have been. Ling Ma published the book in 2018\, which makes its dystopian vision all the more remarkable.  Candace winds up in a group of like minded would-be survivors and the tale unfolds. \nThe novel does offer a brisk pace yet we mostly read it for the author’s eyes and ears on our current dilemmas as we struggle to survive. \n  \nFor more than three years\, the MEP Science and Visionary Fiction reading group has explored topics of oppression and resistance\, history and science\, capitalist and post-capitalist future\, human and nonhuman intelligence. We read with an overall commitment\, To build a better future\, we have to envision it first (adapted from Walidah Imarisha). Reading science\, speculative and visionary fiction\, discussing it together\, and reading it politically\, offers one tool for envisioning a future worth building. \nGive it a try for your summer reading: drop in\, stay for a while\, and contribute to lively\, present day-centered discussions. Everyone has something to contribute\, whether you read this sort of thing regularly or have hardly ever given it a second thought. Convened by Steve Backman. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/reading-science-fiction-politically-severance-by-ling-ma/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Africanfuturism,Classes/Events,featured,Literature,Multi-session Classes,Science Fiction,Visionary Fiction
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2025-07-07_09-56-35.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250701T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250701T203000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250624T143442Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250926T163514Z
UID:10008352-1751396400-1751401800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Book Talk: Brian Kwoba on Hubert Harrison
DESCRIPTION:A video of this July 1\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nBrian Kwoba speaks on his newly published book Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism and Harrison’s prominent role in the early Socialist Party\, IWW\, and Black radicalism during the 1910s and 20s.  Brian’s visit forms part of our current study group on the Historical Roots of American Fascism. \nThe following excerpt from the Introduction to Kwoba’s book gives a taste of his new approach: \n“In the face of the superexploitation of working people by the likes of John D. Rockefeller\, Andrew Carnegie\, and J. P. Morgan—the capitalist robber barons of the Gilded Age—Harrison crystallized a secular Black revolutionary Socialist politics. In so doing\, he theorized the role of anti-Black racial oppression in preventing the emancipation of the working class from the wage slavery of industrial capitalism. \nIn contrast to the Eurocentric mass media and education systems\, Harrison’s spellbinding street-corner speaking\, commitment to grassroots empowerment\, fearless journalism\, and encyclopedic knowledge allowed him to crystallize a new and revolutionary model—what some called the “Outdoor University”—for free urban Black emancipatory education. It stood in stark contrast to both the industrial education symbolized by Booker T. and Margaret Murray Washington’s Tuskegee Institute and the “higher” elite education of the colleges and universities that were inaccessible to the masses of Black people. Perched atop a sidewalk stepladder at 135th Street and Seventh Avenue and addressing audiences large enough to block traffic\, Harrison spoke on subject matter ranging across such topics as African American art and popular culture\, sociology\, scientific racism\, English literature\, evolutionary biology\, theological criticism\, African history\, macroeconomics\, and global geopolitics. A. Philip Randolph aptly described this model of education as “one of the great intellectual forums in America.” \nIn the face of rampant racism in white society and President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to take the United States of America into World War I\, Harrison helped crystallize Harlem’s political “New Negro” movement. Calling for voting rights for Black men and Black women\, federal antilynching legislation\, armed self-defense\, and an end to Jim Crow racial oppression\, Harrison’s Liberty League of Negro-Americans cohered a pan-African and people-centered movement for Black self-empowerment. By recruiting and training an unknown Jamaican immigrant by the name of Marcus Garvey\, Harrison’s Liberty League catalyzed the emergence of the largest international organization of Black people in modern history. \nHarrison spoke out about injustices taking place all over the globe. Standing against European colonialism and the predatory imperial powers of the world\, Harrison crystallized a new form of radical internationalism in his groundbreaking theorization of the “Colored International.” As a revolutionary political alliance of colonized peoples in the Islamic world\, India\, the Caribbean\, Latin America\, Africa\, Europe\, and Asia\, the Colored International he envisioned would smash the giant triplets of capitalism\, imperialism\, and white racial domination. \nIn a city where white people put a Congolese man named Ota Benga on display in the Bronx Zoo\, Harrison self-identified as an “untamed\, untamable African” and crystallized a model of African consciousness for the Black diaspora based on his deep study of African history\, culture\, and politics. \nAfter a childhood upbringing steeped in the Anglican Church\, Harrison broke with Christianity and religion more generally. He would later emerge as the most prominent Black freethinker of his generation. As against the conservative dogmas of the church\, Harrison crystallized—for a new generation—a Black agnosticism grounded in modern science\, empirical evidence\, and rational explanation over religious dogma. As a militant “truth seeker\,” he demanded the taxation of church properties\, an end to prayers in school and courtroom Bible oaths\, and a complete separation of church and state. \nIn the face of federal government censorship\, repression\, and criminalization of sexuality—and widespread policing of sexual morality by the church—Harrison crystallized a Black free love politics. In that respect\, he emerged among the earliest of Black voices advocating for legalizing access to contraception\, offering public-facing courses in sex education\, and explicitly advancing a conception of love based on variety and freedom from compulsory monogamy and the Puritanical sex-negativity of US culture and society. \nAs a result of crystallizing so many political breakthroughs\, Harrison developed a kaleidoscopic radicalism that connected multiple worlds of counter-hegemonic knowledge. As Kirnon put it\, “Harrison was the first Negro who boldly preached racialism and all forms of radicalism in New York. He preached them continuously and consistently. He was the first Negro whose radicalism was comprehensive enough to include racialism\, science\, politics\, sociology and education in a thorough-going\, scientific manner.”