Marx and Contemporary Theory

Catalog description

This course is intended to familiarize graduate students with the intellectual history, background, and development of Marxist theory in relation to the contemporary literary and cultural-theoretical landscape. As the broad field through which numerous other directions in theory and research were formed, a knowledge of the Marxist tradition remains an essential backdrop to later developments - the analysis of modes of production, the sociology of labour, the politics of class formation, the developments and trends of postcolonial studies, the modern and contemporary forms of social thought, numerous currents of political thought, and so on. This course therefore fills a need for graduate students to familiarize themselves not only with the work of Marx, but also with central debates in twentieth century and postwar social theory. Rather than examine the work of major figures of the history of socialism as a political tendency, we will focus on the history of theoretical research in the Marxist tradition, with the goal of preparing students to critically apprehend the intellectual history of the principal debates, the major figures, and developments of this tradition in a broad and inclusive sense.