2025 Charles F. Fraker Graduate Student Conference
CAPITALISM AND DESIRE
October 17-18
Department of Romance Languages & Literatures
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Deadline for abstracts: June 30th (up to 250 words)
LINK TO ABSTRACT SUBMISSION:
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 Tomšič 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
We welcome abstracts up to 250 words for papers in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, that engage with the above-mentioned fields and themes. We encourage scholarly investigations in the form of academic papers, but also alternative formats such as creative writing, performance, photography, and video essays. Papers may deal with literary or cultural studies as well as other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
LINK TO ABSTRACT SUBMISSION:
https://forms.gle/9zENxMYi9i1Wotu67