… \nScholars of a particular figure or organization are often ideologically partisan toward it and therefore less comfortable remembering—let alone actually engaging with—forceful internal critics like Harrison. As Harrison once observed\, “Even savants are prone to forget that they do most of their thinking with their desires\, beliefs\, prejudices and subconscious urges\, which they then proceed to rationalize.”23 This explains\, in part\, why those who are partial to one or another ideological framework that Harrison criticized have so often run from him—whether consciously or subconsciously—like a rich person avoiding a beggar. His legacy has been forbidden precisely because it forces us to rethink fundamentally what we think we know—about everything from poverty\, war\, and racism\, to love\, sex\, and religion. \nAnd this is precisely why it is so revealing to study Hubert Henry Harrison. \nOn the one hand\, the most relevant historiographies—of Black Marxism\, Black freethinkers\, Garveyism\, Black sexual liberation\, and the New Negro “Renaissance”—have either marginalized or omitted him entirely. On the other hand\, Harrison played a groundbreaking role in the crystallization of each of these formations. Therefore\, putting him back into the picture opens multiple highly revealing angles of vision on the conjunctures both within and between them. \nRecovering Harrison’s legacy requires us to: reexamine the history of Black people in relation to the Socialist and Communist Parties; recover a forgotten strand of Black class-conscious\, anti-imperialist\, “colored” internationalism; reframe the spatial and intellectual possibilities for Black liberatory education in light of Harlem’s “Outdoor University”; rethink the genealogy of the Black secular and freethinking traditions; reappraise the origins and pitfalls of the global Garvey movement; reinterrogate the mythology of the “Harlem Renaissance”; excavate an onyx crystalline layer in the historical geology of free love politics. In short\, to reimagine the horizons of the Black radical tradition.”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/kwoba_on_harrison/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,featured,Multi-session Classes,Reading Group,Summer 25,Video Available
ORGANIZER;CN="Political Strategy Study Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250630T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250630T183000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250313T184630Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250620T193944Z
UID:10008340-1751302800-1751308200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Reading Death of the Author by Nigeria's Nnedi Okorafor
DESCRIPTION:Next\, Monday June 30\, 5:00 pm   \nAfricanfuturism is concerned with visions of the future\, is interested in technology\, leaves the earth\, skews optimistic\, is centered on and predominantly written by people of African descent (black people) and it is rooted first and foremost in Africa. It’s less concerned with “what could have been” and more concerned with “what is and can/will be”. It acknowledges\, grapples with and carries “what has been.”   —NNedi Okorafor  \nDip into the growing realm of Africanfuturism reading NNedi Okorafor’s most recent novel\, Death of the Author.  Her science fiction successful and highly popular today\, Okorafor here provides both an introduction to Nigerian science fiction for those that need it and a reflection on its cultural meaning for those who have read Binti\, others from Okorfor\, or other Nigerian- or African-inspired visionary and speculative fiction today. \nDeath of the Author centers on a Nigerian woman setting out to write science fiction\, perhaps like Okorafor herself years and many novels back. The novel explores Zelu’s dilemmas and doubts\, her relationship with family and community\, the world of publishing  in ways that may reflect Okorfor’s past. It also features a story within the story about intelligent robots in a futuristic African context.  The two stories blend together in unusual and unexpected ways\, and fit well with concerns of politically conscious readers of fiction and science fiction today. \n  \n  \nJuly Book Selection: Severance\, by Ling Ma.\nWatch this page for more information. \nFor more than three years\, the MEP Science and Visionary Fiction reading group has explored topics of oppression and resistance\, history and science\, capitalist and post-capitalist future\, human and nonhuman intelligence. We read with an overall commitment\, To build a better future\, we have to envision it first (adapted from Walidah Imarisha). Reading science\, speculative and visionary fiction\, discussing it together\, and reading it politically\, offers one tool for envisioning a future worth building. \nGive it a try for your summer reading: drop in\, stay for a while\, and contribute to lively\, present day-centered discussions. Everyone has something to contribute\, whether you read this sort of thing regularly or have hardly ever given it a second thought. Convened by Steve Backman \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/reading-science-fiction-politically-summer-25/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Africanfuturism,Classes/Events,featured,Literature,Multi-session Classes,Science Fiction,Visionary Fiction
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/2025-05-30_12-17-26.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250629T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250629T180000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250528T145023Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250926T163231Z
UID:10008349-1751212800-1751220000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Aristotle\, Hegel\, Marx: A Philosophical Dialogue
