Roundtable discussion on Western European Communist Leaders

Roundtable discussion on Western European Communist Leaders: John Bulaitis on Maurice Thorez; Donald Sassoon on Palmiro Togliatti; Andrew Thorpe on Harry Pollitt. Discussants: Giuseppe Vatalaro, Stephen Hopkins.

Saturday 31 January 2009
Club Room, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1; 2.00-5.00p.m.
Admission £1.50
Nearest tube: Holborn.

Organised by the Socialist History Society.

A Man Between Two Worlds? Palmiro Togliatti, the PCI and the Making of Post-War Italy – Manchester

A Man Between Two Worlds? Palmiro Togliatti, the PCI and the Making of Post-War Italy

Professor Aldo Agosti (Turin)

University of Manchester, Samuel Alexander Building room A7, Friday 17 October, 3-5 p.m.

Further details from Kevin.Morgan@manchester.ac.uk

Download a promotional flyer for this event.

A Man Between Two Worlds? Palmiro Togliatti, the PCI and the Making of Post-War Italy – London

A Man Between Two Worlds? Palmiro Togliatti, the PCI and the Making of Post-War Italy

A roundtable discussion to mark the appearance in English of Professor Aldo Agosti’s biography of Palmiro Togliatti and featuring leading specialists in the field of modern Italian history:

• Tobias Abse
• Aldo Agosti
• Geoff Andrews
• Maud Bracke
• Carl Levy
• Linda Risso (chair)

To be held at : Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green, London EC1 (Farringdon tube station) 2-4 p.m., Tuesday 14 October.

ALL WELCOME!

Download a promotional flyer for the event.

Looking For Lukács symposium

Looking For Lukács: A symposium in the School of Social Science, Media and Cultural Studies, University of East London, June 25th 2008 1:00pm – 5:00pm, Room EB.G.11

In an era when the hegemony of capitalism within Western culture appears to be almost unchallengeable, can we afford to ignore one of the greatest critics of capitalism’s fundamental cultural processes? A range of recent and current work to be presented here has taken up the challenge of Györky Lukács, arguably the father of ‘Western Marxism’.

Speakers and Titles

Andrew Hemingway

Totality vs. Reification: The Significance of Romantic Anti-Capitalism in History and Class Consciousness

Andrew Hemingway is Professor in History of Art at University College London. His publications include Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956 (2002) and the edited volume Marxism and the History of Art: From William Morris to the New Left (2006).

Tim Hall

Materialism and Metaphysics: Lukács & Adorno

Tim Hall is senior lecturer in International Politics at the University of East London where he teaches courses on the history of political thought and contemporary political philosophy. He is the co-author of Theories of the Modern State: theories & ideologies (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) with Erika Cudworth and John McGovern and has written various articles and reviews on Critical Social Theory. He is currently working on a book on Adorno and Hegelian Marxism.

Timothy Bewes

How to Escape from Literature: Lukács, Cinema, and The Theory of the Novel

Timothy Bewes is Associate Professor at Brown University. He is the author of Cynicism and Postmodernity (1997) and Reification, or the Anxiety of Late Capitalism (2002), both published by Verso, and is currently working on a book called The Event of Shame: Literature after Colonialism.

Andy Fisher

Allan Sekula’s ‘Novelistic Fantasy’: Lukács, Aesthetic Totality and the Literary Problematisation of Photographic Form.

Andy Fisher is an artist and Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College. Most recent publication, ‘Beyond Barthes: Rethinking the Phenomenology of Photography’, Radical Philosophy, No. 148, March / April, 2008. Coeditor of Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century, eds. David Cunningham, Andrew Fisher and Sas Mays, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005.

Stewart Martin

The art of capital in Lukács

Stewart Martin is a member of the editorial collective, and reviews editor, of Radical Philosophy, and teaches philosophy and art at Middlesex University.

Attendance is free and open to all.

To register email Jeremy Gilbert: J.Gilbert@uel.ac.uk

For transport info: http://www.uel.ac.uk/ssmcs/about/location.htm

The Public Intellectual and the Left in the 21st Century

The Public Intellectual and the Left in the 21st Century:
A conference to celebrate Shelia Rowbotham’s intellectual and political contribution

Helena Kennedy, Peter McMylor, Shelia Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, Hilary Wainwright

Saturday 7th June 2008

1.45pm-6.00pm

Cross Street Chapel, Cross Street, Manchester M2 1NL (opposite Ann Street)

Admission free

Sponsored by the Lipman Miliban Trust; Sociology, Cultural Theory Institue and Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, University of Manchester

Eric Hobsbawm and Dai Williams In Conversation

To celebrate the Launch of the new biography Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale, The Raymond Williams Society present ‘Eric Hobsbawm and Dai Williams In Conversation: Welcomed by Merryn Williams’, on Saturday 10th May At 2pm at Birkbeck University London Room 532. To be followed by book signing and buffet in the student bar on the fourth floor extension.

For further details please contact Steve Woodhams [parmod.w@ntlworld.com]. Entry is free but places are limited so please contact Steve.

This biography of Raymond Williams reveals the intensely private and conflicted man behind such hugely influential critical works as Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution (1961), Keywords (1976) and Marxism and Literature (1977). With unlimited access to never-before-seen papers, Dai Smith shows how the making of the work for which Williams is famous was inextricably bound up with the relentless writing and rewriting of his fiction, both published and unpublished, which includes the Border Country trilogy.

Seminar: Communism And Changing Political Allegiance

Communism And Changing Political Allegiance: The Complex Lives of Activists

University of Leicester
(Ken Edwards Building, Seminar Room 528)

Friday 28 March 2008
10.30-4.30

Draft programme:

10-10.30am
Registration and Welcome

10.30-12pm
Francis KING (Socialist History Society), ‘Forty Years of Heresy: the intellectual odyssey of Vladimir Bazarov’

Peter ACKERS (Loughborough), ‘The Intellectual Formation of Professor Hugh Clegg: From Communism to social-democracy and industrial relations pluralism’

12-1.30pm
Reiner TOSSTORFF (Cardiff), ‘Alexander Dridzo-Lozovsky: the international leader by chance’

Christian HOGSBJERG (Leeds), ‘Trotsky’s Lieutenant: The Early Marxism of C.L.R. James’

1.30-2.30pm
Buffet Lunch

2.30-4pm
Neil REDFERN (Manchester Metropolitan), ‘Michael Shapiro: Dissident and Conformist’

Stephen HOPKINS (Leicester), ‘Jorge Semprun: A Spanish Red’s difficult relationship with communism’

Conference Registration: £10 (Includes tea/coffee and buffet lunch)

This is the third in a series of seminars devoted to European communist life-histories (the others took place at Manchester in March 2007, and at Glamorgan in September 2007). Further details available from S. Hopkins, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester; sh15@le.ac.uk.