Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything (reading group)

Full Tuition: $200 — Scholarship options are available in the drop-down enrollment menu for you to self-select.

Instructor: Andrews | 4-weeks | Sundays | October 22 - November 12 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET | ONLINE

By re-writing the past, this book offers genuine hope for the future. Read it together and get excited about what humanity has been and can be!

Many of the ideas that shape policy, practices, and beliefs about culture and society are grounded in broad-sweeping myths about the past. Either we were “born free” and now “everywhere in chains” or born in a hostile “state of nature” that pitted us against each other so that we needed rationality and rule to form a society. But why did those myths emerge and how did those made-up ideas come to lie at the heart of disciplines like economics and political science? In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, authors David Graeber and David Wengrow deploy anthropology and archaeology to show that the past was in fact very different than we have been taught, thus giving us a very different understanding of the present, and new possibilities for the future, too. The publishers describe the books as: “A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution―from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality―and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.” Join us as we read together to make sense of what we believed and what is possible. The book is long and challenging, but that means it’s the perfect book to study in community! We’ll spend each meeting trying to get a grasp on the history that’s being contested, the new possibilities Graeber and Wengrow share, and formulating our own ideas about what they mean for us.

Classes are recorded to allow for students to participate asynchronously. If you want to take a class but cannot make the class time, sign up for the asynchronous audit option to follow along on your own. Recordings are password protected and will only be available for the duration of the class and two weeks after it ends.

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We are currently able to offer three full scholarships per class, and one full scholarship per person per term. If the scholarship tier you need is sold out or you would like to pay tuition on an installment basis, please email us directly, and we will work with you.

If at any point up to 48 hours before your first class session you realize you will be unable to take the class, please email us and we will reallocate your funds to a future class, to another student’s scholarship, or refund it. After that point, we are able to offer 50% refunds.