In Karl Marx in America, historian Andrew Hartman argues that even though Karl Marx never visited America, the country has been infused, shaped, and transformed by him. Since the beginning of the Civil War, Marx has been a specter in the American machine. During the Gilded Age, socialists read Marx as an antidote to the unchecked power of corporations. In the Great Depression, communists turned to Marx in hopes of transcending the destructive capitalist economy. The young activists of the 1960s were inspired by Marx as they gathered to protest an overseas war. Marx’s influence today is evident, too, as Americans have become increasingly attuned to issues of inequality, labor, and power. 

Join the Seminar in Contemporary Marxism for the launch of Karl Marx in America, and a discussion about how after decades of being pushed to the far-left corner of intellectual thought, Marx’s ideologies have crossed over into the mainstream and are more alive than ever. 


At this book launch, Andrew Hartman will be in conversation with Christina Heatherton and Lorenzo Costaguta.

This is a hybrid event taking place at King's College London, Safra Lecture Theatre, King’s Building, WC2R 2LS:https://www.tickettailor.com/events/seminarincontemporarymarxisttheory/1597708

For Zoom, register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/8uWKlFE_Qg6m0ujfVot8iw#/registration

SPEAKER

Andrew Hartman is professor of history at Illinois State University. He is the author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, published by the University of Chicago Press, and Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School. He is also the co-editor of American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times.

Christina Heatherton is Associate Professor of American Studies and Everett and Joanne Elting Associate Professor for Human Rights and Global Citizenship. She is the Director of the Trinity Social Justice Institute, the Director of Graduate Studies in American Studies, and the co-host and co-producer of the public humanities podcast Conjuncture. She is the author of Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution (University of California Press, 2022).

Lorenzo Costaguta is a Lecturer in US History at the University of Bristol. He specialises in ideas of race and class, radicalism, and labor history in the United States and Europe. He is the author of Workers of All Colours Unite: Race and the Origins of American Socialism (University of Illinois Press, 2023).