Listening to Marx with the Ear of Our Hearts

“Is there wisdom in Marx that can help us address what troubles us today? This ten-session mini-course will allow us to hear Marx’s words in our own voices while connecting to our life stories as neighbors, family members, organizers, workers, artists, creators and educators. Each session will focus on key extracts from chapters in Marx’s Capital, Volume 1. No preparation or prior study of reading Capital is required. Just a desire to listen with intention, learn, and participate in dialogue. The goal of our mini-course is to have you tune into Marx using your life experiences and knowledges as a path into critical social analysis and community-building. This is NOT an exhaustive reading of Capital. Rather, it is an invitation to knowing and understanding a text that has guided social justice movements across the world since it was published in 1867.”

Edgar Rivera Colón, PhD, a medical anthropologist, teaches courses on health justice and the history of racism in medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine’s Narrative Medicine program. Dr. Rivera Colón is also faculty at Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine program where he trains students in qualitative research methods. With his Columbia colleagues, he co-authored the award-winning textbook, The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press). Recently, Patrick Hebert and he published “Slow Burn, Humid Pitch: Cultivating Care While Livin’ La COVIDa Loca” in NACLA Report on the Americas. His forthcoming book project is Love Comes in Knots: Meditations in the American Labyrinth. He hosts a podcast about politics and spirituality called Karl Marx Ate My Field Notes. He is also member of the People’s CDC.

Robert Sember is an educator and administrator with the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Program (APAEP) at Auburn University, Alabama. He is a member of APAEP’s Higher Education in Prison team, which offers college courses in prisons in Alabama. Robert is also a member of the international sound-art collective, Ultra-red, which helped establish Vogue’ology, an initiative by and for members of the African-American and Latino/a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community in New York City. Robert is a devoted UoO comrade, having taught a JanTerm course and participated in workshops and reading groups. He was a co-chair of the organizing committee of the 400 Years of Inequality initiative.