2020 marks the centenary of the foundation of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and the bicentenary of the birth of Karl Marx’s lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels. And of course, anniversaries means conferences. The University of Brighton are hosting a conference on Engels in Eastbourne on 23 and 24 June 2020. Later on this year, on 18 and 19 September 2020, the People’s History Museum in Manchester is hosting a conference, in conjunction with Socialist History, Twentieth Century Communism and the CPGB Archive Trust, on Workers of the world? The Communist Party of Great Britain as a global party. A call for papers for the CPGB conference has been launched.
Archive for the 'news' Category
02
Mar
20
anniversaries, conferences…
The People’s History? conference website has been updated with details of the programme and papers. The conference will take place at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 February. The site will be updated periodically as we get closer to the event….
26
Nov
19
People’s History? Radical Historiography and the Left in the Twentieth Century – call for papers
Conference on Saturday and Sunday, 15 and 16 February 2020
Venue: School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK
Organised and hosted by UEA School of History in conjunction with the journal Socialist History and the Institute of Working Class History, Chicago.
History has always played a crucial role in the making of the modern left, both in Britain and around the world, providing a vital tool for theoretical rationale, social critique and direct action. Whilst offering an important source of intellectual stimulus, it has equally been the cause of hot debate, controversy and division, never more so than during the twentieth century. Over the course of those ten tumultuous decades, history became the ground upon which the left struggled to define and redefine itself in response to dramatically changing times. Critique was, and continues to be, all-encompassing, from debates on historical interpretation, method, pedagogy and application, to questions addressing the very nature – or possibility – of historical knowledge itself.
This conference seeks to explore all aspects of the status and uses of history in modern left imagination.
We are seeking papers of 5000 to 10000 words to be presented at the conference. Conference themes may include, but are not limited to:
History, Marxism and international socialism
History, class and class consciousness
History, philosophy and critical theory
History, gender, race, sexuality
History and (post)colonialism
History and/as activism
History, pedagogy and empowerment
National and international histories
Party histories
History and the role of the historian as public intellectual
For further details and updates please visit the conference website on https://shspeopleshistory.wordpress.com. Proposals for papers and any enquiries should be submitted via the website or by e-mail to the organisers on shspeopleshistory@gmail.com. In view of the UCU industrial action currently underway, the deadline for submitting proposals has been extended to Monday 9 December 2019. We shall inform all applicants as to whether their proposals have been accepted as soon as possible after that date. The deadline for receiving completed papers from successful applicants will be Monday 3 February 2020. Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the journal Socialist History. Attendance at the conference for both presenters and audience will be free of charge, but we ask that anyone wishing to attend registers in advance.
The first draft version of the conference programme is now online on the conference website. Registration is still open via this link.
There is now a special WordPress site for this event: echoesofrevolution.wordpress.com, where the latest information about this event will be posted.
As the old European powers approached exhaustion in the Great War, a wave of revolutionary struggles broke out across the continent, from Ireland to Russia. Mass movements articulated class, social and national aspirations as states fragmented and empires, dynasties and rulers were toppled. But relations between these movements and their component parts were anything but simple. National claimants contested for control of disputed territories in the name of self-determination. Class and social movements struggled with one another over who should rule in the successor states, and in whose interests. These struggles left a lasting legacy which helped shape European politics for decades.
As a pivotal year in European history, 1918 begs comparison with other pivotal years, in particular 1848, in which many similar social and national aspirations came to the fore. This conference will look at and compare movements for radical social and political change of those revolutionary years. We are seeking papers of 5000 to 10000 words to be presented at the conference on any aspects of revolution, nationalism and socialism anywhere around the world during, around or across the years 1848 and 1918. Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the journal Socialist History. Attendance at the conference will be free of charge, but we ask that anyone wishing to attend registers in advance. Proposals for papers and any enquiries should be submitted to Francis King. E-mail: f.king@uea.ac.uk
Dates: Saturday and Sunday, 17 and 18 February 2018
Venue: School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK
Organised and hosted by UEA School of History in conjunction with the journal Socialist History and the Institute of Working Class History, Chicago.
Deadline for proposals for papers: 15 December 2017
FIFTEENTH ESSEX CONFERENCE ON LABOUR HISTORY
The Fifteenth Essex Conference on Labour History, jointly sponsored and organised by Labour Heritage and the Essex Labour Campaign Forum will take place at The Labour Hall, Collingwood Road, Witham, CM8 2EE, (adjacent to Witham railway station), from 10.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, 29th October, 2016.
