International Herbert Marcuse Society

Eleventh Biennial Conference 

York University

Toronto, Ontario, CANADA

December 4-7, 2025

• DUE DATE (June 15, 2025) for completion of the Conference Paper/Presentation Proposal form has now passed.

Re-Visioning Education: Cultural Studies, Critical Media and  Digital Literacies, and Democracy

Douglas Kellner's latest book is Re-Visioning Education: Cultural Studies, Critical Media and  Digital Literacies, and Democracy (New York: Peter Lang/Counterpoints: Studies in Criticality, 2024). It provides a comprehensive account of his critical theory of education that combines his work in philosophy of education, cultural studies, and media and digital literacies aimed at a critical theory of education and radical pedagogy for the 21st Century. 

Kellner also engages the battle for Higher Education in the contemporary moment, taking on rightwing attacks on education, and defending progressive concepts of education and democracy advocated by John Dewey and his pragmatist cohort, Paulo Freire and his movement of critical pedagogy, and Herbert Marcuse who calls for a radical critique and transformation of education in the contemporary era. 

Clearly written and documented for teachers, students, and citizens Kellner provides discussion of key issues challenging education today and calls for transformation of education to provide more democratic, inclusive, equalitarian, and culturally relevant education for the future.

Image Above: Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was a member of the Frankfurt School, a leading figure of 1960s counterculture, and a fundamental character for the New Left. His ideas and theories, inspired by a rich fusion of Marxian and Freudian thought, exert a strong influence on contemporary thinking about activism, emancipation, and political resistance. He was also a student of Martin Heidegger in the late 1920s and engaged deeply with philosophy throughout his career.

The Marcusean Mind is an outstanding survey and assessment of Marcuse's thought. Beginning with a thorough introduction to Marcuse's life and work, 39 chapters by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors are organized into five clear parts:

• Intellectual Ecosystems of Marcuse

• Reason and Sensibilities

• Futures and Utopias

• Contemporary Movements

• Counterrevolutions, Neoliberalism, and Fascism

These sections each contain a short introduction, after which Marcusean ideas are brought to bear on many key contemporary debates and issues across the humanities, social sciences, and science and technology.

Including a Foreword by Craig Calhoun and an Afterword by Douglas Kellner, The Marcusean Mind is a superb resource for anyone interested in Marcuse's thought and its legacy. It is valuable reading for students of contemporary political theory, activism, philosophy, sociology, media and cultural studies, critical legal studies, and race and gender studies.

CALL FOR PAPERS

St. Nicholas of Myra Conference on Catholic Social Thought &

Center for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics

28-29 March 2025

Providence College

Providence, Rhode Island (USA)

DREAMING A BETTER WORLD:

Aristotelians, Marxists, & Christians in Dialogue & Action

for Social Equilibrium and Peace

In January 2024, Pope Francis met with members of DIALOP (Transversal Dialogue Project). DIALOP is dedicated to dialogue between Marxists/Socialists and Christians in European countries to change the world. Francis shared with them the desire for more dialogue in service, not to financial markets, but to humanity, inclusive political, economic, and religious institutions, and dreaming for a better world. Francis noted the need for solidarity as an aspect of justice. Moreover, we need dialogue that breaks with historically established norms, dialogue that includes the vulnerably, disadvantaged, and marginalized.

A dialogue between Christians and Marxists/Socialists invites dialogue with their shared forefather, Aristotle. Aristotle’s influence on Marx is well-known, especially the analysis of economics within the whole historical-social situation. Moreover, Aristotle’s influence on Christianity, particularly through Thomas Aquinas, cannot be ignored. Concepts such as Eudaimonia and the Common Good are key to these dialogues.

These points serve as a departure for this call for papers—how can Aristotelians, Socialists/Marxists, and Christians dream a better world together? How can we together share ideas and imagine different ways of changing the world, especially by engaging with those least well off in society?

Possible topics:

• The point is not to describe it, but to change the world

• What is justice? What is the relation between justice and love? Justice and peace?

• What concepts do Aristotelians, Socialists/Marxists and Christians share to change the world?

• Alienation as a religious and a political concept

• Solidarity beyond ideology

• The New Left Church

• Marxism as a failed political program

• Catholic social thought and/or Liberation Theology as failed traditions

• Aristotelian, Socialist/Marxist, and Christian challenges to nation-state liberalism

• Aristotelian, Socialist/Marxist, and Christian challenges to the language of rights

• The Eucharist and the Commodity Form

• Faith, Hope, and Love: Theological and/or Cardinal Virtues of the City

• Inclusive Communities

• Marxism and Queer Theory

Proposals on any of these or related topics are encouraged.

Accepted papers will be shared before the conference, and the conference will take the form of short presentations and deep discussion about the ideas of different attendees. An expectation is to collect selected papers into a publishable volume.

Proposals of 500 words, along with a bibliography and CV, due by 6 December 2024.

Notifications expected: 11 January 2025.

