Socialist Studies 2018: Call for Sessions/Papers

Rekindling the Socialist Imagination

29 May to 1 June, Regina

This year the Society for Socialist Studies meets on Treaty Four territory and the homeland of the Métis. Regina is where the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation penned its 1932 Regina Manifesto, which laid out a program for eradicating capitalism and replacing it with a planned socialist economy. It is also the site of the 1935 riot, which resulted when homeless and unemployed men demanding dignified work by trekking across Canada to Ottawa were stopped and attacked by the RCMP and city police. The symbolism associated with the Regina location of this meeting gives us a chance to re-evaluate the past and present of socialisms. In this moment of severe austerity in Saskatchewan and elsewhere, we are in desperate need for new and rekindled visions of just socialist futures.

This year we invite papers inspired by broad socialist traditions including anti-racist, feminist, eco-socialist, and anti-colonial, and we encourage conversations between socialisms and other freedom struggles, including Indigenous and Black liberation struggles, among others. We especially encourage papers that look at the successes and failures of past and present socialisms, from the CCF’s slide toward social democracy to the current enthusiasm for democratic socialism in the US and UK. We invite critical reflections on what has been left out of socialist visions and how we might put social movements, ecology, decolonization, and opposition to all forms of oppression squarely at the centre of our rekindled socialist movements, theorizing, and praxis.

To submit a session proposal, please complete this form electronically and submit it as a file attachment to rosa1919@uvic.ca by midnight (Pacific time) at the end of December 1, 2017. Please place the words “Call for Sessions” in first place in the subject heading.

To submit a paper proposal, complete this form electronically and submit it as a file attachment to rosa1919@uvic.ca by midnight (Pacific time) at the end of January 31, 2018. Please place the words “Call for Papers” in first place in the subject heading. If you know the paper is being included in a sessions proposal, you DO NOT have to submit a separate form for the paper.  If you are submitting an independent paper, and would like to make a recommendation for its inclusion in one of our open sessions, please wait to submit your paper form until the list of accepted open sessions is posted in mid-December.