DESCRIPTION:A video of this June 29\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nJoin us for a dialogue on philosophical themes featuring two authors of forthcoming books from Stanford University Press. Michael Lazarus is the author of Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle\, Hegel and Marx\, and Jensen Suther is the author of True Materialism: Hegelian Marxism and the Modernist Struggle for Freedom.  Lazarus situates Marx within a shared tradition of ethical inquiry\, placing him in close dialogue with Aristotle and Hegel. His book traces the ethical and political dimensions of Marx’s work missed by Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre\, two of the most profound critics of modern politics and ethics. Ultimately\, the book claims that Marx’s value-form theory is both a continuation of Aristotelian and Hegelian themes and at the same time his most distinctive theoretical achievement. In True Materialism\, Suther engages with three titans of literary modernism—Franz Kafka\, Thomas Mann\, and Samuel Beckett—to pursue not only an account of Hegel’s materialism but also a new critique of capitalist modernity. Breaking with the received view of Marx’s relation to German Idealism\, the book argues that the materialist critique of capitalist production is inseparable from Hegel’s idea that the demand for freedom is a demand for mutual recognition. \nMichael Lazarus is a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin University. \nJensen Suther received his PhD from Yale University and is currently a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/aristotle-hegel-marx/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Antiquity,communism,featured,Hegelianism,historical materialism,History,Marx,Marx and Hegel,Modernity,Philosophy,Philosophy of History,Science and Method,Seminars and Talks,Summer 25,Video Available
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/web-image.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250626T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250626T203000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250530T133233Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250620T134031Z
UID:10008350-1750964400-1750969800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Literary Echoes of Vietnam's 1975 Victory
DESCRIPTION:While the bombs were falling\, only a stone wouldn’t be terrified. If the Americans noticed movement in the forest\, they would eliminate the forest. Who knows how much money was spent? American taxpayers’ money. If a cluster of napalm bombs were dropped\, the jungle would turn into a sea of fire. Can you imagine a sea of fire? –Bao Ninh \nJoin with the MEP Literature Group to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1975 fall of Saigon\, bringing an end to the Vietnam War. This month\, we will read two volumes by Bao Ninh–The Sorrow of War and Hà Nôi at Midnight.  \nBorn in October 1952\, Bao Ninh experienced the effects of US bombing while growing up and later joined the “Glorious 27th Youth Brigade” at the age of 17. Bao Ninh’s writing offers restrained\, poignant\, yet powerful accounts of the “sorrow of war\,” the losses and grief of a generation who fought to unify the country. \nConvened by Jacqueline Cantwell and the MEP Literature Reading Group. Jacqueline Cantwell became involved with the MEP’s Literature Group because of her love of Victor Serge’s  novels. Participating in an MEP reading group led by Serge translator Richard Greeman eight years ago\, Jacqueline found a community of readers eager to be challenged by the ambitions of international writers devoted to the creative potential of political fiction. Since the death of Michael Lardner\, who hosted and organized the Literature Group for so many years\, Jacqueline has taken the lead in furthering the group’s goals of exploring international fiction and encouraging thoughtful conversation. \n(Bao Ninh quote from Ken Burns’ series The Vietnam War)
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/fall_of_saigon/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,featured,Literary Studies,Summer 25,War
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/81ckXikZEyL._SY522_.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250621T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250621T160000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250512T162452Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250926T163308Z
UID:10008347-1750514400-1750521600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Through the Lens of Spectacle: Panel 2\, Witness
DESCRIPTION:Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture\nA video of this June 21\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \n“The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains\, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep\,” Guy Debord declared in The Society of the Spectacle (1967): it is “a permanent opium war.” A half-century later\, the specter of the spectacle continues to haunt Marxist cultural studies. Do we still sleep in Debord’s spectacle\, a world of images\, infinitely consumable and reproducible\, devoid of meaning outside the hollow\, homogenous temporality of the commodity? Or have we entered an age where the audience is more appropriately conceived\, not as isolated onlookers\, but as a network of users–with unprecedented access to digital information while subjected to pervasive forms of control and surveillance? Does “a critical theory of the spectacle” still allow us to make sense of shared sensorial flashpoints\, past and present? And what does it mean to be a spectator–to regard\, to look\, to witness? In two linked panels\, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture proposes to track “the worldwide division of spectacular tasks” from lens manufacture to retail logistics\, stadiums to camptowns\, polar expeditions to spring festivals\, as well as revolutionary specters in novels and borders\, assassinations and squares.  \nThe second panel\, “Witness\,” asks how various spectral presences–of memory\, rebellion\, interiority\, history–demand us to account for spectacle’s reversals\, negations\, and reenactments in mass protests and counter-spectacles. Is the society of the spectacle necessarily also one of bearing witness?  