Call for Papers: The End(s) of Democracy | Political Concepts 2025
The annual Political Concepts conference will take place on Friday and Saturday, February 28 and March 1, 2025, at Brown University, under the auspices of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities. The conference is part of the Political Concepts Initiative, a collaborative project of colleagues from the New School, Columbia University, NYU, CUNY, and Brown, and is convened by Timothy Bewes, Ainsley LeSure, Brian Meeks, Adi Ophir, and Vazira Zamindar.
The goal of the Political Concepts Initiative is to experiment with modes of concept construction, concept performance, and/or concept analysis, and to use this concept-work as a tool for enhancing critical questioning of the political, while creating a framework for an ongoing conversation across disciplines, methodologies, and styles of thinking in the humanities and social sciences.
The deadline to submit a title and 400- to 600-word abstract relevant for critical reflections on “the end(s) of democracy” is August 15, 2024.
Participants are invited to present a single concept that helps thinking about, revising, or questioning some of the concerns outlined in the call for papers. Such a concept may be one that needs to be revised, deconstructed, or invented to better reflect on, criticize, or resist whatever falls under this ambiguous title. Only concepts (usually one or two words) are admitted as titles.
If your proposal is selected and you will be coming from outside Brown, the Cogut Institute will reimburse your travel expenses and cover your lodging in Providence. If you have any questions about the conference or the project, please email humanities-institute@brown.edu. Submit an abstract here.