2025 Chicago Graduate Conference in Political Theory

Saturday, April 12th and Sunday, April 13th, 2025

• Wendy Brown’s keynote address will take place April 12th at 5pm in Ida Noyes Hall, 3rd floor theater (1212 E. 59th St.)
• Camila Vergara’s plenary address will take place on April 13th at 11:30am at the Franke Institute for the Humanities (1100 E 57th St.)
• A moderated dialogue between Wendy Brown and Camila Vergara will take place on April 13th at 12:45pm at the Franke Institute for the Humanities (1100 E 57th St.)

Please note: persons with a disability who believe they need assistance are requested to call 773-702-8274 in advance.

Schedule and Program

Saturday, April 12th: Franke Institute for the Humanities, 1100 E 57th St.

9:00–9:30am — Breakfast and registration

9:30–9:45am — Welcome remarks

9:45–11:15am — Panel I: Utopia and the political imagination (Discussant: Sankar Muthu)

11:15-11:30am – Break

11:30am-1:00pm — Panel II: Territory, sovereignty, displacement (Discussant: Adom Getachew)

1:00–2:30pm — Catered lunch

2:30—4:00pm — Panel III: Re-visioning institutional democracy (Discussant: James Lindley Wilson)

5:00-6:30pm — Wendy Brown: keynote and Q&A (Ida Noyes Hall, 3rd floor theater – 1212 E. 59th St.)

6:30-7:30pm — Catered reception (Ida Noyes Hall, 3rd floor theater)

Sunday, April 13th: Franke Institute for the Humanities, 1100 E 57th St.

9:00–9:30am — Breakfast

9:30–11:15am — Panel IV: Crisis, critique, revolution (Discussant: Linda M.G. Zerilli)

11:15-11:30am – Break

11:30am–12:45pm — Camila Vergara: plenary address and Q&A

12:45–1:30pm — Moderated dialogue between Wendy Brown and Camila Vergara

1:30-3:00pm — Catered lunch

 

Panel details:

Panel I: Utopia and the political imagination (Saturday, April 12, 9:45-11:15am)

Discussant: Sankar Muthu

Disrupting the Circuits of Violence: Abolition as Antifascism in Angela Davis’s Thought (Michael Mirer – UCLA)

The Politics of Algorithms: Utopia, Despair, and the Limits of Political Imagination (Felicia Jing – Johns Hopkins University)

Creolizing Marxism: José Carlos Mariátegui, the Incan Empire, and ‘the Indian’ (Gabriel Vergara – UMass-Amherst)

Panel II: Territory, sovereignty, displacement (Saturday, April 12, 11:30am-1:00pm)

Discussant: Adom Getachew

The Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS): Dispossession and Displacement as Two Faces of Settler Colonialism (Mirza Abu Bakr Baig – University of Michigan)

Kinship and Loss in a Warming World – Lessons from the Andean ‘Ayllu’ (Lior Hamovitz – Boston University)

The Space of Transformative Continuity: Land, Politics and the Anthropocene in Laura Cornelius Kellogg and Chaim Zhitlowsky (Isaac Stethem – Columbia University)

Panel III: Re-visioning institutional democracy (Saturday, April 12, 2:30-4:00pm)

Discussant: James Lindley Wilson

Toni Morrison’s Political Vision: Schmitt, Mouffe, and the Labor of Political Survival (Columbus De’Marcus Pruitt – Brown University)

Towards a Democratised Rule of Law: Or, the Rule of Law for Radicals (Matthew Haji-Michael – Central European University)

“Conditions of Outward Freedom”: Crystal Eastman’s Political Strategy and the Memory of American Radicalism (Ewa Nizalowska – Cornell University)

Panel IV: Crisis, Critique, Revolution (Sunday, April 13, 9:30-11:15am)

Discussant: Linda M.G. Zerilli

Theory and Actions in the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement (Jinxue Chen – Northwestern University)

Contentious Optimism: Temporal Horizons of Possibility, Probability, and Foreclosures (ilkim karakuş – Harvard University)

Means to the End of Freedom: Instrumental Reason and the Possibility of Social Critique (Matthew Cohen – Harvard University)

Articulating Freedom through Autotheoretical Practices (Gabrielle Jourde – Sciences Po)