revolution100

Revolutions: A Conference

In the 100th anniversary year of the Russian Revolutions, our conference focuses on the theme of revolutions, including their widespread and widely varying causes, contexts, conditions and consequences.

"It will feature keynote addresses from four very accomplished speakers whose work is representative of the diverse features and geographies of revolutions past and present: Julia Buxton, Domenico Losurdo, Ruslan Dzarasov and Gong Yun. The conference will benefit greatly from the contributions of these scholars, as well as from the generous support of the following journals and institutions:

Capital and Class; Capitalism Socialism Nature; International Critical Thought; Marxism 21; Research in Political Economy; Review of African Political Economy; Third World Quarterly; World Review of Political Economy;

Centre of Asia Pacific Initiatives, Victoria; Gyeongsang University, South Korea; Centre for Global Studies, Victoria; Mayworks Festival; Association of United Ukrainian Canadians

There are many types of revolution, of course, but we are primarily interested in the often spectacular political, social or economic events that confront particular institutional, social and ideological regimes. The revolts of colonized, enslaved and indigenous peoples from Tyrone, Toussaint, Tupac and Tecumseh, through the revolutions which defined the west like the English and the French to today’s Bolivarian, Arab Spring, and colour revolutions, have transformed politics, state structures, economies, cultures and societies. Revolutions require imagination: ideologies motivate actors, events confound them and prompt new explanations. By some accounts, we are still living in age of revolutions; others question their possibility today.

“Revolutions” share a fraught history with the broader democratization of life in the modern world. They reshape the structures of colonialism and imperialism, patriarchy and racism. Theorists from both the left and right—a distinction, in itself, revolutionary in its origins—have made the promotion of, or reaction to, revolutions a central part of social and political thought. Attempts to contain or spread revolutionary ideologies and forces have played, and continued to play, pivotal roles in geopolitics.

Within this broad framework we invite considerations of past and present “Revolutions”, their causes, characters and consequences. We will, however, consider other revolutions (Scientific, technological, artistic etc.) in terms of their association with watershed moments in social, political or economic life.

We invite proposals for papers, panels and streams of panels any theme related to revolutions thus conceived. Possible themes include:

  • revolutions and counterrevolutions in comparative perspective;
  • revolutions in political, social and economic thought;
  • the political and geopolitical economy of revolutions;
  • the interaction of revolutions with gender, race and class
  • discussions of particular revolutionary events or related ideologies or people and
  • whether revolutions are possible today."

Conference

29. September 2017
1. October 2017, All Day
University of Manitoba
, Winnipeg, Canada