The Raymond Williams Society

Wars of Position: Marxism and Civil Society

International Conference, Manchester, 8-10 June 2017

(Deadline for abstracts: 1 December 2016)

Key-note speakers

Jodi Dean, Professor of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York. Author of books including Crowds and Party (2016), The Communist Horizon (2011), Democracy and other Neoliberal Fantasies (2009)

Stathis Kouvelakis, Reader in Political Theory, King’s College, London and former member of Syriza’s Central Committee. Author of Philosophy and Revolution: From Kant to Marx (2003)

Kevin Morgan, Professor of Politics and Contemporary History, University of Manchester. Author of books including Bolshevism, Syndicalism and the General Strike: The Lost Internationalist World of A.A. Purcell (2013), Labour Legends and Russian Gold (2006), The Webbs and Soviet Communism (2006). Continue reading Wars of Position: Marxism and Civil Society – Call for Papers

‘Finiau: Four painters in Raymond Williams’ Border Country’

An art exhibition curated by Peter Wakelin in order to honour Raymond Williams’ 1960 novel Border Country is currently on tour. Featuring the work of four of Williams’ contemporaries (Joan Baker, Charles Burton, John Elwyn, and Bert Isaac), the exhibition recently featured at the 2016 National Eisteddfod in Abergavenny. It has since been to Wrexham and will also be held in Machynlleth and Chepstow.

‘Finiau: Four painters in Raymond Williams’ Border Country’ will be at MOMA Machynlleth (17 September-19 November) and will then move on to Chepstow Museum (26 November-26 February).

A 64-page booklet by Peter Wakelin is available at the exhibitions or from Art Works of Abergavenny, price £7.50 including postage: contact@acex.co.uk

For more information: http://www.walesartsreview.org/exhibition-in-raymond-williams-border-country/

As a response to the significant revival of interest in the diverse legacy of Raymond Williams, this day conference sought to consider productive but little explored connections between Williams and the study of subcultures, popular music and social change.

A lively and productive day, with 31 attendees and 9 speakers, the event at Friends’ Meeting House in central Manchester was attended by a mixture of academics, students and cultural producers. There was also a representative of Social Science Centre Manchester, a new initiative that aims to provide free, co-operative higher education evening classes open to all.

 

Continue reading Raymond Williams: Popular Music and Subculture – conference report (10/6/16)

1-16 July 2016, The Cornerstone Gallery, Liverpool

The description of Northern Ireland as a ‘post-conflict’ society has to be treated with scepticism. For while there is no sustained, high-level campaign of armed conflict of the sort witnessed between 1969-1996, the place remains riven by fundamental forms of division and antagonism – sectarian, social, historical, political and psychic. The photographs displayed in this exhibition, taken between 2012-2016, focus on the ways in which the representation of symbolic, cultural and physical conflict plays a role in everyday life.

The photographs in the exhibition are part of a collection of more than 20,000 images, mostly of murals, dating from 1979. Approximately 4,500 photographs are available in a fully searchable and downloadable historical archive hosted by the Claremont Colleges Digital Library:

ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/mni

Tony Crowley was born and brought up in Liverpool. He is Professor of English at the University of Leeds (t.crowley@leeds.ac.uk) and has taught in a number of universities in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The ‘British Communism and Commitment’ day-school was held on 9^th June 2016 in the Labour History Archive and Study Centre at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Wars of Position: Communism and Civil Society.’

It brought together former party activists and researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines to analyse the complexities of commitment in the British Communist Party over its seventy-year history (1920-1991). The day-school also marked the opening to researchers of new CPGB-related archive material, including the papers of Monty Johnstone (1928-2007).

SCHEDULE

Please direct any questions to Ben Harker at ben.harker@manchester.ac.uk.

Read the report on Diana Heeks’s Black Mountains project which was supported by the Arts Council of Wales and Arts Alive Wales and which draws on Raymond Williams’s work.

 

 

This conference to be held at Attingham Hall in Shropshire on 23-24 June 2016 is organised in partnership between The University of Nottingham School of Education and The National Trust.

For more information and the call for papers, please visit the conference website.

Please direct any queries to Sharon Clancy at The University of Nottingham.

The May Day Manifesto has been re-issued by Lawrence & Wishart with a new introduction by Michael Rustin and can be downloaded for free from the publisher’s web page.

We welcome new members to help support research and activism in the tradition of Raymond Williams and Cultural Materialism!

Join the Raymond Williams Society.