Opening-Day Talk: Pedro Reyes, Michael Hardt, and Lauren Berlant

Join Pedro Reyes, political philosopher/literary theorist Michael Hardt, and Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, as they discuss some of the ideas broached by Baby Marx and the project's complicated relationship to the current economic crisis. Hardt is coauthor of Empire, heralded as one of the most important explorations of the geopolitical climate at the dawn of the 21st century. Berlant's work on political emotion includes The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (1997) and The Female Complaint: the Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (2008), in addition to the forthcoming Cruel Optimism. She is also the editor of Intimacy;Compassion: the Culture and Politics of an Emotion; Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest (with Lisa Duggan); and a two volume number of Critical Inquiry called On the Case (2007).

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Karl Marx, as voiced by Strongbad