Dissent in Disruptive Times: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Rise (and Fall) of the American Empire

Professor Mampilly will discuss W.E.B. DuBois’s work in the first part of the 20th century during the period of America’s rise onto the global stage and DuBois’s legacy in an era when the US is no longer uncontested globally. He will address the current wave of global uprisings and look to past writing of DuBois and others figures across the Third World for ways to understand the current moment. Professor Mampilly argues that those figures were uniquely situated to answer the question of “Who is the revolutionary class today?”, and he will further explore this question by looking at how the current phase of global capitalism is shifting the context away from traditional liberal (Middle Class) and Marxist (Proletariat) modes of political change.

About the Speaker:
Zachariah Mampilly is the Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, CUNY and a member of the doctoral faculty in the Department of Political Science at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the Co-Founder of the Program on African Social Research.

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