Dialectics of Transformation

UC Irvine Graduate Student Conference
Oct. 9th and 10th, 2025
Keynote speaker: Prof. Andreja Novakovic (UC Berkeley)

G.W.F. Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit performs the very transformations that it tracks at the level of life, consciousness, science, ethics and other forms and figurations of Spirit. In this way the text sets up a hall of mirrors that demands the reader come to see themself differently. It follows that a reading of The Phenomenology is itself a transformative experience. As the work teaches us, rarely is a transformative moment without its agony, opacity and irony; however, it offers a vantage point from which these experiences can come to make a certain sense. On the other hand, Hegel also exposes the impossibility of establishing permanently stable ground amid the vertiginous movements of the dialectic. Thus the problematic legacy of The Phenomenology, and of Hegelian thought more broadly. At every turn, the question is raised: what is to be made of the Hegelian dialectic?

The Dialectics of Transformation Graduate Student Conference invites papers that address different forms of transformation, revelation, and conversion as they appear in The Phenomenology. We are particularly interested in papers that seek to question or problematize the possibility, stakes, and consequences of a given transformation present in the text or in its legacy, especially those transformations deemed desirable or necessary. Papers may consider questions such as: What contemporary relevance does or might The Phenomenology hold? What are the risks and limitations of the Hegelian dialectic? And if forming a judgment on the dialectic or its legacy merely returns the dialectic to itself, albeit in a new form, what is to be made of this inevitable transformation? We encourage applicants to share novel, experimental, alternative, or speculative readings of The Phenomenology of Spirit informed by a wide range of discourses and disciplines, including literary studies, visual studies, cultural studies, black studies, history, art history, political science, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and more.

This conference came about from the collective efforts of the Phenomenology of Spirit Reading Group at UCI. To continue in the spirit of communal learning, this conference will be conducted in the style of a workshop. Presenters will share early versions or drafts of their work with the moderator and other members of their respective panels, and they will be expected to share questions and feedback with each other during the Q&A.

We invite papers including, but not limited to, the following topics:

-  Transformative experiences
-  Aesthesis and aesthetic experiences
-  Coils and circular movements
-  Conditions of possibility
-  Comedy, tragedy, genre
-  Theatricality, act and performance
-  Life/death, absence/presence
-  Revelation and concealment
-  Bondage, mastery and freedom
-  Changes in form or content
-  Chance encounters
-  Bildung
-  Revolution and social upheaval
-  Narrative, history and temporality
-  Inversion and conversion
- Organic and inorganic natures
- Substance and transubstantiation
- Production, consumption, and waste

Please send abstracts of 300 words or less and a short bio with your full name and institutional affiliation (if applicable) to olaminaj@uci.edu and coliver2@uci.edu by August 8, 2025. Please include “Dialectics of Transformation” in the subject line.