Los Altos Institute Archive

This class elaborates on my essay on the Donatist movement, in which I explain points of resemblance between modern Wokeness and the new brand of orthodox Christianity we associate with Constantine, the Council of Nicea and the Donatist Crisis of the fourth century.

This is the course introduction in which the approach of the course is explained. We are examining Wokeness only one angle, the theological and looking at past events and movements that resemble its key doctrines.

Indigenous actions in the Western Hemisphere 1978-92.

The Arctic and Indigeneity: from the Sami and Inuit conquests to the Frobisher expedition.

Los Altos Institute sponsored a public lecture by Ira Zbarsky on his forty years of eco-anarchist bioregional organizing in Eastern Ukraine, Guatemala, Mexico and BC on November 28th. You can listen to it here.

In this final episode, we talk about the two schools of thought in American imperialism and their twenty-first century prospects.

In this episode we wrap up the course narrative by looking at the 2009 Honduran coup and its consequences.

In this episode we examine the rise of structural adjustment programs and their first tests in Argentina

In this episode, we discuss the introduction of neoliberalism and its original testing not in the UK or BC but in Chile under Augusto Pinochet. 

We examine the founding of the Alliance for Progress, its spawning of the School of the Americas and the strange case of the Peruvian dictatorship of the 1970s.

In our second episode on the Brazilian dictatorship, we look at the "diversity politics" of the authoritarian junta.

We begin our two-episode look at the distinctive features of Brazil's 1964-85 dictatorship that made it the most successful of the US-backed bureaucratic authoritarian regimes.

We continue our mid-course focus on Brazil, examining the building of its industrial sector in the 1930s and 40s and American attempts to deindustrialize the country in the 1950s.

Nicaragua and Brazil have very different histories, geographies and cultures but both were reshaped by the coffee industry.

The US changed dramatically as an empire when it seized Spain from Cuba and became the second in a succession of three empires to ruin Cuban cuisine.

Like the term "third world," Banana Republic has come to be a pejorative description of an underdeveloped country lacking in democracy. But it has a more precise meaning. Such Republics had a specific pattern of development developed in Central American and the Caribbean.

This episode looks at the transformation of liberalism and, consequently, the Monroe Doctrine 1848-76.

The course begins with America's oldest and most important foreign policy doctrine, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which declared the US protector of liberty in the Western Hemisphere and the political conditions that gave rise to it.

While LAI is not a Slavic studies think tank, we have enough knowledge on our board to organize a short panel discussion on the Ukraine crisis. This does not purport to be an analysis of the war and the Institute takes no official position on the conflict. Instead, we are simply offering those looking for new contextual, especially historical information on the conflict some novel information to h...

Leisl wraps up the course.

In this episode, Leisl Westfall puts together the various pieces of analysis that have been developing over the course of the class to look comprehensively at the evolving views and understandings of gender in the original Dune corpus.

Stuart Parker delivers a second guest lecture on canonicity, social reproduction and other key sociological ideas in the Dune series.

Leisl Westfall summarizes the last two Dune books and sets up for seeing gender as a central heuristic for interpreting the series.

Leisl Westfall continues our synopsis of the series with God Emperor of Dune.

In this episode, Leisl Westfall begins her synopsis of the series with commentary.