On Monday, September 28, the UMass Amherst History Department and partners launch the 2026-2027 Feinberg Series, a free public event series that brings together students, scholars, organizers, and community members. The series theme is Escape from Oligarchy: The History and Future of Rule by the Rich. Throughout the year, events–including lectures, panels, workshops, a community-wide read, and a professional development series for teachers–will trace the global history of oligarchy as well as the popular movements that have fought back.
One of the founding premises of the Feinberg Series is that history can help make sense of current political conflicts. As the series directors write, “The consolidation of oligarchic rule, in the United States and around the world, lies at the heart of today’s crises of war, resurgent fascism, and climate destruction, and it poses severe obstacles to addressing those crises in peaceful and equitable ways. Now more than ever, we find it essential to study how we got into this predicament and how we might extricate ourselves from it."
The series launches on Monday, September 28, with Exit Strategies: Contesting the Future of Capitalism, an online plenary panel with Jeanelle K. Hope, Tristan Hughes, and Clara E. Mattei (6pm). Panelists will examine the authoritarian futures envisioned by today’s far-right thinkers and tech billionaires. They will also analyze some of the alternative democratic visions that could ensure the survival of all humanity, not just the rich.
The series continues with a lecture by historian Priya Satia on the anti-oligarchic movements of the eighteenth-century world, titled “Who Else Opposed Monarchy in 1776?” (October 22, 5:30pm). A week later, historians and organizers Aviva Chomsky, Julio Flores, and Cecilia Guerrero will dissect the relationship of national borders to capitalism and oligarchy, in “The Business of Borders” (October 29, 6pm). In November, historian Steven Press puts recent expansionist designs into historical context through a look at the East India Company and King Leopold II’s Congo Free State, in “How to Buy Your Own Country” (November 9, 6pm). The fall lineup concludes with “Feminist Movements Confronting Oligarchy,” a panel on the feminist and anticapitalist Wages for Housework movement of the 1970s with historians Elisabeth Armstrong and Emily Callaci (December 2, 6pm).
The series opens its spring-semester offerings with a community-wide reading of The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, by writer Amitav Ghosh, in partnership with Northampton’s Forbes Library. The author then visits the UMass Amherst campus to deliver the series keynote, titled “Intimations of Apocalypse” (March 1, 6pm). With an eye to history, Ghosh considers the recent rise of doomsday planning by billionaires and what it may portend.
Later that month, the series hosts the 2027 James Baldwin Lecture in collaboration with the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. This year’s lecture features longtime organizers Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome Scott speaking on “Lessons from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers for Today’s Class Struggle” (March 25, 5:30pm). From February through April the series also hosts “The Oligarchy Night School: History Institute for K-12 Educators.” The spring semester concludes with a “plug in” event organized in collaboration with the UMass Alliance for Community Transformation. This final event, “Organizing Against Oligarchy,” is a chance for students and community members to connect with local grassroots organizations that do work related to the series theme (April 8, 4pm).
The Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series is offered every other academic year by the UMass Amherst History Department thanks to the generosity of Kenneth R. Feinberg ’67 and associates. Each iteration of the series focuses on a “big issue” of clear and compelling concern, grounding it in historical context. The 2026–27 series is presented in collaboration with more than a dozen community and university partners, including numerous UMass and Five College academic departments, programs, and initiatives.
All events are free and open to the public. Register for events on the series website: www.umass.edu/feinberg
Contact: [email protected]