"The Right to Revolution: Law, Culture, and Communism in the Interwar United States"

Velkommen til gjesteforelesing med Dr. Molly Pucci, hun er førsteamanuensis i europeisk historie på 1900‑tallet ved Trinity College i Dublin. Hennes bøker inkluderer Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe (Yale University Press, 2020) og Marxism and the Interpretation of Dreams: Communism in Interwar Czechoslovakia and the Idea of Central Europe (Stanford, 2026).

Abstract

The talk will focus on the use of immigration law to punish foreign-born radicals, 
communists in particular, for political and labor activism in the interwar United States. 
It is one chapter of a larger book project that aims to write a new history of American 
communism that focuses not only on ideology and politics, but also on its engagement 
with major contemporary American legal, cultural, and ethnic struggles. Drawing on the 
world of the International Labor Defense, the communist party's legal aid organization, 
the talk explores how immigrant workers, lawyers, artists, and organizers became, often 
reluctantly, key defenders of civil rights—speech, assembly, due process, racial justice, 
and asylum—in an era of repression, segregation, and deportation. By tracing these 
conflicts across immigrant neighborhoods, courtrooms, and transnational networks, the 
talk shows how radical activists reimagined what and who America was, and who had 
the right to challenge it

For mer informasjon, kontakt Elena Kochetkova eller Marcus Colla.

OBS: Inngangen til Øystensgate 3 er låst, gjester utenfor UiB må gå gjennom inngangen i Øystensgate 3, der noen vil vente ved døren og slippe deg inn.