In “Delineating Specters\,” Javier Porras Madero considers how the conjuration and nationalization of specters deepened the contradictions of border formation in the decades following the Mexican Revolution. In “Spectacles of Sympathy\,” Morgan E. Freeman analyzes human interest stories produced in the age of polar exploration to consider this genre as a vehicle for mythologies of the bourgeoisie. In “Spectacular Reversal\,” Damanpreet Pelia reflects on the spectacle of political violence by tracking the spectral presence of the bāz (from the Persian for hawk) in the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Satwant Singh and Beant Singh in 1984. In “The Spectacle of the Mass Demonstration\,” Michael Denning reflects on Marx’s account of mass demonstrations and universal suffrage in the wake of a decade of occupations: citizens in the streets and elected populists as the religion of everyday life. In “Detouring the US Military Camptown\,” Madeleine Han explores tourism as memory work toward remembering the US military’s legacy and ongoing occupation of Korea. \nThe Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture is an interdisciplinary cultural studies research collective that has been practicing at Yale University since 2003. Over the years\, we have presented our work at the Left Forum\, Historical Materialism\, the Marxist Education Project\, Occupy Boston\, and the World Social Forum. Past projects have appeared as “Going into Debt\,” online in Social Text‘s Periscope\, and as “Spaces and Times of Occupation” in Transforming Anthropology; a collective interview regarding “Matters of Life and Death” was published in Revue Française d’Études Américaines. Our current members are: Damanpreet Pelia (doctoral researcher in American Studies; research interests include religion\, sovereignty\, and empire); Henry Zhang (doctoral researcher in English; research focuses on the aesthetics of post-war memory and post-socialist transition in East Asia and its diaspora during the long cold war); Jane Zhang (doctoral researcher in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies; research focuses on the intersecting history of medicine\, consumer culture\, and notions of selfhood); Javier Porras Madero (doctoral researcher in Latin American history; research focuses on revolution and border formation); Jess Cruz (doctoral researcher in History; research focuses on the history of Miami\, Florida as a center for the Latin American Right across the 1980s-1990s); Madeleine Han (doctoral researcher in American Studies; research focuses on US militarism\, cold war cultures\, and overlapping imperialisms in Asia); Michael Denning (professor of American Studies; research focuses on labor\, critical theory\, and social movements); Morgan E. Freeman (doctoral researcher in American Studies; her research focuses on the contemporary art and visual cultures of Black and Native practitioners as it relates to belonging and place specificity); Sofia Cutler (doctoral researcher in American Studies; research traces the cultural and political history of last-mile delivery–or the last-leg of a product’s long journey across supply chains to a customer’s front door; and Suvij Sudershan (doctoral researcher in English and Film; research focuses on 19th and 20th century global anglophone\, francophone\, and South Asian vernacular literature\, the development of the novel\, ideas of realism and modernism\, and the depiction of peasant revolt and rural modernization).
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/yale-wggc-2025-2/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Alienation,American Imperialism,Art and politics,Asia,Colonialism,Critical Theory,Cultural Resistance,featured,Globalization,Imperialism,Marxisms,Modernity,Political Economy,Seminars and Talks,Spring 25,Urbanism,Video Available
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/spectacle-denning-crop2.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250615T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250615T160000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250512T162306Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250926T162901Z
UID:10008346-1749996000-1750003200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Through the Lens of Spectacle: Panel 1\, Oversight
DESCRIPTION:Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture\nA video of this June 15\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \n“The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains\, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep\,” Guy Debord declared in The Society of the Spectacle (1967): it is “a permanent opium war.” A half-century later\, the specter of the spectacle continues to haunt Marxist cultural studies. Do we still sleep in Debord’s spectacle\, a world of images\, infinitely consumable and reproducible\, devoid of meaning outside the hollow\, homogenous temporality of the commodity? Or have we entered an age where the audience is more appropriately conceived\, not as isolated onlookers\, but as a network of users–with unprecedented access to digital information while subjected to pervasive forms of control and surveillance? Does “a critical theory of the spectacle” still allow us to make sense of shared sensorial flashpoints\, past and present? And what does it mean to be a spectator–to regard\, to look\, to witness? In two linked panels\, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture proposes to track “the worldwide division of spectacular tasks” from lens manufacture to retail logistics\, stadiums to camptowns\, polar expeditions to spring festivals\, as well as revolutionary specters in novels and borders\, assassinations and squares.  \nThe first panel\, “Oversight\,” considers the dual meanings of oversight: as surveillance – “watching over” – and as that which is missed – “overlooked.” In “That Superficial\, Theatric Sense\,” Suvij Sudershan opens by exploring the resonances of spectacle and speculation in reflections on revolutions from Edmund Burke to Lukács. In “Roving Eyes: The Stereoscopic Vision of War\,” Jane Zhang examines the production and marketing of optical lens to offer an alternative history of stereoscopic vision. In a pre-history of our contemporary era of Amazon last-mile delivery and e-commerce\, “From Errand to Spectacle\,” Sofia Cutler follows the delivery drivers who serviced elite white women shopping at early 20th-century department stores to show how their labor transformed shopping. In “Vita Contemplativa: Beijing Coma and China’s Modern Constitution\,” Henry Zhang explores Ma Jian’s anatomy of the student movement and its aftermath. In “Arenas of Conflict” Jess Cruz traces the unexpected uses of Miami’s stadiums and their links to the city’s multigenerational devotion to anti-communism and transnational right-wing politics. \nThe Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture is an interdisciplinary cultural studies research collective that has been practicing at Yale University since 2003. Over the years\, we have presented our work at the Left Forum\, Historical Materialism\, the Marxist Education Project\, Occupy