Capitalism, Temporality, and the Crisis of Labor
Philosopher Moishe Postone seeks to fundamentally rethink the core categories of Marx’s critique of political economy in the fall 2015 Ellen Maria Gorrissen lecture.
The Internet of Things – Solutionism at Its Worst, or Humanity’s Last Savior?
Evgeny Morozov articulates a way to put the Internet of Things to more humane and citizen-focused use.
X-Ray Architecture
Architectural historian Beatriz Colomina discusses how modern architecture, launched by an international group of avant-garde architects in the 1920s, has usually been understood in terms of functional efficiency, new technologies of construction, and the machine aesthetic.
Shame and Shamelessness in the Age of New Media
The New York correspondent of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Andrea Köhler, discusses how shamers can wreak havoc on the lives of those who have offended their values.
Shifting Power Dynamics in the New Digital Age
The founder and director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, discusses how from the Great Firewall of China to Russia’s troll armies, from the Syrian Electronic Army to ISIS’s propaganda machine, states and non-state actors are presently using technology to repress people and restrict free expression.
The Possibility of Social Progress
In this lecture, philosopher Philip Kitcher explores the concept of social progress by proposing that we should think of progress pragmatically -- a did John Dewey -- in terms of overcoming problems rather than as directed towards some ideal state.
Gay Berlin, Birthplace of a Modern Identity
In this lecture, Robert Beachy presents the broad argument from his book Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (published in November 2014 and in German translation last June). He argues that German legal reformers and medical doctors invented a new language to describe an “essentialist” sexual identity that helped to shape Berlin’s community of sexual minorities, both before and after the First World War.
Building between Worlds: The Spaces of Yugoslavia’s Socialist Globalization
For Yugoslavia, the Cold War period was a decisive moment of world-wide expansion in its political, economic, cultural relations -- and its architecture.
The South and the Federal Income Tax
Historian Robin Einhorn discusses the big story about taxation in American history: the redistribution from the South to the Northeast, through the nineteenth-century tariff, and then from the Northeast to the South, through the twentieth-century income tax.
A Global History of Health
In this lecture, "A Global History of Health: Reconstructing Humankind’s Encounters with Infectious Diseases," historian Monica Green addresses the need for a narrative of global health that encompasses every continent, across time, and includes all major infectious diseases.