September 13, 2022
11.30 PST – 19.30 BST
A panel of feminist scholars will discuss the new book, Socialist Feminism: A New Approach, by Frieda Afary which will be published by Pluto Press in October. They will exchange ideas with the author and answer questions from the moderator and the livestream audience.
Socialist Feminism: A New Approach reclaims theories of women’s oppression through a return to humanism, enriched by social reproduction theories, Black feminist intersectionality, abolitionism, queer theories, Marxist-Humanism and the author’s own experiences as an Iranian American feminist, scholar and international activist.
Afary looks at global developments in gender relations since the 1980s, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the distinct features of twenty-first century authoritarianism and current struggles against it, drawing out lessons for revolutionary theorising, organising and international solidarity including the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements.
Speakers
Rosemary Hennessy is the L. H. Favrot Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Rice University.
Oksana Dutchak, co-editor of Ukrainian Spilne/Commons Journal and fellow at Berliner Institut für empirische Integrations- und Migrationsforschung.
Wonda Powell, Professor Emerita, History/Ethnic Studies, Los Angels Southwest College
Yulia Yurchenko, Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Political Economy, University of Greenwich
Frieda Afary is an Iranian American socialist feminist activist, translator and writer. She is a public librarian in Los Angeles.
(biographies below)
Contact address: www.socialistfeminism.org
Link to Pre-order the book: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745347738/socialist-feminism/
Link to the workbook/study guide that accompanies Frieda’s book: https://www.plutobooks.com/socialist-feminism-workbook/
Biographies
Rosemary Hennessy is the L. H. Favrot Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Rice University. She is also a faculty affiliate with the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice which she directed from 2006-2015. Her publications include Fires on the Border: The Passionate Politics of Labor Organizing on the Mexican Frontera (2013), Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism (2000), and Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse (1993) as well as numerous essays and book chapters. ). She also co-edited NAFTA From Below: Maquiladora Workers, Campesinos, and Indigenous Communities Speak Back (2006),and Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives (1997). Her current book, In the Company of Radical Women Writers (forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press 2023), considers the work of seven writers who as young women turned to communism during the Great Depression and, over decades of national crisis, spoke to issues of labor, land, and love in ways that provide urgent, thought-provoking guidance today.
Oksana Dutchak is co-editor of Ukrainian Spilne/Commons Journal. Dutchak holds a PhD in social sciences. She is currently continuing her academic work within the Berliner Institut für empirische Integrations- und Migrationsforschung. Her research interests include: protests, workers’ protests, gender inequality, social reproduction, care labor, Marxism, Marxist feminism. Oksana is devoted to engaged and public research, which contributes to public discussion and policies, trying to give voice to workers and other structurally underprivileged groups. Currently she is a refugee in Germany, with two kids and a dog.
Wonda Powell, Professor Emerita, History/Ethnic Studies, Los Angels Southwest College. Wonda Powell is a graduate of the University of Michigan and University of California Los Angeles respectively. Her Master’s Program included History and Ethic studies with a special interest in African American Folklore. She is a writer, poet, and in the words of Bertolt Brecht, she is “…a worker who reads”. Her long academic career of over 40 years includes teaching in the Los Angeles Community College District, tenure as Department Chair of Behavioral and Social Science, Passage program at UC Irvine, California State University Los Angeles, and numerous other conference and community engagements. She continues to enjoy her passionate study of historical events especially those that impact the 21st Century. She continues to lecture on American History and Ethnic Studies. Her broad interests include travel, literature, and game creation and theory.
Yuliya Yurchenko; Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Political Economy, University of Greenwich. Yurchenko is a senior lecturer and researcher in political economy at the Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability Institute and the Economics and International Business Department, the University of Greenwich (UK). Her research focuses on state/society/capital complexes and transnational class formation, and on the political economy of post-Soviet countries. She is the author of Ukraine and the Empire of Capital: From Marketisation to Armed Conflict (London: Pluto Press, 2018) and many other publications, including in Capital and Class and New Political Economy. She is vice-chair of the Critical Political Economy Research Network Board (European Sociological Association), co-coordinator of the World Economy working group, IIPPE, and an editor for Capital and Class.
Frieda Afary is an Iranian American librarian, translator and author of Socialist Feminism: A New Approach. She brings the insights gained through her study of feminist philosophy, her international activism and her work in community education as a public librarian in Los Angeles. She is also the producer of the websites, Iranian Progressives in Translation and Socialist Feminism
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