June 2019
Capital Crisis: 2008 Global Slump
A decade has passed but the crisis is not over. Indeed we might even say that we are only beginning to see the effects of this greatest crisis of capitalism: the rise of anti neo-liberal populism of the right and left in Trump and Sanders, Brexit, extreme austerity, all the labor and social movements such as the teachers movement in the US and the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France and the deepening crisis in the Middle East. The ruling class has regrouped and regained its arrogance, continuing their political and economic assault imposing ever deeper social wage cuts while ideologically taking aim at hard won democratic and civil rights. It remains important for us to understand the underlying causes within this late stage of capitalist development that led to the 2008 crisis so that we of the working classes develop our capacity to effectively take on the political, ideological and economic challenges we are facing now and in the struggles ahead for a better life for all.
Find out more »A Spring Fever of World Literature
Four writers (John Berger, China Miéville, Arundathi Roy and Chris Abani) who have provided us with an array of work to counter the despair of late capital during this period when the scales are weighted far more towards barbarity and continual degradation of our biosphere, than towards what should be an equally shared planet by all who inhabit it. Please join us for close readings and discussions of works spanning the last century and much of the globe.
Find out more »July 2019
A Summer of Further Discontent: Noir Fiction and the City
This summer our noir group will visit our old stomping grounds of Los Angeles but will begin our summer of more discontent with Narcopolis, set in Mumbai, then after two stops in L.A. go off to Glasgow before dipping south to finish our summer in Paris with the soon-to-be-published Nada.
Find out more »September 2019
Les Temps Modernes: The Early Decades
This class will examine the first decades of its existence, when such important works as Sartre’s What is Literature appeared in it, as well as the first installments of Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. It will focus on its political positions, as Sartre first attempted to set up a third-way party...
Find out more »Forewarned is Forearmed: Graphic Novels in Late Capitalism
The innocent and marginalized that seem destined to be lost in the history of a world cold to their existence and beyond their ability to affect, would get their days back and the publishing world had an explosion of creative expression by some of the biggest names in comic book history.The Pulitzer Prize winning Maus by Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller’s gritty The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore’s prophetic V for Vendetta, Will Eisner’s semi-biographical A Contract with God and the grim post-nuclear When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs are some of the books this forward-looking and exciting 8-week class will read, consider and discuss.
Find out more »