Boston\, and the World Social Forum. Past projects have appeared as “Going into Debt\,” online in Social Text‘s Periscope\, and as “Spaces and Times of Occupation” in Transforming Anthropology; a collective interview regarding “Matters of Life and Death” was published in Revue Française d’Études Américaines. Our current members are: Damanpreet Pelia (doctoral researcher in American Studies; research interests include religion\, sovereignty\, and empire); Henry Zhang (doctoral researcher in English; research focuses on the aesthetics of post-war memory and post-socialist transition in East Asia and its diaspora during the long cold war); Jane Zhang (doctoral researcher in Comparative Literature and Film & Media Studies; research focuses on the intersecting history of medicine\, consumer culture\, and notions of selfhood); Javier Porras Madero (doctoral researcher in Latin American history; research focuses on revolution and border formation); Jess Cruz (doctoral researcher in History; research focuses on the history of Miami\, Florida as a center for the Latin American Right across the 1980s-1990s); Madeleine Han (doctoral researcher in American Studies; research focuses on US militarism\, cold war cultures\, and overlapping imperialisms in Asia); Michael Denning (professor of American Studies; research focuses on labor\, critical theory\, and social movements); Morgan E. Freeman (doctoral researcher in American Studies; her research focuses on the contemporary art and visual cultures of Black and Native practitioners as it relates to belonging and place specificity); Sofia Cutler (doctoral researcher in American Studies; research traces the cultural and political history of last-mile delivery–or the last-leg of a product’s long journey across supply chains to a customer’s front door; and Suvij Sudershan (doctoral researcher in English and Film; research focuses on 19th and 20th century global anglophone\, francophone\, and South Asian vernacular literature\, the development of the novel\, ideas of realism and modernism\, and the depiction of peasant revolt and rural modernization).
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/yale-wggc-2025-1/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Alienation,American Imperialism,Art and politics,Asia,Colonialism,Critical Theory,Cultural Resistance,featured,Globalization,Imperialism,Marxisms,Modernity,Political Economy,Seminars and Talks,Spring 25,Urbanism,Video Available
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/spectacle-denning-crop.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250517T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250517T160000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250422T152837Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250926T162308Z
UID:10008345-1747490400-1747497600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:'Roses for Gramsci' with Andy Merrifield
DESCRIPTION:A video of this May 17\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nAuthor Andy Merrifield presents Roses for Gramsci\, a remarkable personal journey through the life and writings of the great Sardinian Marxist\, Antonio Gramsci. \nIn the summer of 2023\, Merrifield and his family move from the UK to Rome to begin a new life. Soon after his arrival\, the author visits Gramsci’s grave and decides to take a volunteer position helping to maintain the cemetery. At the Non-Catholic Cemetery\, home also to the great Romantics\, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats\, he keeps a watchful eye on Gramsci’s tombstone\, talking to some of his visitors\, admiring the roses and notes that Gramsci’s guests leave\, and communing with the sentinel cat that keeps watch near the gravesite. Thus begins Merrifield’s deep dive into Gramsci’s life almost a century after his death. \nThe result is a stunning portrait that offers fresh insights into nearly every aspect of Gramsci’s often tortured existence: a childhood scarred by severe health problems; his grasp of the culture of workers and peasants; his growing understanding of political economy; his friendship with the economist Piero Sraffa; his frustration trying to communicate with and be father to the son he never saw; his generosity and kindness. Above all\, Merrifield illuminates how Gramsci kept his humanity\, suffering horribly in prison while writing a revolutionary classic\, The Prison Notebooks. Personal\, compassionate\, moving—and illustrated with the author’s photographs —Merrifield revives both the legacy and meaning of Gramsci’s work and the dying art of belles lettres. Roses for Gramsci is an evocative and indelible book. \nAndy Merrifield is an independent scholar and author of a dozen books including\, most recently\, Beyond Plague Urbanism and Marx\, Dead and Alive: Reading “Capital” in Precarious Times. He has written numerous articles\, essays and reviews appearing in Monthly Review\, The Nation\, Harper’s Magazine\, New Left Review\, The Guardian\, Literary Hub\, Jacobin\, and Dissent. He is a prolific writer about urbanism\, political theory and literature.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/roses-for-gramsci/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Anti-capitalist Literature,Class,communism,Cultural Resistance,featured,Fordism,Gramsci,Hegemony,historical materialism,History,Intro to Marxism,Italian history,Late Capital and Fascism,Poetry,Political Economy,Radical Literature,Seminars and Talks,Socialism,Spring 25,Video Available
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/webp:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/tomba_gramsci-2.webp
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250326T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250326T203000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20250222T183359Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250327T152213Z
UID:10008336-1743012000-1743021000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:'Citizen Marx' with author Bruno Leipold
