Items

• Wars of Position? Marxism Today, Cultural Politics and the Remaking of the Left Press, 1979-1990

  An exploration of the connections between political practice and cultural form through the transformation of Marxism Today from a Communist Party theoretical journey into a 'glossy' left magazine. Marxism Today's success and failures during the 1980s are analysed through its political and cultural critiques of Thatcherism and the left, innovative publicity and marketplace distribution, relationships with the national UK press, cultural coverage, design & format, and writing style. Wars of position offers insights for contemporary media activists and challenges the neglect of the left press by media scholars.
• COVID-19 Essays: A Rapid Response Collection of Essays on the Pandemic

  This rapid response collection of essays, co-edited by Greg Bird and Penelope Ironstone, was published in 10 days following the initial pandemic "lockdown" in March, 2020. It includes 10 essays, including essays by Laurier Faculty Neil Balan, Greg Bird, and Penelope Ironstone. The essays provide an early snapshot of the pandemic from a biopolitical standpoint, looking to the social, cultural, economic, and political fault-lines of response to the pandemic that were already becoming apparent so early in its experience.
• Rumble and Crash: Crises of Capitalism in Contemporary Film

  At the beginning of the twenty-first century, as the contradictions of capitalism became more apparent than at any other time since the 1920s, numerous films gave allegorical form to the crises of contemporary capitalism. Some films were overtly political in nature, while others refracted the vicissitudes of capital in stories that were not, on the surface, explicitly political. Rumble and Crash examines six particularly rich and thought-provoking films in this vein.