Friends,
We invite you to participate in the upcoming conference at Harvard, Oct.
3-5, "The Global E. P. Thompson: Reflections on the Making of the English
Working Class after Fifty Years." We will be hosting a truly global
conversation among scholars, and we invite you to join us, either in person
or online.
We will be broadcasting live; please spread the word and tune-in, October
3-5th. The Broadcast will start at 4 PM EST on Thursday, October 3rd, and
conclude on Saturday October 5th at 1 PM, EST.
(
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/global-e-p-thompson-conference-harvard-un…
)
Broadcast viewers will be able to submit questions and participate via the
Ustream Channel.
Full Program: http://studyofcapitalism.harvard.edu/global-thompson-program<
http://studyofcapitalism.harvard.edu/global-thompson-program#.UjpSucabM…;
Follow the live broadcast ustream channel: http://bit.ly/18cpE73
All conference panels will take place in the Tsai Auditorium of the CGIS
South Building, located at the corner of Cambridge and Prescott Streets,
just northeast of Harvard Square.
We look forward to your participation!
________________________________
Fifty years ago E. P. Thompson published The Making of the English Working
Class, one of the most influential social history works ever. Its approach
to the history of common people, its arguments and its methods came to
influence several generations of historians and others all over the world.
To trace Thompson’s influences, and with it the larger story of the varied
approaches to social history that have come out of them, the Program on the
Study of Capitalism and the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at
Harvard University seek to initiate a global conversation among researchers
across the humanities and social sciences to reflect critically on
Thompson's impact on the writing of history and his enduring significance
for future research.
At a time of global economic crises, as scholarship returns to themes of
class, inequality and political economy with renewed interest, urgency, and
moral purpose, the fiftieth anniversary of the Making of the English
Working Class offers a welcome opportunity to both critically reflect on
Thompson's scholarship and consider the ways in which his ideas, methods
and commitments can still inspire intellectual frameworks and research
programs that speak to present global problems.
__________________________
DAY ONE:
Thursday, October 3
4:00 – 6:00 PM: Thompson and his Times
Madeleine Davis, Queen Mary, University of London, UK: “Edward Thompson's
ethics and Activism 1956-1963: reflections on the political formation of
The Making of the English Working Class”
Michael Merrill, Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies, SUNY, New
York: “What MakesMaking Marxist? E. P. Thompson and the Theory of the
English Working Class”
Tim Shenk, Columbia University, New York: “The Ends of History: E. P.
Thompson Writes the Apocalypse”
Comment: Alex Keyssar, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
6:30 – 8:30 PM
Opening Keynote Address
(space no longer available for this limited space dinner)
Cal Winslow, University of California Berkeley, California: “Tending the
Liberty Tree: Experience, Politics and History from Below”
________________________________
DAY TWO:
Friday, October 4
10:00 – 12:00 AM: Thompson and Theory
John Trumpbour, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School: “Edward P.
Thompson, Perry Anderson, and the Antinomies of British Marxism Revisited”
Jeffery Webber, Queen Mary, University of London, UK: “Reading E. P.
Thompson in the Andes”
Lisa Furchtgott, Yale, New Haven: “'That on-rolling fashion-machine:'
gender and the eschatological E.P. Thompson”
Comment: Norberto Ferraras
Noon – 1:00 PM: Lunch
1:00 – 3:00 PM: Thompson in the Global South
Jonathan Hyslop, Colgate University, New York: “The Practice and Politics
of Thompsonian Social History in South Africa, from the 1970s to the
present”
Y. Doğan Çetinkaya, Panteion University, Athens Greece: “E. P. Thompson in
the 'Orient': His Belated Impact on Young Scholars of Turkey during the
1990's”
Lucas Martín Poy Piñeiro, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina: “The
Making of Labor History: Tracing the Influence of E. P. Thompson in
Argentina”
Comment: John Womack, Harvard University
3:00 – 3:30 PM: Coffee Break
3:30 – 5:30 PM: Thompson in the Global North
Rudolf Kucera, Masaryk Institute and Archives, Czech Academy of Sciences,
Prague, Czech Republic: “Meeting the Hard Line: British Marxism, The Making
and the Communist Historiographies of East Central Europe”
Thomas Lindenberger, Center for Contemporary History, Potsdam, Germany: 'Of
historical relevance only? The German reception of The Making reassessed
from a (post) Cold War perspective'
Hideo Ichihashi, Saitama University, Tokyo, Japan: "E. P. Thompson and
Japanese Left Wing Intellectuals: Why Wasn’t His Major Work Translated for
40 Years?”
Melvyn Dubofsky, SUNY Binghamton, New York: “Edward Thompson: The Man, the
Scholar, the Activist, Personal Recollections”
Comment: Charlie Maier, Harvard University
________________________________
DAY THREE:
Saturday, October 5
8:30 – 10:30 AM: Moral Economy
Gabrielle Clark, European University Institute, Florence, Italy: “'Humbug'
or 'Human Good'?: E. P. Thompson, the Rule of Law, and Labor from The
Making to Neoliberal American Capitalism”
Kazuhiko Kondo, Rissho University, Tokyo, Japan: “'Moral Economy' retried
in digital archives”
Michael Ralph, NYU, New York: “Actuarial Time, Work-Discipline and
Industrial Capitalism; or, The Making of the American Working Class”
Nikos Potamianos, University of Crete, Greece: “Moral Economy? Popular
demands, liberalism and state intertervention in the struggle over
anti-profiteering laws in Greece, 1916-1925”
Comment: Vince Brown, Harvard University
10:30 – 11:00 AM: Coffee Break
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Class Formation
Anna Hájková, University of Warwick, UK: “The Bright Young Things of the
Holocaust: The Terezín ghetto as a society of inequalities”
Joseph Fronczak, Yale, New Haven: “The Making of the Global Left:
Thompsonian Political Formation and the Worldwide Sitdown Strike Movement
of 1936”
Cemil Boyraz, Istanbul Biligi University, Turkey: “Class in the Age of
Global Capitalism: The Case of Post-1980 Privatization in Turkey”
D. Parthasarathy, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India: “The
Poverty of (Marxist) Theory: Peasant Classes, Provincial Capital, and the
Crique of Globalization in India”
Comment: Michele Lamont, Harvard University
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM: Lunch
________________________________
Organizers
Rudi Batzell, PhD Candidate, History, Harvard University
Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of American History, Harvard University
Andrew Gordon, Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University
Gabriel Winant, PhD Candidate, History, Yale University
Conference Coordinator: Jessica Barnard, Weatherhead Initiative on Global
History, Harvard University
________________________________
Made possible by a Major Conference Grant from the Weatherhead Center for
International Affairs
Co-Sponsored by The Program on the Study of Capitalism and The Weatherhead
Initiative on Global History
With generous support from:
The Committee for African Studies; the David Rockefeller Center for Latin
American Studies; the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies; the South
Asia Institute; the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History;
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies
[Cross-posted, with thanks, from H-Labor]