Full papers expected for distribution to attendees: 7 March 2025.

Submit proposals to: jefferynicholas@gmail.com 

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Professor Tom Jeannot

Tom Jeannot has been at Gonzaga since 1986. He works on moral philosophy, personalism, philosophical hermeneutics, Hegelian Marxism and Critical Theory, classical American philosophy, and the thought of Bernard Lonergan.

Sponsored by the Dean of Arts and Sciences, Providence College, CASEP, The Humanities Program, the Philosophy Department, the Political Science Department, and the Theology Department.

Taking the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s death as an opportunity to reflect on the possibilities and problems faced by contemporary political movements, we are excited to invite papers on the theme, “Solidarity and Class Struggle,” to our 16th biennial conference. The war on the working class is waged with increasing violence, even as it takes different forms in various contexts. While capitalist exploitation characterizes the experience of all but a few of the world’s human inhabitants, the forms of oppression faced by those living in the global periphery, racial and ethnic others, migrants and stateless persons, women and LGBTQIA+ individuals, and other marginalized groups seem to complicate the picture of a working class united by universal interests. The question then arises as to the possibility of a shared struggle of the exploited despite their uneven experiences of oppression. How can class struggle help us overcome the barriers to unity? What are the conditions allowing for solidarity across difference?

Recognizing that solidarity and class struggle take many forms today, we welcome a broad variety of approaches to our conference’s topic, or in any area of radical philosophy. We are particularly interested in papers addressing any of the following themes:

• The legacies of Lenin and subsequent developments of Marxist theories of class struggle

• The relationships between class and identity (including racial, gender, and sexual identity)

• The possibility of class solidarity across lines of division such as race, gender, ability, geography, etc.

• Processes of ideology production, including the role of ideology in fragmenting classes 

• Contemporary practices of working class organization around the world, for example, among gig economy workers, among college professors and graduate students, and in movements such as the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) in South Africa, and more

• The political economy of ecological devastation and the war on the working class

• The potential for emerging technologies (including artificial intelligence technologies and other forms of automation) to either intensify or block class struggle against capitalist exploitation

• Psychoanalysis’s contributions to the study of ideology and class struggle 

• Contemporary attacks on the working class through the erosion of public resources, including dwindling healthcare access (including reproductive healthcare and gender-affirming care), attacks on higher education, and more

• The global resurgence of fascism and its implications for ongoing class struggles

• Other topics within the broad spectrum of radical philosophy

Submissions

The Radical Philosophy Association Conference Program Committee invites submissions of 250-500 word abstracts for talks, papers, workshops, or roundtable discussions. In keeping with the spirit of radical thinking embodied by the RPA, we also encourage submissions that employ formats and media that challenge the standard conference presentation (including workshops, interactive sessions, etc.). In recognition that radical philosophy is often done outside traditional philosophical settings, we want to encourage proposals from those working in other disciplines and/or outside of academia. We especially welcome contributions from those often excluded from or marginalized in academic philosophy, including BIPOC, LGBT+, persons with disabilities, and poor and working-class people.

Please submit paper, workshop, or other proposals related to the conference theme or general themes of the RPA as an email attachment (pdf, docx, doc, or txt) to radical.philosophy.association@gmail.com by February 15, 2024. Please identify if the submission is from a graduate student, so it can be considered for the Iris Marion Young Prize for Best Graduate Paper. 

HERBERT MARCUSE, MARX & la psychologie du fascisme

On October 9, 2023, at 9:30 am (CANADA / Pacific Time), Professor Andrew Feenberg will give a talk on Marcuse, Freud and fascism for the University of Lorraine. The talk will be in French. Here is the information from the organizers. You can join at https://sciencespo.zoom.us/j/98082282760#success 

"Herbert Marcuse's ideas animated young people's protests in 1968, but today he's rarely discussed. Simon Blin argues that it's time to return to Marcuse's radical ideas in order to think anew about the struggles we face today."

*Read the article here.*

This article was originally published by Libération on July 20, 2022.

Charles Reitz's important new book—the latest work from his Ecosocialist EarthCommonwealth Project—has just been published and is now available.

"Charles Reitz is a major scholar of the work of Herbert Marcuse and an important commentator on the global crises faced by contemporary society."

—Arnold L. Farr, University of Kentucky

"To the rising fascist threat...Reitz counterposes the themes of ecology and humanism analyzed in a global, multicultural light, from European socialist humanism to African Ubuntu."

—Kevin B. Anderson, University of California, Santa Barbara

Charles Reitz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Social Science, Kansas City Kansas Community College. His previous books include Art, Alienation, and the Humanities: A Critical Engagement with Herbert Marcuse (2000); Crisis and Commonwealth: Marcuse, Marx, McLaren (2013); Philosophy & Critical Pedagogy: Insurrection & Commonwealth (2016); and, Ecology and Revolution: Herbert Marcuse and the Challenge of a New World System Today (2019).