Critical Studies

The Critical Studies Network provides meeting space for all scholars interested in critical social science, broadly defined. By “critical social science,” we mean scholarly work in the social sciences oriented toward deepening our knowledge of various relations of social domination, exploitation, and extraction, both transparent and hidden, and pointing the way to emancipatory alternatives. We believe that comparative and historical work is uniquely positioned to contribute to this critical vocation of the social sciences because of its ability to denaturalize and historicize the social world. The network’s aim will be to cultivate and promote scholarship that not only self-consciously recognizes this critical vocation, but also draws out and reflects upon the political implications of scholarly work. The network is especially interested in work that engages with a diverse range of critical theories, including but not limited to postcolonial and decolonial theories, Marxism, feminist theories, queer theory, and the Black Radical Tradition. We draw together various historical strands of “critical” thinking (e.g., critical theory, critical race theory, etc.) that have developed in different disciplines and that can be brought forward to the future. Our network will rethink assumptions and challenge disciplinary orthodoxies about social science and theory. We welcome quantitative and qualitative methods, empirical and theoretical work oriented toward concept building, and causal social analysis that is speculative and future-oriented.

• Sadia Saeed
• Zachary Levenson