the Center for Transcultural Studies

Coming up…

Ecology, Capitalism, Democracy

July 14–19, 2025

Summer University, CEU, Budapest, Hungary

Directors

Dilip Gaonkar, Rhetoric, and Public Culture, Northwestern University

Shalini Randeria, President and Rector of Central European University

Liam Mayes, Politics, Law and Social Thought, Rice University

Faculty

Prathama Banerjee, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India

Miguel de Beistegui, Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Craig Calhoun, Social Sciences, Arizona State University

Sonja Dümpelmann, Environmental Humanities, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Ludwig Maximilians University

Harris Feinsod, Department of English, Johns Hopkins University

Robert Meister, Department of the History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz

Lars Tønder, Political Science, University of Copenhagen

Peter Wagner, Department of Sociological Theory, University of Barcelona

Recent Event

The Privatized State

Friday, May 16, 2025

10 a.m. to 12 p.m. CST

Featuring:
Chiara Cordelli (Political Science, University of Chicago)

Respondents:
Leah Downey (Human, Political and Social Sciences, St. John’s College, Cambridge University )

Blake Emerson (Law and Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles)

Nadia Urbinati (Political Science, Columbia University)

Convener:
Dilip Gaonkar (Communication Studies, Northwestern University)

Free and open to the public. On Zoom.

Featured Projects

Questioning the Present

The Questioning the Present project was launched in 2020 as a response to the contemporary political, economic, and social conditions in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

Democratic Agendas Network

In 2017, the CTS launched a new network-building project titled Democratic Agendas Network as a framework for integrating projects and dialogues related to the career of democracy and its futures.

Summer School

This program at the Central European University is co-funded by the Open Society Foundations, the Center for Transcultural Studies, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, and the Buffett Institute of Global Affairs (Northwestern University, Evanston, USA).

Publications

Public Works

Public Works is the CTS's international publications project. It includes the contemporary paperback series Public Planet Books (a collaboration with Duke University Press) and CTS-sponsored books. Benjamin Lee is Public Works' executive director.

Working Papers

Dig into the CTS’s intellectual history by checking out the working papers that CTS-affiliated scholars wrote between 1986 and 1992.