Description:

Prof. Hartman will workshop "American Revolutionary: The U.S. Civil War,” the first chapter of his in-progress book entitled Karl Marx in America, which is under contract with University of Chicago Press.

The book is an exploration of how Karl Marx’s thought has interacted with the history of the United States from the 1840s to the present. This chapter examines how Marx’s close attention to events in the United States, especially the U.S. Civil War, shaped his understanding of capitalism and how, in particular, slavery and emancipation informed him as he completed his magnum opus, Capital, Vol. 1. The interconnections between Marx’s intellectual formation and U.S. historical development also help explain why Marx has continued to matter in U.S. political culture ever since, even and especially as he has been demonized as the antithesis of all that is supposedly good about America. 

Andrew Hartman is a professor of history at Illinois State University. He the author of Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (2008), A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (2015, second edition 2019), and co-editor of American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times (2019). 

Light lunch is provided.