[URPE] [NYC] Fall Classes Beginning in October:Poverty, Germinal, Witches and More!
urpe-moderator at lists.econ.utah.edu
urpe-moderator at lists.econ.utah.edu
Tue Oct 3 15:55:58 MDT 2006
P L E A S E F O R W A R D W I D E L Y
The Brecht Forum
451 West St. (Betw Bank & Bethune)
New York, NY 10014
(212) 242- 4201
www.brechtforum.org
1,2,3 A,C,E to 14th st.
14A,11,20 buses to Abingdon Square/12th Street
8 bus to Christopher St.
L to 8th Ave @14th st.
F,V to 14th St. B,D to W. 4th
_____________________________________________________________________________
10/10 Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive
Accumulation (Silvia Federici)
10/10 Reading & Using Marx's Capital Today: Part 1 (Rick Wolff)
10/10 Intermediate Spanish (Jose Rosa)
10/11 Marx for Our Times (Randy Martin)
10/11 Individualism & Gender in Marlowe, Shakespeare & American
Literature (Annette T. Rubinstein)
10/11 A Workshop on Memoir Writing (Edith Chevat)
10/11 Advanced Spanish (Jose Rosa)
10/12 Zola's Germinal (Patricia Carter)
10/12 New Directions for the Left (Stanley Aronowitz)
10/16 Beginning Spanish (Marisol Ruiz)
10/23 Ordinary Poverty in the United States: The Failure of Social
Policy & Advocacy (William DiFazio)
_____________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, October 10
5:30 - 7:30 pm
6 SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation
Silvia Federici
The class will read and discuss Silvia Federici's latest book,Caliban
and the Witch-- a history of the body in the transition to capitalism.
Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the
witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici shows that
the birth of the proletariat required a war against women, inaugurating
a new sexual pact and a new patriarchal era: the patriarchy of the wage.
Firmly rooted in the history of the persecution of the witches and the
disciplining of the body, her arguments explain why the subjugation of
women was as crucial for the formation of the world proletariat as the
enclosures of the land, the conquest and colonization of the 'New
World,' and the slave trade.
Silvia Federici, a long time feminist activist and teacher, is
co-founder of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and the RPA
(Radical Philosophy Association) Anti-Death Penalty Project. Federici's
published work includes: Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction
of the Concept of Western Civilization and its 'Others (editor) and A
Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in
African Universities(co-editor).
Sliding scale: $65/$85
___________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, October 10
5:30 - 7:30 pm
10-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Reading & Using Marx's Capital Today: Part 1
Rick Wolff
The course would begin with a session on what social theories are, how
they work and differ, and the importance of how Marx's theory differs
from alternatives (such as conventional economics). We will then plunge
directly into a collective reading through key sections of Marx's
capital (selections from all three volumes). Our goals will be (1) to
gain a clear overview of Marx's class theory of society in general and
of capitalism in particular, and (2) to understand Marx's major
contributions (such concepts as "commodity fetishism," "alienation,"
"labor theory of value and surplus value," "economic crisis," "reserve
army of the unemployed," "capital accumulation" and "productive vs
unproductive labor and capital"). We will be concerned at all times with
applying Marx's analysis to contemporary economic and social issues.
The second 10-session segment of this class will begin in mid-January.
Richard Wolff teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts.
Among other works, he is the author, with Stephen Ressnick, of Knowledge
and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy, and Class Theory and
History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR.
Sliding Scale: $95-$125
____________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, October 10
5:30 - 7:30 pm
8-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Intermediate Spanish
Jose Rosa
Students will continue to develop everyday conversational skills while
learning more complex grammatical forms. Emphasis will be placed on
increasing vocabulary and expressing more sophisticated ideas. At this
level students can express opinions, speak on the telephone, understand
conversations spoken at normal speed and read general interest texts
such as newspapers and magazines. Classes are interactive, stressing
conversation while balancing knowledge of grammar with communication and
cultural skills. Teaching materials include textbooks, magazines,
newspaper articles as well as Latin American and Spanish literature.
Tuition: $275
___________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, October 11
5:30 - 7:30 pm
6-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Marx for Our Times
Randy Martin
This class introduces Marx through engaged readings of excerpts from
The Communist Manifesto, The 18th Brumaire and Capital. It focuses on
making Marx serviceable to contemporary concerns and using his writing
to think through present dilemmas of and on the left.
Randy Martin is a professor of Art and Public Policy at New York
University. His recent books include On Your Marx: Relinking Socialism
and the Left; Financialization of Daily Life, and the forthcoming An
Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk
Managment.
Sliding scale: $65/$85
__________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, October 11
7:29 -9:30 pm
8-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Individualism & Gender in Marlowe, Shakespeare & American Literature
Annette T. Rubinstein
In 1931, a brilliant French visitor, Alexis de Toqueville, headed the
third chapter of his Democracy in America "Individualism," saying
"Individualism is a novel expression to which a novel idea has given
birth."
Not altogether novel but newly important since the protestant
reformation this ideology had already begun to play an important part in
English politics and literature and was carried to the New England
colonies by their first settlers. We will together read and discuss
Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, a number of scenes from Shakespear's plays and
some American material. (If enough students make time to read both
Marlowe's Jew of Malta and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, we will
also discuss the difference between these two great plays.)
Class will meet at the home of Dr. Annette T. Rubinstein, author of
American Literature: Root and Flower and The Great Tradition in English
Literature: From Shakespeare to Shaw. Please call the Brecht Forum
office at 212-242-4201 for advance registration and location information.
Sliding scale: $75-$95
____________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, October 11
5:30 - 7:30 pm
5-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
A Workshop on Memoir Writing
Edith Chevat
You're never too young or too old to write your memoirs. All you need
is paper and pen and a desire to retrieve what you thought was lost.
Unlike biography with its need for facts and dates, a memoir is your
recollection, your memory of what happened, of what was and still is
important to you. It's your story from your point of view. It need not
be the story of your whole life but can be the story of one part of your
life, a part that is important to you.We write in class and share what
we write, thus helping each other to remember things we thought we had
forgotten. As we write, we find a pattern to our lives and create a
legacy for friends and relatives of the world we've lived in and the
lives we've led.
The class is limited to 14 students.
Sliding scale: $55-$75
_______________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, October 11
7:30 - 9:30 pm
8-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Advanced Spanish
Jose Rosa
Students learn to read advanced texts, express themselves fluently,
write long texts, and appreciate humor, irony, and wit in literary and
non-literary texts. Depending on the students' needs, increased
attention may be given to understanding and writing business
correspondence and reports. Classes are interactive, stressing
conversation while balancing knowledge of grammar with communication and
cultural skills. Teaching materials include textbooks, magazines,
newspaper articles as well as Latin American and Spanish literature.
Tuition: $275
___________________________________________________________________
Thursday, October 12
7:30 - 9:30 pm
8-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Zola's Germinal
Patricia Carter
The class will read together Emile Zola's masterpiece of working life
in northern France in the 1860s. By Zola's death in 1902, the novel had
come to symbolize the call for freedom from oppression so forcefully
that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted "Germinal!
Germinal!"
Sliding scale: $65/$85
_________________________________________________________________
Thursday, October 12
5:30 - 7:30 pm
4-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
New Directions for the Left
Stanley Aronowitz
What are the issues and forms of organization that could motivate the
emergence of a strong, effective left in the United States? Using
Stanley Aronowitz' latest book --Left Turn: Forging a New Political
Future--as a text, the class will look at older political models such as
Leninism, social democracy, anarchism and left liberalism, but will
focus on the new issues and approaches that have been emerging and the
yet undeveloped innovations that Aronowitz argues are needed.
The class will meet October 12, 19, 26 and November 9--skipping November 2.
Stanley Aronowitz, professor of sociology and urban education at the
CUNY Graduate Center and the author of numerous books, including False
Promises and From the Ashes of the Old: America's Labor and America's
Future.
Sliding scale: $45/$65
___________________________________________________________________
Monday, October 16
5:30 - 7:30 pm
8-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Beginning Spanish
Marisol Ruiz
A first course for those with little to no previous knowledge of the
language. Students speak Spanish from the first day and acquire basic
speaking, reading, and writing skills while learning about Spanish and
Latin American culture. The course introduces basic grammar and
pronunciation while developing fundamental communication skills.
Students learn to express opinions, physical sensations, feelings, and
needs in a simple way. Students will be able to comprehend brief letters
and texts related to daily life.
Tuition: $275
________________________________________________________________________
Monday, October 23
5:30 -7:30 pm
4-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Ordinary Poverty in the United States: The Failure of Social Policy &
Advocacy
William DiFazio
The week before this class formally begins, the Brecht Forum is hosting
a Forum/Book Party on the text for this class, William DiFazio's latest
book: Ordinary Poverty: A Little Food and Cold Storage.
Forum/Book Party on October 16:An Introduction to Ordinary Poverty. The
Liberals versus the Conservatives; the advocates versus the activists;
who is right? Can the poor in the United States organize and fight-back
to end poverty? Session 1. October 23: The everyday lives of poor people
in New York City: an ethnography. What is the nature of the social
reality of poverty and the limits of positivism and critical theory?
Revisiting Moynihan's The Negro Family and the tangle of pathology. How
were the poor excluded from the economic boom of the 90s? Session 2.
October 30: The Dialectic of Sr. Bernadette and the failure of advocacy.
The domination of the poor by poverty bureaucracies in the age of free
market capitalism: an analysis of the current situation.
Session 3. November 6: The poor are not invisible but they are purposely
forgotten, and willfully ignored. The impact of global, postmodern
capitalism is the perpetuation of poverty. Why is there still no social
movement of the poor?
Session 4. November 13: Privatization and the Katrina disaster a lesson
on the limits of capitalist development as a solution to poverty. Simple
struggles as the beginning of building a social movement to make poverty
extraordinary: an argument.
Suggested readings include:
1. F. Piven and R. Cloward, Regulating the Poor, (updated), (Vintage)
2. J. Poppendieck, Sweet Charity, (Penguin)
3. C. West, Democracy Matters, Penguin)
4. W.J. Wilson, When Work Disappears, (Vintage)
5. H. Giroux, Stormy Weather, (Paradigm)
William DiFazio teaches sociology at St. John's University and is
co-host with Deena Kolbert of "City Watch" on WBAI Radio. He is author,
with Stanley Aronowitz of The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of
Work.
Sliding scale: $45/$65
Includes Introductory Forum
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