I enjoy organizing and participating in collaborative spaces where folks can pursue shared questions and sharpen their analysis in discussion. I currently co-convene the Political Theory Research Group at the University of Birmingham and have worked with the Stuart Hall Archive Project on its 'Conjunctural Analysis Today' symposium. I started and ran the Critical Theory seminar at Oxford from 2018 to 2022.
Critical Theory Seminar
University of Oxford
The Critical Theory seminar brings a range of scholars engaged in social and political critique to Oxford once a week during the winter term. Critical theory offers a distinctive methodological and political problematic for political and social theorists. Its practitioners interrogate how social formations fail to live up to their own normative ideals. Critical Theorists disclose social pathologies, diagnose the sources of oppression, and point the way towards more emancipatory futures.
The seminar is an interdisciplinary space open to students of all levels and scholars from across a diverse range of disciplines. All are welcome. Past years' seminar schedules are available here (2018), here (2019), here (2020) and here (2022).
The Oxford Critical Theory seminar is now run by an excellent group of DPhil students at the University of Oxford, with support from the Department of Politics & International Relations. To join the Critical Theory mailing list, please send a blank email to critical.theory.seminar-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk
Thursdays*, Weeks 2 - 8
5:15 to 6:45 pm
Wharton Room, All Souls College
*There will be an additional Tuesday session in Week 7.*
Week 2 — Jan. 27
Jeannie Morefield (Oxford)
'Global Underworld: The Imaginative Geography of Liberalism'
Week 3 — Feb. 3
Lois McNay (Oxford)
Book discussion: The Gender of Critical Theory
Respondent: Liz Frazer (Oxford)
Week 4 — Feb. 10
Amy Allen (Penn State)
'Slavery, Work, and History: Du Bois's Black Marxism'
Week 5 — Feb. 17
Jean Khalfa (Cambridge)
"Fanon on Alienation and Identity"
Week 6 — Feb. 24
Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt)
*Postponed*
Week 7 — Tues., March 1
Nikolas Rose (ANU/UCL)
"Against mental health: speaking of suffering in the time of COVID"
*Moved to Trinity term.*
Week 7 — March 3
Koshka Duff (Nottingham)
'The death of the prison and other beautiful experiments'
Week 8 — March 10
Amelia Horgan (Essex)
'Critical Theory and Work'
Week 2 — May 3
5:15 pm at All Souls College
Hagar Kotef (SOAS)
'The colonizing self, or home and homelessness in Israel/Palestine'
Week 4 — Feb. 3
5:15 pm at Nuffield College
Nikolas Rose (ANU/UCL), Steffan Blayney (Sheffield), Jasper Friedrich (Oxford), and Lorna Finlayson (Essex)
Panel discussion: The Politics of Mental Health
Week 5 — Feb. 10
5:15 pm at New College
Cristina Beltrán (NYU)
'Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy'