Fifty years ago E. P. Thompson published 'The Making of the English Working Class', one of the most influential social history works ever. Its approach to the history of common people, its arguments and its methods came to influence several generations of historians and others all over the world. To trace Thompson’s influences, and with it the larger story of the varied approaches to social history that have come out of them, the Program on the Study of Capitalism and the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University seek to initiate a global conversation among researchers across the humanities and social sciences to reflect critically on Thompson's impact on the writing of history and his enduring significance for future research.

At a time of global economic crises, as scholarship returns to themes of class, inequality and political economy with renewed interest, urgency, and moral purpose, the fiftieth anniversary of the Making of the English Working Class offers a welcome opportunity to both critically reflect on Thompson's scholarship and consider the ways in which his ideas, methods and commitments can still inspire intellectual frameworks and research programs that speak to present global problems.

DAY ONE:

Thursday, October 3

4:00 – 6:00 PM: Thompson and his Times

Madeleine Davis, Queen Mary, University of London, UK: “Edward Thompson's ethics and Activism 1956-1963: reflections on the political formation of The Making of the English Working Class”

Michael Merrill, Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies, SUNY, New York: “What MakesMaking Marxist? E. P. Thompson and the Theory of the English Working Class”

Tim Shenk, Columbia University, New York: “The Ends of History: E. P. Thompson Writes the Apocalypse”

Comment: Alex Keyssar, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

6:30 – 8:30 PM
Opening Keynote Address
(space no longer available for this limited space dinner)

Cal Winslow, University of California Berkeley, California: “Tending the Liberty Tree: Experience, Politics and History from Below”

DAY TWO:

Friday, October 4

10:00 – 12:00 AM: Thompson and Theory

John Trumpbour, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School: “Edward P. Thompson, Perry Anderson, and the Antinomies of British Marxism Revisited”

Jeffery Webber, Queen Mary, University of London, UK: “Reading E. P. Thompson in the Andes”

Lisa Furchtgott, Yale, New Haven: “'That on-rolling fashion-machine:' gender and the eschatological E.P. Thompson”

Comment: Norberto Ferraras

Noon – 1:00 PM: Lunch

1:00 – 3:00 PM: Thompson in the Global South

Jonathan Hyslop, Colgate University, New York: “The Practice and Politics of Thompsonian Social History in South Africa, from the 1970s to the present”

Y. Doğan Çetinkaya, Panteion University, Athens Greece: “E. P. Thompson in the 'Orient': His Belated Impact on Young Scholars of Turkey during the 1990's”

Lucas Martín Poy Piñeiro, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina: “The Making of Labor History: Tracing the Influence of E. P. Thompson in Argentina”

Comment: John Womack, Harvard University

3:00 – 3:30 PM: Coffee Break

3:30 – 5:30 PM: Thompson in the Global North

Rudolf Kucera, Masaryk Institute and Archives, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic: “Meeting the Hard Line: British Marxism, The Making and the Communist Historiographies of East Central Europe”

Thomas Lindenberger, Center for Contemporary History, Potsdam, Germany: 'Of historical relevance only? The German reception of The Making reassessed from a (post) Cold War perspective'

Hideo Ichihashi, Saitama University, Tokyo, Japan: "E. P. Thompson and Japanese Left Wing Intellectuals: Why Wasn’t His Major Work Translated for 40 Years?”

Melvyn Dubofsky, SUNY Binghamton, New York: “Edward Thompson: The Man, the Scholar, the Activist, Personal Recollections”

Comment: Charlie Maier, Harvard University

DAY THREE:

Saturday, October 5

8:30 – 10:30 AM: Moral Economy

Gabrielle Clark, European University Institute, Florence, Italy: “'Humbug' or 'Human Good'?: E. P. Thompson, the Rule of Law, and Labor from The Making to Neoliberal American Capitalism”

Kazuhiko Kondo, Rissho University, Tokyo, Japan: “'Moral Economy' retried in digital archives”

Michael Ralph, NYU, New York: “Actuarial Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism; or, The Making of the American Working Class”

Nikos Potamianos, University of Crete, Greece: “Moral Economy? Popular demands, liberalism and state intertervention in the struggle over anti-profiteering laws in Greece, 1916-1925”

Comment: Vince Brown, Harvard University

10:30 – 11:00 AM: Coffee Break

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Class Formation

Anna Hájková, University of Warwick, UK: “The Bright Young Things of the Holocaust: The Terezín ghetto as a society of inequalities”

Joseph Fronczak, Yale, New Haven: “The Making of the Global Left: Thompsonian Political Formation and the Worldwide Sitdown Strike Movement of 1936”

Cemil Boyraz, Istanbul Biligi University, Turkey: “Class in the Age of Global Capitalism: The Case of Post-1980 Privatization in Turkey”

D. Parthasarathy, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India: “The Poverty of (Marxist) Theory: Peasant Classes, Provincial Capital, and the Crique of Globalization in India”

Comment: Michele Lamont, Harvard University

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM: Lunch