Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT)

One week until the deadline for paper submissions for the Lauren Berlant 3CT Graduate Student Conference! Graduate students, submit your abstract (max. 300 words) and CV via this Google Form (https://forms.gle/Fj4r9oAk5r8b6Q5K6) by June 30, 2026.

In Case of Emergency: Catastrophe, Climate, and Capitalism
November 5–7, 2026

Jason W. Moore (Binghamton) and Gökçe Günel (Rice) will deliver keynote addresses at the conference, which will also feature a curated program of poetry readings and film screenings. In Case of Emergency is organized by Aditi Kini, Tadhg Larabee, Ernest Lee, and Yolian Ogbu in collaboration with the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and with support from the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization.

https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/call-for-papers-2026-lauren-berlant-3ct-graduate-student-conference/

Call for Papers: Lauren Berlant 3CT Graduate Student Conference

In Case of Emergency: Catastrophe, Climate, and Capitalism
November 5–7, 2026
Keynote speakers: Gökçe Günel and Jason W. Moore

We invite proposals from graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, as well as artists, writers, and other practitioners. Our goal is to create space for imagination and speculation with people of varied backgrounds, interests, and praxes. We welcome interdisciplinary scholarship and cultural criticism attentive to the cultural, aesthetic, historical, and political dimensions of crisis. We imagine submissions might discuss:

• Technosolutionism and the dilemmas of growth
• Speculation, commodities, and disaster capitalism
• Fossil life as economy and desire
• Green neoliberalism as a political and cultural form
• Enclosure and destruction of the commons: water, forests, air and more
• Hydrocolonialism, oceanic crisis, and blue humanities
• Border ecologies, displacement, and the production of space
• State-making, world-making, and the remaking of political, social and ecological orders
• Toxic temporalities, slow violence, and “post”-colonial precarity
• Apocalypse and new worlds in literature and culture
• Climate pessimisms and the politics of fear and hope in crisis
• Resistance, strikes, and land back: movements and solidarity
• Community, care, and affective ecologies of crisis

To apply, submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and a CV by Tuesday, June 30, at 11:59pm CT. View the full Call for Papers and submit a paper proposal at https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/call-for-papers-2026-lauren-berlant-3ct-graduate-student-conference/

Video is now available from our April 13, 2026 event with Dominique J. Baker, Ron Lieber, and Lauren A. Rivera, titled “Aspiring to Elitism: How the Admissions Office Remade the Corporate University.”

Watch the video at https://youtu.be/5tLUepJUs78?si=Yujg3oEJ1nupsYSnW

Video is now available from our February 5, 2026, Theorizing the Present event with Leah Feldman, Exhausting Internationalism.

Watch the video at https://youtu.be/on3nDVtzSHA?si=_cBJYJkW0g8DvZAN

Call for Papers: Lauren Berlant 3CT Graduate Student Conference
In Case of Emergency: Catastrophe, Climate, and Capitalism
November 5–7, 2026
Keynote speakers: Gökçe Günel and Jason W. Moore

Crisis discourse often privileges spectacular catastrophe while obscuring the slow, uneven, and racialized forms of ecological violence embedded in everyday life. With the sirens blaring, it is easy to lose sight of the material impacts of the ideology of crisis across time and space. We can also miss the ways in which the permanent emergency warps our cultural production and social relations, concealing the most pressing contradictions of capitalism today. How might we map the cartography of crisis? In doing so, might we open space for alternative ways of thinking and living within and against crisis? How do we hold crisis at bay long enough to bring about a “real state of emergency,” as Benjamin says is our task?

We invite proposals from graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, as well as artists, writers, and other practitioners. Our goal is to create space for imagination and speculation with people of varied backgrounds, interests, and praxes. We welcome interdisciplinary scholarship and cultural criticism attentive to the cultural, aesthetic, historical, and political dimensions of crisis.

To apply, submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and a CV by Tuesday, June 30, at 11:59pm CT. View the full Call for Papers and submit a paper proposal at https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/call-for-papers-2026-lauren-berlant-3ct-graduate-student-conference/

This conference is organized by Aditi Kini, Tadhg Larabee, Ernest Lee, and Yolian Ogbu in collaboration with the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and with support from the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization.

Video is now available from our November 18, 2025, Theorizing the Present event with Roy Scranton, Climate Change and the Virtues of Pessimism.

Watch the video at https://youtu.be/mdPIPbjYb6Y?si=994x9xURjmjE_Zyy

Video is now available from Cédric Durand’s November 7 keynote presentation for the 2025 Lauren Berlant 3CT Graduate Student Conference, Power and Personality in Contemporary Capitalism. Durand’s keynote was titled The Vacant Throne: Institutional Contest for Dominance after the Hegemony of Finance.

Watch the video at https://youtu.be/ixH8mQJq5YI?si=x1cfT7wOEJYnxEdg

Academic Freedom / Academic Boycott
Wednesday, May 6, 2026, 5:00–6:30pm
Social Science Research Building 122

Speaker highlight: Na’ama Rokem

Na’ama Rokem is Associate Professor, Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, where she works on Modern Hebrew and German-Jewish literature. Her first book, Prosaic Conditions: Heinrich Heine and Spaces of Zionist Literature (Northwestern University Press, 2013) argues that prose—as a figure of thought, a mode and a medium—played an instrumental role in the literary foundations of the Zionist revolution.

Learn more and register for tomorrow's event at https://ccct.uchicago.edu/events/academic-freedom-academic-boycott/

Academic Freedom / Academic Boycott
Wednesday, May 6, 2026, 5:00–6:30pm
Social Science Research Building 122

Speaker highlight: Genevieve Lakier

Genevieve Lakier is Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar at the University of Chicago. She is an expert in the First Amendment, particularly as it relates to freedom of speech and press, civil rights and liberties, law and anthropology, media law, and criminal procedure. Her work examines the changing meaning of freedom of speech in the United States, the role that legislatures play in safeguarding free speech values, and the fight over freedom of speech on the social media platforms.

Learn more and register for tomorrow's event at https://ccct.uchicago.edu/events/academic-freedom-academic-boycott/

Academic Freedom / Academic Boycott
Wednesday, May 6, 2026, 5:00–6:30pm
Social Science Research Building 122

Speaker highlight: Veena Dubal

Veena Dubal is professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and general counsel of the American Association of University Professors. Professor Dubal’s work encompasses a range of topics, including the impact of digital technologies and emerging legal frameworks on workers’ lives; the interplay between law, work, and identity; and the role of law and lawyers in solidarity movements. Her research has been cited internationally in legal decisions, including by the California Supreme Court, and her research and commentary are regularly featured in media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, and CNN.

Learn more and register for tomorrow's event at https://ccct.uchicago.edu/events/academic-freedom-academic-boycott/