CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline for submission: Tuesday, June 30

Lauren Berlant 3CT Graduate Student Conference
In Case of Emergency: Catastrophe, Climate, and Capitalism
University of Chicago | November 5–7, 2026

"The urgent threat of climate change, though often disavowed, is at the center of today’s general atmosphere of crisis. Walls hold back displaced populations and rising seas. Earth systems sustain lasting damage. Species are devastated. And with apocalyptic alacrity, capitalist-imperialist competition crosses terrains that were once uninviting and hostile, from deserts to the polar regions and outer space. 

"So far, discourses of risk and emergency have mostly been a boon for the racist right and anti-democratic technocrats, rather than contributing to a genuine project of planetary stewardship. The quest for “energy sovereignty” has unleashed a wave of extractive interventions in the Global South amid the collapse of the postwar international order, creating new sacrifice zones and colonial resource frontiers. Amid widespread doubts about electoral institutions’ ability to deliver systemic transformation, some environmentalists have embraced climate doomerism or the technosolutionism of geoengineering. We see how climate crisis is increasingly governed through biopolitical management, securitized borders, and technocratic forms of environmental control—and how the emergency becomes yet another opportunity for further administration."

To apply, submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and a CV by June 30, 2026. 

"We want to investigate how crisis is produced, circulated, and inhabited across domains, including climate, culture, political economy, media, and governance. Through this cartography of crisis, we hope to understand how we might countermap and counteract this state of ecological and social emergency. 

"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."

See the complete call online