The topics on the agenda include the historical role of Aneurin Bevan, relations with Ireland, the Poplar rates dispute and the life of a Labour activist in Essex.
The Conference is completely open and friends, relatives and acquaintances are welcome, whatever their political allegiances. Questions and other contributions will be invited from the floor, lunch will be provided by the Essex Labour Campaign Forum and the cost is included in the registration fee.
The registration fee is £8 per person (cheques payable to the Essex County Labour Party). Those not previously registered can pay at the door, provided there are places, but pre-booking is advisable – particularly for catering purposes.
CHARLES COCHRANE, Chair – Essex Labour Campaign Forum
STAN NEWENS, Chair – Labour Heritage. For details contact Stan on this e-mail address
Registration fee: £8.00 per person
PROGRAMME
10.30 – 11.00 a.m. Conference assembles (tea and coffee will be provided)
11.00 – 11.10 a.m. Chair’s opening remarks – Charles Cochrane, Chair, Essex Labour Campaign Forum
11.10 – 12.05 p.m. The Left in the mid-20th Century and the Role of Aneurin Bevan
Francis Beckett (Labour historian and author)
12.05 – 1.00 p.m. Ireland – the 1916 Rising and Social Progress
Ivan Gibbons (former Director of Irish Studies at St. Mary’s University Twickenham, and Director of the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith)
1.00 – 2.00 p.m. Lunch, arranged by the Essex Labour Campaign Forum.
2.00 – 2.45 p.m. George Lansbury and the 1921 Poplar Rates Dispute
Chris Sumner (George Lansbury Memorial Trust)
2.45 – 3.30 p.m. A Life in the Labour Movement
Stan Newens (former MP, MEP and Labour historian)
3.30 – 3.55 p.m. Discussion and suggestions
3.55 – 4.00 p.m. Conclusion of the Conference
Loyalties: An Interdisciplinary Seminar on British Communism.
The question of dual or contested loyalties has been a constant theme in the history of British communism. Much of existing research has centred on the political allegiances of communists who have occupied positions of influence in the military, or have been involved in espionage. Research in this field has been enriched by the availability of MI5 files, Soviet archives and personal memoir. However, the question of the loyalties of British communists has a much wider scope and significance, encompassing the dilemmas of intellectuals, changing personal and political identities and the balance between trade union activism and political priorities. In the background have often been tensions between the freedom of the artist and writer and their political commitments, the internationalist and anti-fascist allegiances in the context of war and pacifism, and the effects of the Cold War on work and family life.
Given the breadth of the loyalties question, this one day seminar, funded by The Open University’s Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance, was conceived with the idea of pushing out the boundaries of research to bring together historians, political scientists, intelligence experts and those working on biographical studies and life-writing. The seminar is intended to be a starting-point for further research and will focus initially on three main areas:
War, intelligence and espionage
British communists and Spain in the 1930s
Writers, intellectuals, artists.
The emphasis will be on short 10-15 minute contributions to maximise the time available. In addition to these three themes the two plenaries at the beginning and end of the day are intended to discuss further research opportunities.
Date: Friday 18 November. 9.30-16.00
Venue, Kellogg College, 62 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PN
For further details and to register please contact Dr Geoff Andrews: geoff.andrews@open.ac.uk
Call for Papers
Wars of Position: Marxism and Civil Society
International Conference, Manchester, UK, 8-10 June 2017
Key-note speakers
Jodi Dean, Professor of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York. Author of books including Crowds and Party (2016), The Communist Horizon (2011), Democracy and other Neoliberal Fantasies (2009)
Stathis Kouvelakis, Reader in Political Theory, King’s College, London and former member of Syriza’s Central Committee. Author of Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx (2003)
Kevin Morgan, Professor of Politics and Contemporary History, University of Manchester. Author of books including Bolshevism, Syndicalism and the General Strike: The Lost Internationalist World of A.A. Purcell (2013), Labour Legends and Russian Gold (2006), The Webbs and Soviet Communism (2006).
