Doing Utopia and Communal Living in South Africa, Japan, and Jamaica, 1900-1950
Apr 14, 2022 | 12pm (ET)
Lecture (Zoom) | Speaker: Robert Kramm (LMU Munich)
2022 Spring Lecture Series: Not the Usual Suspects: Everyday Agents of Globalization in the Twentieth Century
Communes in the early twentieth century were an integral part of the modern world. Despite being located at the geographical, political, and social margins of modern society, these communes never existed in enclosed circles. They were both a niche and hub for radicals, revolutionaries and reformers, and their doing utopia in seeking a better world. This talk investigates communal life in various places of the non-Western world, including unionized South Africa, imperial Japan, and colonial Jamaica. And it discusses the possibilities of communal living and subjectivity beyond capital, empire, and state power.
About the Speaker
Robert Kramm holds a doctoral degree in history from ETH Zurich and is a Freigeist-Fellow in the School of History at LMU Munich. At LMU, he is the principal investigator of the research group “Radical Utopian Communities” funded by the VolkswagenStiftung, and a member of the Munich Centre for Global History and the Center for Advanced Studies. Before coming to Munich, he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and the Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolleg in Konstanz. His field is global history, history of everyday life and modern Japanese, European, and North American history with a combined focus on the history of the body, race and sexuality, and anarchism and communal life. His first book, Sanitized Sex, was published in 2017 by University of California Press, and he co-edited Global Anti-Vice Activism: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and ‘Immorality’ (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
About the Lecture Series
Not the Usual Suspects: Everyday Agents of Globalization in the Twentieth Century
This lecture series reassesses globalization from a bottom-up perspective. Globalization processes have typically been associated with intergovernmental organizations, multinational corporations, and NGOs. Less known are the “everyday” agents of economic, cultural, and political globalization: historical actors who initiated and promoted connection and exchange (intentionally and unintentionally) across world regions through their day-to-day activities. Backpacking tourists in postwar Europe, for instance, redefined the very idea of Europe with their cross-border itineraries and the many interactions with their host communities. The lecture series shines a spotlight on these and other drivers of globalization at the micro-social level. The different lectures discuss the activities of individual and group actors since the 1920s, covering a truly global range of geographies including the Middle East, East Asia, and the Caribbean. By applying an actor-centered approach to the study of twentieth-century globalization, the lecture series highlights the significance of globalization agents not usually suspected of playing this role.
Organizers: Andreas Greiner, Mario Peters
Empire's Mistress: The Labor of Love in Imperial Circuits
March 31, 2022 | 2pm (ET) virtual
Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez (University of Hawai’i)
Doing Utopia and Communal Living in South Africa, Japan, and Jamaica, 1900-1950
April 14, 2022 | 12pm (ET) virtual
Robert Kramm (LMU Munich)
Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe
April 21, 2022 | 6:30pm (in person)
Richard Ivan Jobs (Pacific University Oregon)
Reaching the People: American Globalism and the Quest for Universal Literacy
May 5, 2022 | 630pm ET (in person)
Valeska Huber (University of Vienna)