About

Historical Materialism’s London-based conferences have long drawn hundreds of scholars from around the world. Since 2006, North American HM conferences have been organized in Toronto and New York City, which will now alternate with bi-annual Spring conferences. Our conferences are spaces for broad debate and collaboration, in which we explore the logic and trajectory of capitalism, as well as the strategic visions necessary for its dissolution.

Since the HMNY 2011 conference, we have been working to grow as a collective in various ways beyond the organization of HM conferences. In addition to our immediate goal of compiling and sharing audio footage from the HMNY 2011 conference, we are also in the process of updating and expanding our website and establishing an ongoing presence in the Marxist community.

In 2011, the organizing collective decided to incorporate HMNY as non-profit social club, making all of our conference attendees ‘members’ in our organization. The members of the organizing collective do not receive any compensation for their work, and all membership/registration fees collected during our conferences are spent on the events themeselves, including audio documentation and as much free food as we can afford!

There have been three HMNY conferences: 2010, 2011 and 2013.

Organizing Collectives

HMNY 2013

  • Morgan Buck
  • Tahir Butt
  • Jonathan Cogliano
  • Jason Farbman
  • Paul Heideman
  • Aaron Jaffe
  • Erin Schell
  • Wilson Sherwin
  • Nicole Whalen
  • Adaner Usmani

HMNY 2011

  • John D. Boy is a doctoral student in sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center.
  • Morgan Buck is a student of Political Science and a publishing lackey with radical aspirations. She studies at the Graduate Center with a focus on Marxist theories of nature and autonomous food production.
  • Jonathan Cogliano is a PhD student in Economics at the New School for Social Research. His research focuses on situating Marxian/Classical value theory in an agent-based computational framework, political economy, distribution, and the history of economic thought.
  • Rachel Goffe
  • Jesse Goldstein is a Phd Candidate in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research focuses on waste, capitalism and ecology.
  • Francesca Manning is a doctoral candidate in Geography at the City University of New York, and teaches Economic Geography at Hunter College.
  • Laura Silverman is a masters student of Politics at New School for Social Research (NSSR). Her research interrogates questions of reproduction and modern political theory from a Marxist perspective.
  • Asher Dupuy-Spencer is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. His interests include political economy, economic planning, and the history of social scientific thought.
  • David Spataro is a PhD candidate in Geography at The Graduate Center (CUNY) in New York City, where he researches social movements in the city that organize around the provision of free services using the principles of mutual aid. In addition to his academic work, he is a creative writer and co-host of a psuedo-literary event at Bluestockings Books where activists and academics present creative work.
  • Arya Zahedi is a PhD student in the department of Politics at the New School for Social Research. His research interests include critical theory, revolutions, aesthetics, and the history of modern Iran.