DESCRIPTION:A video of this March 26\, 2025\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nAs some of the most powerful capitalists in history are openly disavowing political democracy and calling for the unbridled rule of private wealth\, now is a good time to revisit Karl Marx’s revolutionary republicanism and his ideas about political power and social classes. In his recently published Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought\, Bruno Leipold argues that Karl Marx’s thinking was deeply informed by republicanism. Challenging common depictions of Marx that downplay or ignore his commitment to politics\, democracy\, and freedom\, Leipold shows that Marx viewed democratic political institutions as crucial to overcoming the social unfreedom and domination of capitalism.  \nPlacing Marx’s republican communism in its historical context—but not consigning him to that context—Leipold traces Marx’s shifting relationship to republicanism across three broad periods. First\, Marx began his political life as a republican committed to a democratic republic in which citizens held active popular sovereignty. Second\, he transitioned to communism\, criticizing republicanism but incorporating the republican opposition to arbitrary power into his social critiques. He argued that although a democratic republic was not sufficient for emancipation\, it was necessary for it. Third\, spurred by the events of the Paris Commune of 1871\, he came to view popular control in representation and public administration as essential to the realization of communism. Leipold shows how Marx positioned his republican communism to displace both antipolitical socialism and anticommunist republicanism. One of Marx’s great contributions\, Leipold suggests\, was to place politics (and especially democratic politics) at the heart of socialism. \nBruno Leipold is a fellow in political theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science.\nHe is the coeditor of Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition’s Popular Heritage.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/citizen-marx-bruno-leipold/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Anarchism,Capital vs. Labor,communism,England,featured,France,History,Intro to Marxism,Marx,Multi-session Classes,Philosophy,Political Strategy,Reading Group,Republicanism,Revolutions,Social Democracy,Winter 25
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/WebImageCommuneCover.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250119T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250119T123000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20240503T145434Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250114T174138Z
UID:10007985-1737284400-1737289800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Reading Gramsci for Today's Movements
DESCRIPTION:Sundays at 11 am ET \nAn ongoing study group on the Prison Notebooks and other works of Antonio Gramsci. We explore Gramsci’s themes and concepts\, including state-civil society relations\, historical bloc\, hegemony\, spontaneity\, strategy and tactic\, and language. We follow Gramsci’s philological method\, addressing such areas as linguistics\, cinema\, critical theory\, literature\, journalism\, comics\, animation\, plastic arts\, mass media and Machiavellian political studies. We draw on Iran’s Woman\, Life\, Freedom movement and its documentary evidence\, along with other shared historical movements\, experiences and cultures in U.S.\, Iran and worldwide\, towards change and “What-ought-to-be.” \nNo prior knowledge of Gramsci is required. Session contributors lead the discussions on passages from Gramsci’s works and bring their own experiences\, philosophies and scholarship to our readings.  RSVP below if you wish to attend and we will send you the Zoom link. A suggested donation of $50 or whatever amount you can afford is welcome and appreciated. \n\nConvened by Piruz Alemi. Piruz has a PhD in Political Economy and an MFA in Documentary Film Making from City University of New York (CUNY). Piruz is an independent scholar-activist in Gramsci’s work and cultural studies\, with a focus on the common struggle of politics of race in the U.S. and gender segregation in Iran and the wider region.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/reading-gramsci-for-todays-movements-spring-2024/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,featured,Iran,Multi-session Classes,Political Strategy,Winter 25
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Iran-Pictures-912x513-1.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250108T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250108T203000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20241211T223321Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250109T193820Z
UID:10008327-1736362800-1736368200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Reading Capital in an Age of Climate Change
DESCRIPTION:A recording of this January 8\, 2025\, event is available on YouTube. \nWhile there is a robust and exploding literature on capitalism as the root cause of climate change\, few have systematically explored Karl Marx’s most important finished work – Volume 1 of Capital – to bring to light the climate repercussions of capital’s “laws of motion.” Volume 1 is of special importance to a Marxist climate politics given the centrality of production in causing climate change itself. Matt Huber highlights the relevance to the climate crisis of key concepts such as value\, the hidden abode of production\, surplus-value\, the accumulation of capital\, primitive accumulation\, and the expropriation of the expropriators.  \nMatt Huber is Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University and the author of two books\, Climate Change as Class War and Lifeblood: Oil\, Freedom\, and the Forces of Capital.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-climate-change/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Accumulation of Capital,Capital Studies,Capital vs. Labor,Climate Change,Crisis,Ecosocialism,Extractivism,featured,Intro to Marxism,Marx,Political Economy,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/air-air-pollution-climate-change-221012.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241214T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241214T160000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20241126T224849Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241223T211522Z
UID:10008326-1734184800-1734192000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Translating 'Capital' for the 21st Century
