GLOBAL CAPITALISMS

Wednesdays, 2:00 – 3:30, Online

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84961934426?pwd=UkVCTjNLaDNodlhWK0lNSU1DRVlxZz09

FIRST MEETING OF THE FALL 2023 SEMESTER!

Wednesday, October 4th, 2:00 – 3:30pm

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol’s wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for “dead souls”–deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them–we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov’s proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel’s lyricism, sulphurous humor, and delight in human oddity and error.

                                                                                                                                                                                  – Centaur Classics, Amazon.com

URL for text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1081/1081-h/1081-h.htm

ABOUT THE GROUP:
This group offers a forum to discuss what capitalism is and how it has affected the world through commodity production and circulation, labor relations, international trade, and politics. They seek to combine theoretical texts defining capitalism as a system with a variety of approaches to history including economic, social, cultural, environmental, gender, and intellectual histories in order to unpack the differences between capitalism in theory and in historical practice. The readings will be both local and global, focusing on multiple countries as the sites of study to understand the way capitalism has differential impacts and meanings in different places. Readings will address a variety of perspectives, including authors who support, critique, or oppose capitalism as a system.

For more information, contact:
Phoenix Paz: ppaz@gradcenter.cuny.edu
Chris Del Santo: cdelsanto@gradcenter.cuny.edu

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