The 2011 conference, “Marxism and Cultural Studies,”

Many accounts of the emergence and development of Cultural Studies accord a central place to Marxism, both as a body of knowledge and as an important ideological component of the New Left. The rediscovery of  the writings of Antonio Gramsci, George Luckacs, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno, among others, along with the formation of the 
Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies, led to a general renaissance of Marxist theory and cultural analysis, which in turn resulted in ground-breaking studies of working class culture, the political role of new social movements that were not class based, the power of ideology and mass culture in sustaining existing social relations, and critical analyses of state-authoritarianism. As Cultural Studies crossed the Atlantic and gained an institutional foothold in the United States,
some have feared that its engagement with Marxism has been diluted through an over emphasis on the subversive potentialities of mass media and consumer capitalism.

The 2011 conference, “Marxism and Cultural Studies,” will explore the role of Marxism in the field. Some questions that motivate this year’s conference are: How do we understand the relationship between the base and superstructure today? Does ideology critique still have an ongoing usefulness? Do globalization and the world recession require new
objects of study? To what extent does Marxism provide a utopian impulse for existing social movements? Do iterations of Cultural Studies in South Asia, Africa, Central and Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe retain a
commitment to Marxism and how is this work revitalizing the field more broadly? Does the Marxist imperative to
historicize challenge current paradigms of cultural analysis such as the “New Formalism”? What exactly does a historical materialist methodology enable? How do we articulate media analyses with questions of political economy, geo-politics, and activism? What is the role of the intellectual and Cultural Studies more generally?

Panelists will address some of these issues during three sessions:

“Marxism and Cultural Analysis,” “Marxism and Social Movements,” and “Marxism and History.” Invited speakers include:  Dianne Feeley (UAW and Against the Current) Laura E. Lyons (University of Hawai’i), Ursula McTaggart (Wilmington College), and Janet Sorensen (University of California, Berkeley). S. Charusheela (University of Nevada) will deliver the keynote address which will consider the “return” to Marx and the political limitations of a too-easy embrace of economic determinism for cultural analyses.
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FRIDAY,
April 1 (Ernie Pyle Auditorium, Room 220)
4:00-6:00 pm; Opening
Keynote:
Delivered by S. Charusheela “Rethinking Marxism in Times of
Turmoil”

SATURDAY, April 2 in the Faculty Club on the Second Floor of
IMU
10:00 am-12:00pm; Panel I: Marxism and Cultural Analysis
1. Laura E.
Lyons "'I'd Like My Life Back': BP, Corporate Personhood
and the Intimate
Public Sphere"
2. Patrick Dove  "Muddying the Waters: The Politics of
Populism in
Peronist Argentina"
3. Lessie Frazier:"(Counter)Revolutionary
Cultures"
Moderator: Nick Williams

1:00 pm-3:00 pm; Panel II: Marxism
and Social Movements
(Faculty Club on the Second Floor of IMU)
1. Gardner
Bovington "What's class struggle got to do with it?  Social
mobilization and
framing"
2. Dianne Feeley "Building Feminist Consciousness in a Male
Workplace."
3. Jeff Gould "Marxism and Christian Base Communities: Notes from

Morazan, El Salvador”
Moderator: Micol Siegel

3:15 pm--5:15 pm;
Panel III: Marxism and History
(Faculty Club on the Second Floor of
IMU)
1. Janet Sorenson TBA
2. Ursula McTaggart “Change as Code for Black
Radicalism: Barack Obama
and Right-Wing Charges of Socialism”
3. Matt
Guterl "Class Passing and Cosmopolitanism in the Age of
Globalization"
Moderator: Patrick Brantlinger