Kibbitznest Liberal Arts Discussions are a collaboration with The University of Chicago Graham School to host presentations and discussions of original research.
About the Discussion:
How might we understand the fraught character of contemporary American democracy? Is this crisis provoked by the Trump presidency? Or does it stretch back to the crisis of neoliberalism in the 1980s that saw the rise of the Reagan-Thatcher governments? This crisis of politics resurfaced in the financial crisis of 2008, the emergence of Jeremy Corbin’s leadership of the Labour Party, the Brexit referendum, Bernie Sander’s campaign for President of the US, and Donald Trump’s victory as President of the US. While the Right is charged with incoherence and its inability to make sense of the situation, how does the Left grapple with the problems of democratic politics? Is contemporary Left invested in the politics of socialism? How does the Left understand democracy? This talk will be an occasion to wrestle with the difficult question of democracy’s relationship to socialism.
Sponsor: Kibbitznest Books, Brews & Blarney
ATIYA SINGH completed her MA and PhD in the Department of History at the University of Chicago. Her primary interests include history of the Left, critical and social theory, history of modern South Asia and the Muslim world. As a lecturer in the College at the University, she taught in a Social Science core sequence that focused on the constitution of capitalist modernity, the conception of culture and cultural practices, and finally keyed into the psychoanalytic conception of the modern self. Additionally, she taught in a Civilizational core sequence that analyzed the expansion of the British Empire, and the response to the advent of modernity in India. As the 2007 recipient of the Von Holst Lectureship Prize, she taught an undergraduate seminar course, Pakistan: A Failed State?, based on her research examining the rise and fall of progressive social movements in the 1960s, and the emergence of fundamentalist politics in the wake of the failure of the left in Pakistan. For her efforts in the classroom, she received the 2012 Wayne C. Booth Undergraduate Teaching Prize at the University of Chicago. Currently, she works in the Dean of Students Office as a College Adviser.
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