‘In Russia’, wrote Antonio Gramsci, ‘the State was everything’ and ‘civil society primordial’; in the highly-developed West, civil society formed ‘permanent fortifications’ which the revolutionary party would have to occupy and transform in order to take and hold power.
No Marxist parties in the West made a revolution. Historical analysis of their failure has been abundant, but insufficiently attentive to parties’ approaches to civil society in Gramsci’s sense (i.e. social practices and institutions outside the government, judiciary and repressive state apparatus). This international and interdisciplinary conference is at once historically grounded and attuned to contemporary debates on the Left. It brings together: analysis of the theory and practice of twentieth-century Marxist parties in relation to civil society; analysis of contemporary Left formations’ approaches to civil society; analysis of the ‘idea’ of communism today and the relevance or obsolescence of ‘the party’ as an organizational form in the twenty-first century.
Proposals are invited for twenty-minute papers and panels of three papers. Abstracts (250 words) should be emailed to warsofposition2017@manchester.ac.uk by 1/12/16. Conference interpreters may be available for delegates who wish to present in languages other than English (please e-mail the organisers). The conference will take place in Manchester’s People’s History Museum, an institution committed to archiving and chronicling the history of radical politics; some panels will discuss the challenges faced by such institutions today. Papers for the conference might address, but are not restricted to:
- History, civil society and the ‘idea of Communism’ debate (Badiou, Žižek, Dean et al)
- Civil society and political strategy in recent / contemporary Left formations (e.g. Podemos, Syriza, Five Star Movement, Die Linke, Parti de gauche)
- Theoretical debates in the Marxist tradition on ‘civil society’ (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Gramsci, Lukács, Althusser, Marcuse, Poulantzas et al)
- The struggle for ‘proletarian culture’ in the 1920s and after
- Communism, the nation and the Popular Fronts in the 1930s and 1940s
- New Lefts and communism
- ‘Anti-revisionism’ and cultural revolution
- Eurocommunism and civil society
- ‘Post-Marxism’
- Marxism, gender and the family
- Marxist parties and intellectuals/ education / science / religion / writing history/ the media / the family
- Marxism and the arts / the avant-garde / popular culture
- Marxist parties and their cultural institutions, publishing houses, publications and counter-hegemonic events
The conference is part of the AHRC-funded project, Wars of Position: Communism and Civil Society led by Dr Ben Harker at the University of Manchester:
http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/english/research/projects/wars-of-position/
It is run in collaboration with the People’s History Museum and the journal Twentieth Century Communism. The organisers intend to publish an edited collection based around the conference proceedings.
01
Aug
16
Teaching Russian Revolutionary History in the Centenary and Beyond: Sources, Approaches, Events
Teaching Russian Revolutionary History in the Centenary and Beyond: Sources, Approaches, Events
Location: University of Leicester
Date and Time: September 6, 2016. 10:00-13:00.
We are delighted to announce the following workshop, to be held at the University of Leicester on the morning of September 6, 2016 (10:00-13:00). The initiative is funded by the East Midlands Centre for Teaching History and Learning (EMC – http://historycentre.org/) and is organised by Dr. Sarah Badcock (University of Nottingham) and Dr. Zoe Knox (University of Leicester). Looking forward to the centenary of 1917, it will explore ways of bringing the Russian Revolution to life in the classroom. The workshop will be accessible and open both to specialists working and teaching directly on the Revolution and to scholars teaching broader modules touching on the Revolution.
The workshop aims to disseminate and develop best practice in teaching aspects of the Russian Revolution across the East Midlands. It will:
- bring together scholars researching and teaching revolutionary history to discuss latest research agendas and assess the state of the field;
- produce a critical teaching guide and bibliographic survey for teaching the Russian Revolution;
- share information on innovative teaching initiatives and public facing events relating to 1917.
The workshop will consist of short several presentations on research and teaching innovation in the field, followed by a structured discussion on teaching materials and methods. Confirmed speakers include:
- Sarah Badcock (Nottingham)
- Nick Baron (Nottingham)
- Alexandre Christoyannopoulos(Loughborough)
- Alistair Dickins (Manchester)
- Zoe Knox (Leicester)
- Paul Maddrell (Loughborough)
Limited funding is available to support the travel costs for attendees and lunch will be provided. Due to limited space, all potential workshop attendees are asked to register their interest to teaching1917@gmail.com by no later than midday on August 26, 2016.
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