School of Sociology and Social Policy Research Seminar and Book Launch: Alexandre Kojève, a Man of Influence

We are delighted to host this special research seminar and book launch in association with the Bauman Institute.

Abstract

Some people might associate the name of Alexandre Kojève with the idea of the end of history, some other with an obscure Marxist philosopher committed to the construction of the EU in its beginnings. There may even be those for whom that name stands for the wiseman who, building on Hegel, attained the ultimate truth of the world.

The edited volume “Alexandre Kojève: a Man of Influence” (2022, Rowman & Littlefield) which we now have the pleasure to present, comprises a multi-faceted approach to the rather elusive work of the Russo-French thinker. We are delighted to count on five of its contributors to offer a snapshot of the book by featuring their respective chapters. 

The panel discussion will be chaired by Dr Jack Palmer (Leeds Trinity University)

Speaker Bios:

Bryan-Paul Frost is the Elias “Bo” Ackal, Jr./BORSF Endowed Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is the editor and co-translator (with Roberts Howse) of Kojève’s Outline of a Phenomenology of Right (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) as well as contributor and co-editor (with Timothy Burns) of Philosophy, History, and Tyranny: Reexamining the Debate between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojève (SUNY, 2016). In addition to the above, he has published on the political thought of Aristophanes, Aristotle, Raymond Aron, Cato the Younger, Cicero and Roman civic education, Rousseau, and Tocqueville and Emerson 
 
Isabel Jacobs is a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London. Her research explores Alexandre Kojève's aesthetics. In 2021, she was one of the organizers of a large international workshop on Kojève. She currently co-edits a special issue dedicated to Kojève and Russian philosophy. Her interests include global intellectual history, philosophy of science, and cinema. She holds an MA in Russian and East European Literature and Culture from University College London. 
 
Jeff Love is Research Professor of German and Russian at Clemson University. He is the author of The Black Circle: A Life of Alexandre Kojève (Columbia University Press, 2018), Tolstoy: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2008), and The Overcoming of History in War and Peace (Brill, 2004). He has also published a translation of Alexandre Kojève’s Atheism (Columbia University Press, 2018), an annotated translation (with Johannes Schmidt) of F.W. J. Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (State University of New York Press, 2006), a co-edited volume, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky: Philosophy, Morality, Tragedy (Northwestern University Press, 2016), and an edited volume, Heidegger in Russia and Eastern Europe (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017). His most recent work is a translation of António Lobo Antunes’s novel Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water (Yale University Press, 2019). 
 
Waller R. Newell is Professor of Political Science, Philosophy and Humanities at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he helped found and teaches in the College of the Humanities, Canada’s only four-year baccalaureate in the Great Books.  He was educated at Yale University, where he received a PhD in Political Science and at the University of Toronto, where he received a B.A. in Arts and Sciences and an M.A. in Political Economy. His latest book is Tyranny and Revolution: Rousseau to Heidegger from Cambridge University Press. www.wallernewell.com
 
Luis J. Pedrazuela earned his PhD with a thesis on Alexandre Kojève at the University Carlos III of Madrid. He is currently a research fellow at the University of Leeds (Bauman Institute)

Jack Palmer is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Leeds Trinity University and is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Bauman Institute. His publications include Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile (forthcoming 2023, McGill-Queens University Press), Entanglements of Modernity, Colonialism and Genocide: Burundi and Rwanda in Historical-Sociological Perspective (Routledge, 2018) and Revisiting Modernity and the Holocaust: Heritage, Dilemmas, Extensions (Routledge, 2022 – edited with Dariusz Brzeziński). He is a co-editor of a three-volume series of selected writings of Zygmunt Bauman (Polity Press). His work has appeared in journals such as European Journal of Social Theory, Theory, Culture & Society,  European Holocaust Studies and Thesis Eleven.

How to join the research seminar

The event will be held on Zoom, access the meeting via the link and joining details below:

Join Zoom Meeting – Meeting ID: 871 9967 7280 – Passcode: +3BByd

No booking required.