Event Details

Thursday, April 8th, at 4:00 p.m. in Blodgett House.

This lecture will begin by examining the reasons why Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism has remained a modern classic of political thought from 1951, when it was first published, to today. It then will probe Arendt's unique and controversial notion of how to search for the origins of modern catastrophes. It will conclude with the relevance of this notion for understanding specific political crises of our age.

Joan Cocks is Professor and Chair of Politics, and a member of the interdisciplinary program in Critical Social Thought, at Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of articles on Marxism, feminism, the history of political thought, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sovereign power, as well as two books in political theory, The Oppositional Imagination (Routledge) and Passion and Paradox: Intellectuals Confront the National Question (Princeton UP).