Dear all,

Next Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm, the History and Theory of Capitalism Workshop and the East Asia Trans-regional Histories Workshop will jointly host Yuting Chen (PhD candidate in Sociology). Yuting will present his paper titled “Historicizing State-led Industrial Upgrading: Social Construction of Expertise and Naval Research-and-Development Process in Early Socialist China, 1949–1965.” The event will take place at the John Hope Franklin Room (SSRB 224). Our discussant will be Xiaoyu Gao (PhD in History).

Good morning all,

We are delighted to invite you to our third session of the quarter. Professor Jonathan Levy (History, University of Chicago) will present his essay “What Was Capitalism?” on Wednesday, November 6th from 4:30PM to 6PM at the Social Science Tea Room (SSRB 201). (Please note the location change for this session.) Light refreshments will be served.

You may find the paper here (password: France1830). Professor Emeritus William H. Sewell Jr. (History and Political Science, University of Chicago) has kindly agreed to serve as the discussant.

This is a photograph of historian Fernand Braudel, c. 1984, by Bruno de Monès.

While in-person attendance is encouraged, we will provide a Zoom link upon request. Please contact us for further information.

Best wishes,

Ada and Xiaoyu

Good Morning Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Dear colleagues,

The History and Theory of Capitalism Workshop is pleased to announce its call for papers for the 2024–25 academic year. We invite submissions from graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty members using historical and/or theoretical lenses to advance our understanding of capitalism, broadly defined. We welcome submissions from disciplines across the humanities and social sciences and especially encourage those applying comparative and/or interdisciplinary methods. Workshop papers may be drafts of dissertation chapters, journal articles, and book chapters.

Niquo and I shall be stepping down from our roles as coordinators for the next academic year, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors and the workshop community for an extremely productive year, full of exciting papers and stimulating discussions. We will be succeeded by two PhD candidates in History: Ada Torres and Xiaoyu Gao. Following our aesthetic tradition, they will feature different symbols of the history of capitalism in these emails, starting us off with Raymond Williams’ classic The Country and the City (1973). As you can see, the workshop will be in safe hands. As faculty sponsors, the workshop will have Dr. Mary Hicks and Dr. Gabriel Winant. This will certainly be the beginning of yet another thrilling, thought-provoking period for this workshop.

If you are interested in presenting, please email Xiaoyu Gao (xiaoyugao@uchicago.edu) and Ada Torres (adalinetorres@uchicago.edu) with the subject line [HTC Presentation Proposal] as well as the following details: 

• A title
• An abstract of 300 words or less
• An indication of the nature of your paper (article, dissertation chapter, etc.)
• Which quarter(s) you would prefer to, and/or cannot present

We encourage interested presenters to get in touch as soon as possible and request that proposals be received no later than Friday, September 6th.

Workshop papers should be works in progress ideally between 20–40 pages in length, double-spaced. Accepted presenters are asked to submit their paper at least one week before their workshop date for pre-circulation. The workshop strives to build a durable community so we ask that presenters regularly attend the workshop for at least the quarter in which they present.

Possible paper topics may include:

• The history of capitalism as a world-system
• Imperialism, colonialism, slavery
• Racial capitalism
• Economic histories about labor, inequality, finance, consumption, ownership, debt, crisis, informality, money, etc.
• Environmental history, the anthropocene, etc.
• The juridical life of capital and other legal histories
• Human rights and humanitarian discourse under capitalist rule
• Migration, expropriation, deportation, and industrial disintegration
• Digital labor, Silicon Valley, big data, and financial speculation
• Capitalism and the carceral sphere
• The idea of “political economy” and other intellectual histories
• Marx, Marxists, and Marxisms
• Non-capitalist societies in a capitalist world
• Cultural and literary theory/criticism
• Gender and capitalism
• Cultural histories about capitalism (i.e. propaganda, products, etc.)
• Art, taste, and judgment in capitalist societies
• Affect, trauma, identity, and capitalist domination

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