Marx21

Historical Materialism Conference
York University, Toronto
May 13-16, 2010

Call for Papers

Following on the considerable success of the First North American Historical Materialism Conference in April 2007, attended by 400 people, we are pleased to issue a call for papers for our follow-up conference at York University, May 14-16, 2010.

The conference will take place against the backdrop of a profound destabilization of global capitalism alongside significant challenges for labour and social movements. Imperialist wars abound and culture has been drawn into the service of empire. Robust theorizations and critical innovations are needed.

In this context it is vital to develop the resources of historical materialism in addressing the pressing problems of the day and informing all forms of activism, including the intellectual. The conference seeks to combine rich development of historical materialist analysis with critical innovations in areas where such analysis has lagged. The organizers welcome presentations from scholars and activists that reflect the current state of theoretical work and activist mobilization. Themes include:

• Marxism and Philosophy
• Political Economy of Capitalism and the Global Crisis
• Gender, Sexuality and Social Reproduction
• Race, Empire and Resistance
• Ecology and the Environment
• Working Class and Social Movements
• Labour Processes and Class Relations
• Art, Marxism, and Everyday Life
• Revolutionary Experiences since 1848
• Fascism, Militarism, Fundamentalism
• State, Culture and Ideology
• Land, Food and Accumulation by Dispossession
• Marxism and the Urban Experience
• Theorizing Crises in Historical and Comparative Perspective

We welcome individual submissions as well as panel proposals. For individual papers, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words; for panel proposals send a 100 word panel abstract along with paper abstracts of up to 250 words. We appreciate your suggestions about which of the above themes your paper might suits, and also welcome papers beyond these themes. Proposals can be submitted by email until January 8, 2010 to torontohm@gmail.com

P.S. Some of you will have received invitations to a Historical Materialism conference in New York in January . We are delighted to see this initiative and will support it strongly. But that is a distinct, although complementary, event from the Toronto conference in May.

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