Over the past two decades, scholars in literary and cultural studies, history, and critical theory increasingly have used the conceptual lens of “racial capitalism” to analyze the roles of race, ethnicity, and other forms of difference in structuring class-based oppression and labor exploitation in the modern world. This recent development has fostered increased awareness and understanding of the plural, highly complex factors shaping the formation of social and political subjectivities among minoritized groups across different settings and historical periods. It also has led to renewed interest in the sphere of cultural production as a dynamic site of intellectual activity and political theorizing aimed at conceptually modeling—and engendering resistance to—dispossession, extraction, and racialized hierarchies in disparate corners of the modern world-system. 

Despite the prevalence of these tendencies, there remains a need for scholars of race, class, and labor in capitalist modernity to participate in dialogue that spans across disciplinary boundaries and divides of geography, language, and historical period. With that need in mind, this seminar seeks to assemble a range of global perspectives on racial capitalism. It invites contributions that approach literature and culture as vital resources for apprehending the emergence and reproduction of capitalist social relations within contexts of racial or ethnic subordination, such as (post)colonial and (post-)imperial settings. It also welcomes contributions that examine the emergence and evolution of subaltern cultures of opposition to racial capitalism and its effects, ranging from New World slave revolts to climate justice movements in the contemporary Global South. The main objective of this seminar will be to facilitate the open exchange and comparison of ideas, case studies, and techniques of analysis among researchers whose individual projects require them ordinarily to work within regional or temporal siloes. 

Submissions may address any theme or question, but the following topics are of particular interest: 

• Modernity and modernization
• Uneven and combined development
• "So-called primitive accumulation"
• Free labor and bonded labor
• Slavery, colonialism, and empire
• Gender, sexuality, and social reproduction
• Race, capitalism, and the environment
• Borders, migration, and labor
• Digital technologies and surveillance
• Debt (sovereign and personal)
• Literary form and capitalist totality
• Print culture and mass media
• Working-class culture and politics
• Organic intellectualism
• Subaltern transnationalism
• Vernacular socialisms

Prospective contributors are welcome to contact the seminar co-organizers to discuss their ideas prior to submitting an abstract.