The 13/13 Seminars

About the 13/13 Seminars

Each year, the 13/13 public seminars focus on a different set of problematics at the very heart of contemporary critical thought. During the 2015-2016 academic year, the first 13/13 public seminars focused on Michel Foucault’s 13 series of lectures at the Collège de France in Paris, all of which were edited into books, with the complete set finally published in 2015. We engaged in close readings of Foucault’s 13 Collège de France lectures at 13 public seminars at Columbia University. This produced the first “13/13”, the Foucault 13/13 series.

The name and idea, 13/13, was born. During the next year, 2016-2017, the public seminar focused on 13 critical readings of Friedrich Nietzsche and produced the Nietzsche 13/13 series. During the 2017-2018 academic year, the seminar focused on 13 modalities of uprisings and produced the Uprising 13/13 series. The following year, during the 2018-2019 academic year, the seminar focused on the relationship between critical theory and praxis, and produced the Praxis 13/13 series. During the 2019-2020 academic year, the seminar returned to 13 fundamental texts of critical theory, and produced the Critique 13/13 series. During the 2020-2021 academic year, the seminar went completely virtual, due to the pandemic, and focused on the history, theory, and future of abolition. It produced the Abolition Democracy 13/13 series. The 2021-2022 seminar was Revolution 13/13, in which we will explore the texts of "worldly philosophers" and ask why some ideas and manifestos, more so than others, have ignited, animated, or galvanized people to rise in revolution. The 2022-2023 seminar was Utopia 13/13, during which we studied 13 examples and ideas of concrete utopias.

This year, we will be studying cooperative projects and ideas at the Coöperism 13/13 seminars. Please join us!

Please email us at [email protected] for more information.

Many thanks to the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities for their longtime and ongoing support.