DESCRIPTION:A recording of this December 14\, 2024\, event is available on YouTube. \nThe appearance of a new English-language edition of Marx’s Capital\, Volume I\, translated by Paul Reitter and edited by Paul North and Paul Reitter\, has been a momentous occasion. Join a conversation with Reitter and noted Marx scholar Michael Heinrich on the challenges of translating Marx for 21st century readers\, the weaknesses and strengths of earlier translations\, and the ways the new edition can help us understand Marx’s analyses of capital and value. \nPaul Reitter is Professor of Germanic languages and literatures at The Ohio State University\, where his scholarship focuses on German-Jewish culture and the history of higher education. He is the author of The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe; On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred\, and Bambi’s Jewish Roots: Essays on German-Jewish Culture. \nMichael Heinrich served on the Editorial Board for the new edition of Capital. He taught economics in Berlin and was managing editor of PROKLA: Journal for Critical Social Science. He is the author of a number of books on Marx and Capital\, including An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital\, Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society\, and The Science of Value: Marx’s Critique of Political Economy between Scientific Revolution and Classical Tradition.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/translating-capital/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:Accumulation of Capital,Capital Studies,Das Kapital,Engels,Fall24,featured,Intro to Marxism,Literary Studies,Marx,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/web-banner-2.png
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241126T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241126T143000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20240829T205940Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250221T170750Z
UID:10008311-1732626000-1732631400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:AI versus Labor: Luddism and Beyond
DESCRIPTION:Weekly sessions on Tuesdays at 1 pm through December 2024 \nIs Artificial Intelligence (AI\, sic) really the dire threat to the future of humanity as even some of its proponents claim\, or is it a more mundane and familiar threat to working people who face loss of their livelihoods and/or further speed-up and alienation? The entire history of industrial capitalism is punctuated by recurring waves of automation to reduce labor costs and turnover time\, each time provoking strong resistance by the affected workforce. This reading group will probe the history both of AI and computer technology specifically and of working-class resistance to capitalist automation in general. In eight weekly sessions we will read\, discuss\, and critique two recent works: Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job\, by Gavin Mueller; and The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence\, by Matteo Pasquinelli. Both are available in paper and eBook format from the publisher\, Verso Books. Additional reading selections will be provided in PDF format. \nFacilitated by Fred Murphy. Fred has led numerous study groups on ecosocialism\, science and technology\, the history of capitalism\, and Latin American politics at the Marxist Education Project since 2015. He studied and taught historical sociology at the New School for Social Research. \nThere is no fee for this eight-week online reading group – RSVP below if you wish to attend and we will send you the Zoom link. A suggested donation of $50 or whatever amount you can afford is welcome and appreciated.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ai-versus-labor-luddism-and-beyond/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Accumulation of Capital,Alienation,Artificial Intelligence AI,automation,Capital Studies,Capital vs. Labor,Class,Class and Gender,Fall24,featured,Gender,History,Labor History,Labor Process,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Precarity,Reading Group,Science and Technology,Solidarity,Women
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/WebImageLarge.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241120T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241120T210000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20241031T191423Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241128T000424Z
UID:10008323-1732129200-1732136400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Prime Competitor: Understanding Amazon’s Market Power
DESCRIPTION:A recording of this November 20\, 2024\, event is available on our YouTube channel. \nStephen Maher and Scott Aquanno present an innovative analysis of Amazon’s market power\, drawing on major themes from Marx’s Capital\, volume 2. In a recent report prepared for Amazon Worker Solidarity\, they challenge understandings of “monopoly” common in mainstream economics as well as among sections of the left. \nAmazon’s “bigness” and lack of a direct competitor would seem to suggest that it should be considered a monopoly. And yet\, far from exhibiting the tell-tale signs of increasing monopoly prices\, inefficiency\, and technological stagnation\, Amazon has engaged in cutthroat price competition\, built a highly efficient and technologically advanced logistics system\, and unleashed competitive forces whose effects have reverberated across the retail sector and beyond. Moreover\, Amazon’s distinct vertically integrated structure\, competing across a range of sectors including retail\, e-commerce\, logistics\, online search engines\, and media entertainment – each dominated by large firms – suggests that today’s giant corporations are not significantly encumbered by barriers to entry. \nStephen Maher is Assistant Professor of Economics at SUNY Cortland\, and Co-Editor of the Socialist Register. With Scott Aquanno he co-authored The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock (Verso\, 2024). Steve is also the author of Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power (Palgrave\, 2022). \nScott Aquanno is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ontario Tech University\, and a Visiting Associate at the Global Labour Research Centre at York University. With Stephen Maher he co-authored The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock (Verso\, 2024). Scott is also the author of Crisis of Risk: Subprime Debt and US Financial Power from 1944 to Present (Edward Elgar\, 2021).
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/amazon-market-power/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:_Seasons,Accumulation of Capital,Capital Studies,Das Kapital,Fall24,featured,Intro to Marxism,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/AmazonTrucks.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241106T200000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20241013T150047Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241104T235015Z
UID:10008322-1730917800-1730923200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Conversations on the US Elections - What happens next?
