The Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) was founded in Frankfurt a century ago, in 1923. To mark the occasion of its founding and growth over the last one hundred years, the Harvard Colloquium for Intellectual History will convene at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, bringing together some of the scholars who have played a major role in the interpretation and transformation of critical theory in both Europe and America.

This two-day conference also marks the 50^th year since the initial publication in 1973 of Martin Jay’s The Dialectical Imagination, a book that was crucial to the early reception of Frankfurt School critical theory in North America and beyond.

Please refer the agenda below for a list of discussions and speakers. To view the agenda for the second day of the conference on Saturday, October 7, see here.

For those who cannot attend in person, this conference will be livestreamed. Register here to view Day 1 of the conference via Zoom.

Conference Agenda – Day 1

8:30am - 9:00am

Breakfast

9:00am - 9:15am

Introduction – Peter Gordon, Amabel B. James Professor of History, Harvard University & Maxim Pensky, Professor of Philosophy, Binghamton University; Co-Director, Institute of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Binghamton University

9:15am - 10:00am

At Time of Contestation ­– Axel Honneth, Jack C. Weinstein Professor of the Humanities, Columbia University

10:00am - 10:45am

Adorno's Ways of Criticism – James Gordon Finlayson, Professor of Social and Political Philosophy, University of Sussex

10:45am - 11:15am

Break

11:15am - 12:00pm

The Standpoint of Emancipation – Rahel Jaeggi, Professor for Social Philosophy and Director of the Center for Social Critique, Humboldt University Berlin

12:00pm - 12:45pm

Disastrous Times: Reactualizing Horkheimer's Vision of Critical Theory – Maeve Cooke, Full Professor of Philosophy, University College Dublin

12:45pm - 1:45pm

Lunch

1:45pm - 2:30pm

The Living I and the Good Animal: Adorno and Hegel – Karen Ng, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Interim Chair, Department of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University

2:30pm - 3:15pm

The Greening of Critical Theory – Espen Hammer, Professor of Philosophy, Temple University

3:15pm - 3:45pm

Break

3:45pm - 4:30pm

Normality Proper to This Time is Sickness – Fabian Freyenhagen, Professor, School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Essex

4:30pm - 5:15pm

Patriarchal Capitalism: Critical Theory from Adorno to Ecofeminism – Jay Bernstein, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research

5:15pm - 6:00pm

History, Ontology, Nature – Martin Saar, Professor of Social Philosophy, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

(Photo Credit: Creative Common)