EVENT Oct 17
ABSTRACT Jun 30
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2025 Charles F. Fraker Graduate Conference

Ann Arbor, MI / Zoom
Organization: Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan
Categories: Postcolonial, Digital Humanities, Graduate Conference, Hispanic & Latino, Comparative, Interdisciplinary, French, Popular Culture, Gender & Sexuality, Women's Studies, World Literatures, African-American, 1865-1914, 20th & 21st Century, 20th & 21st Century, Aesthetics, Anthropology/Sociology, Classical Studies, Cultural Studies, Environmental Studies, Film, TV, & Media, Food Studies, History, Philosophy, African & African Diasporas, Asian & Asian Diasporas, Australian Literature, Canadian Literature, Caribbean & Caribbean Diasporas, Indian Subcontinent, Eastern European, Mediterranean, Middle East, Native American, Scandinavian, Pacific Literature, Miscellaneous
Event Date: 2025-10-17 to 2025-10-18 Abstract Due: 2025-06-30

2025 Charles F. Fraker Conference

Capitalism and Desire

Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

University of Michigan

17-18 October 2025

Ann Arbor, Michigan / Zoom (Hybrid)

Deadline for abstracts: June 30th (up to 250 words)

Submissions: https://forms.gle/PJiSKYcYDqjkzY3K6

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

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/frakerconference/

frakerconference@umich.edu

Antonia Alvarado, on behalf of the Fraker Conference Committee