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 50th 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 first day of the conference on Friday, October 6, see here. For those who cannot attend in person, this conference will be livestreamed. Register here to view Day 2 of the conference via Zoom.
8:30am - 9:00am
Breakfast
9:00am - 9:45am
The History of the Frankfurt School in Expanded Fields – Martin Jay, Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
9:45am - 10:30am
We’re Not Special. Congratulations! – Christopher Zurn, Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Boston
10:30 am- 11:00am
Coffee Break
11:00am - 11:45am
The Return of Ideology Critique – Cristina Lafont, Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University
11:45am - 12:30pm
The Rational Critique of Social Unreason: On Critical Theory in the Frankfurt Tradition – Rainer Forst, Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
12:30pm - 1:30pm
Lunch
1:30pm - 2:15pm
Radical Tradition: A Contradiction in Terms? – Susan Buck-Morss, Distinguished Professor, Department of Political Science, CUNY
2:15pm - 3:00pm
Critical Theory and Intersectionality: Rethinking the Critique of Power with Black Feminism – Amy Allen, Advancement Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University
3:00pm - 3:30pm
Coffee Break
3:30pm - 4:15pm
Critical Theory and Anti-Racist Struggles: A Missed Encounter? – Robin Celikates, Professor of Social Philosophy and Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin
4:15pm - 5:00pm
Critical Theory and/or/as Marxism? – Nancy Fraser, Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science, New School for Social Research
5:00pm - 5:15pm
Coffee Break
5:15pm - 6:30pm
Concluding Roundtable Discussion
(Photo Credit: Creative Common)
