Marxism in Culture

Marxism and the Visual Arts Now poster

The Marxism in Culture seminar was set up in 2002 in the aftermath of the large international conference on Marxism and the Visual Arts Now held at UCL in April of that year.  Speakers have included:  Caroline Arscott, David Cunningham, Angela Dimitrakaki, Carol Duncan, Richard Godden, Tom Gretton, Suman Gupta, Simon Jarvis, Stathis Kouvelakis, David Mabb, David Margolies, Stewart Martin, Fred Orton, Alex Potts, Adrian Rifkin, Mark Sanders, Fred Schwartz, Greg Sholette, Julian Stallabrass, Blake Stimson, James Van Dyke, Ben Watson, O.K. Werckmeister, and many more.  This seminar series was conceived to provide a forum for those committed to the continuing relevance of Marxism for cultural analysis.  Both "Marxism" and "culture" are conceived here in a broad sense.  We understand Marxism as an ongoing self-critical tradition, and correspondingly the critique of Marxism's own history and premises is part of the agenda.  "Culture" is intended to comprehend not only the traditional fine arts, but also aspects of popular culture such as film, popular musics, and fashion.  From this perspective, conventional distinctions between the avant-garde and the popular, the elite and the mass, the critical and the commercial are very much open for scrutiny.  All historical inquiry is theoretically grounded, self-consciously or not, and theoretical work in the Marxist tradition demands empirical verification.

We welcome contributions that are concerned primarily with principles and methods as well as those that focus on the interpretation of particular cultural practices, historical or contemporary.  As with all the best examples of Marxist work, we hope to provide a forum for analysis that while it looks to the past is also marked by an urgent sense of present realities.

Potential Contributors should contact:  Warren Carter, Department of History of Art, University College London, Gower Street, London  WC1E 6BT.

Programme for Summer 2013

Date Speaker Topic
Friday 10 May
 		Richard Braude (Birkbeck and Cambridge)
 Control and Rebellion in Gothic Architecture
Friday 24 May
 		Massimiliano Tomba (University of Padua)
 Roundtable discussion on Massimiliano Tomba's newly published Marx's Temporalities with Stathis Kouvelakis (King's College London) and Peter Osborne (Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University)
Friday 7 June
 		Kate Crehan (City University of New York)
 "Art" with a Capital "A" and the Practice of Community Art
Friday 21 June
 		Keston Sutherland (University of Sussex)
 T.B.A.

Programme for Spring 2013

Date Speaker Topic

Friday 8 February

Room 349

 Andy Murray (PhD Student, University College London)
 Mediate Foliate Heads: Symbolisms of Evil and the Long Christian Conversion

Friday 22 February

Room 349

 Reading Group
 Reading group on the Historical Novel in advance of the seminar on 8th March. The reading for this seminar will be available online at www.marxisminculture.org

Friday 8 March

Room 349

 Fiona Price (University of Chichester)
 The British Historical Novel before Scott and the post-French Revolution debate

Friday 22 March

Room 349

 Anke Gilleir (University of Leuven)
 "Anna Blume is Put to Death": The Reframing of Rosa Luxemburg in the German Avant-Garde

Programme for Autumn 2012

Date Speaker Topic

Friday 26 October

This will take place in the Torrington Room 104

 Warren Carter (University College London)
 The Dialectical Legacies of Radical Art History: Meyer Shapiro and German Aesthetic Debates in the 1930s and 1940s

Friday 02 November

This will take place in room 349

 Sean Bonney (independent scholar)
 'Of Damballah/and Engels': Revolutionary Strangeness in '60s Free Jazz

Friday 30 November

This will take place in Seminar Rooms 3 and 4, History of Art Department, University College London, 20 Gordon Square

 Karen Mirza and Brad Butler
 Screening of Deep State (2012) by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, made in collaboration with China Miéville

Friday 14 December

This will take place at the slightly later time of 6.30 in Bedford Room G37

 Andrew Thompson (independent scholar)
 Late Capitalist Dialectical Images

Organisers: Matthew Beaumont, Alan Bradshaw, Warren Carter, Gail Day, Steve Edwards, Larne Gogarty, Esther Leslie, David Mabb, Antigoni Memou, Nina Power, Dominic Rahtz, Pete Smith, Alberto Toscano.

The seminar meets four times a term.  All seminars start at 5.30pm, and are held in the Court Room (unless otherwise stated) at the Institute of Historical Research in Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU.

The seminar closes at 7.30pm and retires to a bar.

For further information, contact Warren Carter or Esther Leslie

Previous Years

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