March 14, 2011
Tishman Auditorium
The Life, Letters and Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg
Co-sponsored by Verso Books, Haymarket, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, NYU’s Department of Sociology, and the German Book Office in New York.
In support of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg and to launch The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg.
With Vivek Chibber, Paul Le Blanc, Peter Hudis, Annelies Laschitza, Helen C. Scott, and others ...
This is a free event open to the public but RSVP is requested to clara@versobooks.com / 718-246-8160
Made possible by the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
DEBORAH EISENBERG, an American short-story writer, actor and teacher who received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009, is the author of several collections of stories including The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg which has just been named a finalist for this year's PEN/Faulkner Award.
Vivek Chibber (host and chair) is Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University and author of Locked In Place: State Building and Late Industrialization in India as well as many articles on imperialism, Marxist theory, long-term historical change, and the political economy of development. He is associate editor of the Socialist Register, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Agrarian Change, Politics and Society and others.
Longtime teacher and activist, Paul Le Blanc is series editor of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg and co-editor of The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg and (with Scott McLemee) of C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism and, with Helen C. Scott, Socialism or Barbarism.
Peter Hudis has written widely on Marxist theory and Hegelian philosophy for a range of journals. He is general editor of The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg and co-editor of The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader and The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx. He teaches philosophy at Oakton Community College and Loyola University in Illinois.
Annelies Laschitza, based in Germany, has produced a number of works focusing on the history of the labor movement in Germany at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century century. She has achieved worldwide recognition for editing of the Collected Letters of Luxemburg [in 6 volumes] as well as serving as co-editor of Luxemburg's Collected Writings [in German]. She worked as a consultant for Margarethe von Trotta's film "Rosa Luxemburg" [1986] and has produced an important [600-page] biography of Luxemburg, Full of Life, Despite Everything. Her work on Karl Liebknecht includes the book, The Liebknechts, Karl and Sophie: Politics and Family—the most comprehensive study of the life and work of Karl Liebknecht.
Helen C. Scott is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Vermont. She is editor of The Essential Rosa Luxemburg (Haymarket Books) and, with Paul LeBlanc, an anthology of Luxemburg's writings, Socialism or Barbarism (Pluto Press). In addition to her monograph, Caribbean Women Writers and Globalization: Fictions of Independence (Ashgate), she has published articles in Callaloo, International Socialist Review, Journal of Haitian Studies, Postcolonial Text, Socialist Studies, and Works and Days and chapters in several postcolonial collections.
7.00pm – 9.00pm
Tishman Auditorium
Vanderbilt Hall, NYU School of Law, 40 Washington Sq. South
New York, NY 10012 United States
Authors
Books
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The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg
Letters from the heroic German revolutionary to her comrades, friends and lovers.
Blog
Watch and listen: Deborah Eisenberg brings the letters of Rosa Luxemburg to life
Rosa Luxemburg was celebrated in New York at NYU's Tishman Auditorium on March 14th, where actress and writer Deborah Eisenberg brought Rosa's remarkable correspondence to life on stage. Eisenberg joined a distinguished panel of Luxemburg scholars who reminded us of the continuing importance of Luxemburg's work today: Paul Le Blanc, Anthony Arnove, Helen C. Scott, Peter Hudis and Annelies Laschitza.
Deborah Eisenberg, an American short-story writer, actor and teacher who received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009, is the author of several collections of stories including The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg,which has just been awarded this year's PEN/Faulkner Award.
Many thanks to Noel Benford for making this footage available. This event was organized to launch The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg.
Deborah Eisenberg to read from The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg will be celebrated this coming Monday March 14th in New York at NYU's Tishman Auditorium where actress and writer Deborah Eisenberg will bring Rosa's remarkable correspondence to life on stage. Eisenberg will join a distinguished panel of Luxemburg scholars who will remind us of the continuing importance of Luxemburg's work today : Paul Le Blanc, Helen C. Scott, Peter Hudis and Annelies Laschitza. As a taster, here's an excerpt from one of the several letters Eisenberg will read—from Rosa (in prison) to Mathilde Wurm, February 16, 1917 ...
"Eisenberg channels Luxemburg"
Ahead of the March 14th New York launch of The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg,where writer and actress Deborah Eisenberg will give special readings, Philip Weiss of the essential Mondoweiss shares his enthusiasm:
And here's something I'm going to try to get to the following week in New York. On the night of March 14, the great Deborah Eisenberg, a supporter of Jewish Voice for Peace, author of Under the 82d Airborne and of short stories that defined a generation of New Yorkers, Transactions in a Foreign Currency, will read from a new Verso collection, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg. A lot of history converging that night.
For more on the March 14th event, see "The Life, Letters and Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg."
To read Philip Weiss' post in full, and to access excellent comment and analysis on the Middle East, visit Mondoweiss.
“The Mystery of Rosa Luxemburg’s Corpse”
In a long piece appearing just days before we mark 140 years since Rosa Luxemburg's birth (March 5th), Emily Witt for the New York Observer assesses The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg alongside commentary on the mystery surrounding her corpse:
The story of the missing corpse is only the latest chapter in the collected mythology of Rosa Luxemburg. There's no shortage of romancing when it comes to her life: She was the subject of a 1986 biopic, "Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg", by Margarethe von Trotta; a 2005 historical novel, Rosa, by Jonathan Rabb; and, most recently, a 2010 French musical, "Rosa La Rouge." But as the introduction to a new book of her collected correspondence, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg (Verso, 512 pages, $39.95), points out, only a quarter of her written work has thus far been available in English, the rest inaccessible to the unfortunate "Anglophone monoglot."
“Egypt's Workers Revolt”
In an article for Counterpunch, Mike Whitney rightly points out that the blinkered "ain't capitalism great" US media commentary surrounding the toppling of Mubarak (and the continued unrest across the Middle East) belies the real roots of the revolution: working class roots ...
The real story about what's going on in Egypt is being suppressed in the US because it doesn't jibe with the "ain't capitalism great" theme that the media loves to reiterate ad nauseam. The truth is that the main economic policies that Washington exports through bribery and coercion have ignited massive labor unrest which has set the Middle East ablaze. Mubarak is the first casualty in this war against neoliberalism, but there will be many more to come ...
The revolution started long before the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, and it will continue for a long time to come. Workers everywhere are rebelling against the miserable conditions, slave wages and "privatization", the crown jewel of neoliberalism.
Library Journal on The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg
Library Journal has published an early review of The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg—"the most comprehensive [collection] published in English, with over two-thirds of the letters translated here for the first time" ...
This English-language edition of selected letters of Polish-born Marxist thinker and founder of the German Communist Party, Luxemburg, who was assassinated in 1919, is the most comprehensive published in English, with over two-thirds of the letters translated here for the first time. Described as a companion to Verso's projected 14-volume "Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg," it is based on the German Herzlichst, Ihre Rosa (Most Warmly Yours, Rosa), with 40 letters added to the 190 in that volume. The letters (originally in German, Polish, and Russian) will give informed English-language readers new access to the intellectual, political, and personal life of a leading Marxist theorist and activist. The recipients include political associates Leo Jogiches (also her lover for a time), Karl Kautsky, Karl Liebknecht, and Clara Zetkin.
Visit Library Journal to read the review in full. The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg will be launched in New York on March 14 at NYU's Tishman Auditorium.
Publishers Weekly on the "unfailing passion" of Rosa Luxemburg's letters
In a early review from Publishers Weekly, The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg is praised for the rare "personal insight" it gives into the life of this "remarkable woman." The new collection, which inaugurates The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, "adds meaningful context to any study of early Western Socialism."