The theme of the Spring 2025 Arrighi Center General Seminar will be “Value, Price and Profit in The Contemporary World System”. The spring seminar will be let by Professor Chris Nealon, JHU English Department and Arrighi Center Faculty Advisory Board Member. As always, the seminar is open to JHU students, faculty, postdocs, visiting scholars, alumni and Arrighi Center friends (old and new) in Baltimore and around the world. The seminar meets weekly on Fridays at 1:30 pm (Baltimore time), in person in 526 Mergenthaler Hall (JHU Homewood campus) with a zoom option for those outside Baltimore. To be added to the Arrighi Center mailing list and/or to request the seminar zoom link, please fill out this Google form. For questions, contact [email protected]

The Spring seminar readings and discussions will be organized around the following questions: How can we develop ways of linking all the different elements of today’s “polycrisis” into a strong account of the contemporary world?  One way might be to study what makes profit for capitalism – and what doesn’t. In this seminar we will explore the bridges between the problems of capitalist profitability and contemporary politics. We’ll begin with some reading from Marx that give us a powerful theory of value, then move on to a variety of contemporary case studies that link the dynamics of capitalist profitability to commodity speculation, the development of AI, the green transition, and the rise of right-wing populism.

Graduate students who would like to take the Seminar for academic credit should sign up for 230.676. Undergraduates can participate for academic credit by signing up under 230.376.