Ann Arbor, Michigan / Zoom (Hybrid)
Deadline for abstracts: June 30th (up to 250 words)
Submission Form: https://forms.gle/9zENxMYi9i1Wotu67
Free and open to the public
The 2025 Charles F. Fraker Graduate Conference, organized by the Department of
Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, invites participants to
critically engage with the interplay of capitalism and desire.
The Anthropocene marks an era of profound ecological, economic and existential crisis.
Amidst climate breakdown —what Lucas Pohl and Samo Tomsic call “the ultimate surplus
product of capitalism”— we confront not only the devastation wrought by capital but also its
extraordinary libidinal grip. What, then, becomes of desire in a moment where the future of life
itself hangs in the balance? In other words, does desire as a concept still matter in the era of
climate crisis?
In this sense, we ask questions such as: how has the libidinal economy tied to extraction
and consumption deepened the ecological crisis? What forms of individual and collective
fulfillment might emerge in a society freed from the logic of capital accumulation? How might
we rethink desire not within the anthropocentric categories that enabled the current crises but
as a potential locus for imagining alternative futures?
In light of the current uncertainty surrounding funding availability at many universities
due to federal budget cuts, the conference will be held in a hybrid format. The acceptance of
presentations for Zoom panels will be more competitive.
We welcome papers that examines capitalism and desire from a variety of perspectives,
fields, themes and media, including, but not limited to:
Accumulation and
Dispossession
Care and Commonality
Cinema
Crisis and Culture
Critical Race Theory
Democracy, Law, and Justice
Disability Studies/Crip
Theory
Ecocriticism
Gender and Sexuality
Heritage Studies
History and Historicity
Illustration
Indigenous & Afrodiasporic
Studies
Literature
Museum Studies
Narrative/Narratology
Nation-state and Empire
Performance
Photography
Science, Technology and
Society
Speculative Fiction
Social Reproduction Theory
Technologies
Translation Studies
Urban Studies
Violence and Trauma