DESCRIPTION:Join us online on Wednesday\, November 6 at 6:30 pm US ET for a first-impressions conversation on whatever results are known of the 2024 US elections. We will not know everything; many things will play out over the months that follow. We will know some things that have already taken shape. We can ask what will governing look like\, what new shapes may fascism take\, what directions will capitalism take\, and how resistance will evolve. What does the election mean for climate struggle\, Palestine solidarity\, reproductive freedom\, challenging the carceral state? \nRecent MEP study groups and events have taken on these and related questions. We will bring those studies to bear on these questions\, and bring to bear your participation in these struggles as well. \nJoin us for this open-ended conversation about the evolving US political conjuncture now shaping the November elections. We will also introduce a new study group beginning in November that will examine the historical roots of American fascism to better understand its threat today and the work that lies ahead. \nPlease RSVP below and we will send you a Zoom link to join the conversation.\nA donation of $5 or more will help support the work of the MEP. \nHere are some items we’ve run across about the elections and the present moment which you might find useful.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/conversations-on-the-us-elections-what-happens-next/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,featured
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024-demonstration.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241020T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241020T153000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20240919T140042Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241021T150015Z
UID:10008318-1729432800-1729438200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Book Talk: Liberating Abortion
DESCRIPTION:A recording of this October 20\, 2024\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nRegina Mahone presents Liberating Abortion\, a galvanizing history recentering people of color to put forth a timely argument that we must liberate abortion for all. In their book Mahone and co-author Renee Bracey Sherman illustrate the long racist history that brought us to this moment\, uncover the hidden figures who laid the foundations that activists and storytellers are building on today\, and explain how abortion has been and remains essential to the health of our communities. Liberating Abortion takes us back to the basics of sex education\, detailing the traditions of abortion over centuries\, while examining how society makes us feel about our experiences. The book presents rigorous research\, never-before-heard stories\, and eye-opening interviews with over 50 people of color who’ve had abortions – including activists\, actresses\, television writers\, politicians\, and the two Black members of Jane\, the Chicago feminist service that provided abortions before Roe. With poignant storytelling and precise analysis\, Liberating Abortion will change how you think about abortion forever. \nRegina Mahone is a writer and editor whose work explores the intersections between race\, class\, and reproductive rights. A senior editor at The Nation\, she also runs Repro Nation\, a monthly newsletter about global efforts to protect reproductive freedom. With Renee Bracey Sherman she co-hosts the podcast The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion from The Meteor. Regina has written for publications including Cosmopolitan\, Elle\, Rewire News Group\, Romper\, The Nation\, and Truthout. She lives in New Jersey with her partner and two children. \nLiberating Abortion will be released on October 1 and is available for pre-order at liberatingabortion.org.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/book-talk-liberating-abortion/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:_Seasons,Abortion,African American History,Class and Gender,Classes/Events,Fall24,featured,Gender,Race and Class,Seminars and Talks,Women
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/LiberatingAbortion-website.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241013T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241013T153000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20240922T184357Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241021T145935Z
UID:10008319-1728828000-1728833400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Book Talk: On the History of Capitalist 'Reforms'
DESCRIPTION:A recording of this October 13\, 2024\, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. \nGiampaolo Conte presents A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms\, just published by Routledge. Since the recent financial crises\, the expression “liberal reform” has come to evoke austerity and economic malaise\, especially for the working classes and a segment of the middle class. Conte’s historical research demonstrates that the chief purpose of such reforms has been to integrate semi-peripheral states into the capitalist world-economy. Rules\, institutions\, attitudes\, and procedures are imposed in accord with the economic and political interests of capitalist élites and hegemonic states – first by Britain\, then by the United States. In all situations\, the velvet glove barely conceals the armored fist. The goals and methods – more or less the same today as 300 years ago – promote the ongoing dissolution of traditional societies in the peripheries of the contemporary world. \n“A fascinating account of state debt as a mechanism in international relations forcing liberal reforms on the capitalist periphery\, doing away with ways of social life in conflict with the requirements of modern capital formation. Contains striking historical material from countries like Egypt and China during Polanyi’s Long Nineteenth Century.” – Wolfgang Streeck\, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies \nGiampaolo Conte teaches in Department of Philosophy\, Communication and Performing Arts at the University of Rome 3. He is a Research Associate of ISEM-CNR\, and editorial assistant for The Journal of European Economic History.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/book-talk-on-the-history-of-capitalist-reforms/
LOCATION:Recording available on YouTube
CATEGORIES:_Seasons,Accumulation of Capital,American Imperialism,Anti-colonialism,Asia,British Imperialism,Classes/Events,Colonialism,Fall24,featured,History,Imperialism,Modernity,Neoliberal Authoritarianism,Political Economy,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/conte-web.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240917T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240917T200000
DTSTAMP:20260614T035915
CREATED:20240906T152921Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240912T185216Z
UID:10008314-1726597800-1726603200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Conversations on the US Elections
DESCRIPTION:Join us online on Tuesday\, September 17 at 6:30 pm US ET for an open-ended conversation about the evolving US political conjuncture now shaping the November elections. Drawing on our recent study of political strategy and fascism\, we will assess the contending social and political forces in the US election campaign and consider the various approaches put forward by currents on the American left. \nPlease RSVP below and we will send you a Zoom link to join the conversation.\nA donation of $5 or more will help support the work of the MEP. \nHere are some items we’ve run across about the elections and the present moment which you might find useful. \nWatch for an announcement for the next elections discussion on Tuesday\, October 15. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/mep-elections-discussion-2/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,featured
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/2024-demonstration.png
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END:VCALENDAR