Category Archives: Reading Groups

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading Part Three: Structure of the Third Antinomy through the end), Wednesday, 16 July, 4pm, Chicago Public Library Lincoln Park location (our old standby, but in the “small meeting room” this time).

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading Part Three: Models but just through “Contemplation” ), Tuesday, 1 July, 4pm, Moody’s Pub, 5910 N Broadway. (NOTE this is not a library session due to unavailability all over, but Moody’s tends to be quiet outdoors.)

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading part two: negative dialectics, concepts and categories), Wednesday, 18 June, 4pm, Lincoln Belmont Public Library meeting room. PLEASE NOTE due to Juneteenth this session is NOT on a Thursday, and due to availability it is NOT at the regular LP library location.

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

So we press on: join InterCcECT for the next round of Adorno (reading part one: relationship to ontology), Thursday 5 June, 4pm, Lincoln Park Public Library large meeting room.

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

The times call for Negative Dialectics. Join InterCcECT as we embark on an intensified summer project of Adorno. We’ll aim to meet every two weeks, for as long as we can stand it. Summer schedule remains open for your proposals for alternate/ additional events too.

First session: read the Introduction (pages 1-60, or as deep as you get).

Thursday 22 May, 4pm, Sheffield’s Beer Garden (outside).

RSVP to interccect at gmail for PDF or with other hot summer concepts.

How do the financial instruments deployed in Hollywood shape its aesthetic output? A new book tracking the financialization of culture industries offers a comprehensive theory of the derivative form structuring contemporary music, television, and film. Join InterCcECT for a discussion of Derivative Media, with special guest, Professor Andrew deWaard. We’ll read the Introduction and Chapter 2. University of California Press has an open-access initiative ; rsvp to interccect at gmail for pdfs.

Monday 7 April 2025

4pm

Lincoln Park Public Library (large meeting room), 1150 W Fullerton. (The library has a parking lot.) Red, Brown, Purple Lines: Fullerton

Mark your calendars now for our May event, a celebration of long time InterCcECTer Adam Kotsko’s new book, Late Star Trek! Thursday 8 May, 4pm, Seminary Coop and festivities after.

As spring dawns, let us know what’s on your summer theory agenda; InterCcECT always welcomes event proposals.

Secular stagnation looks different around the globe, yet across those differences it commonly orients the rise of a global right. Join InterCcECT for a reading session on Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline, focusing on the introduction and first chapter. Author Jamie Merchant will be our special guest! 19 Feb, 5pm, back room of The Long Room .

RSVP to interccect at gmail for pdf, and mark your calendars now for our social spring of great guests: 20 March with Erin Graff Zivin, and 7 April with Andrew DeWaard!

How can he not have been immortal? The death of Fredric Jameson this fall leaves us a tremendous life’s work, and the charge to uphold it. In the new year, InterCcECT convenes to begin to find language for what has been given, and what has been lost. The conversation will be rooted in the foundational short text, the original talk and q&a titled “Cognitive Mapping,” printed in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. An optional on-ramp some might like is the posthumous (and long) article “Agon: The Iliad.” With special host Jonathan Flatley, we welcome all Chicago Jamesonians, friends of Fred, and first-timers.

Join us Thursday, 16 January, 5pm, at UIC University Hall, 601 S Morgan St, 20th floor, room 2028 (Blue Line: UIC Halsted). RSVP for pdfs.

ALSO! InterCcECT is delighted to announce the launch of StLSECT, a satellite in Saint Louis! Tell your southern comrades, and email stlsect@mailbox.org to sign up for event announcements. Columbus is also in the works. Other locations looking to start their own satellite can reach out for our handbook!

As always, contact us to propose events. Mark your calendars now for a session with special guest Erin Graff Zivin 20 March, and stay tuned for Feb plans.

Happy back to school! Join InterCcECT for an introduction to the philosophy of Hans Blumenberg and his genealogies of ontology and political theology, “Imitation of Nature: Toward A Prehistory of The Creative Being” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/20686110 or Contact us for PDF).

Tuesday 15 October, 4pm, Wicker Park Bucktown Public Library Meeting Room (Blue Line: Damen).

Mark your calendars now for What’s That Smell? , a conversation with special guests Professors Simon Hajdini and William Mazzarella, Tuesday 12 November, 4pm, UIC University Hall Room 2028.

Where does the marxist interpretative imperative of cognitive mapping meet the ecocritical palpation of energy? In the latest issue of Representations, Harry Pitt Scott’s article “Figures of Separation: Cognitive Mapping and Oil’s Declining Slope” promises some useful synthesis. Join us at 4pm Thursday 25 July outdoors at Sheffield’s. Contact us for PDF and to propose additional summer events!