This conference explores decay as a transformative, liminal state that bridges the physical, the political, and the conceptual. During the process of decomposition, systems and objects start to break down, existing in a precarious limbo that simultaneously signals contamination to the surrounding environment. As theorized by Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror, the abject corpse and the decaying material remind us of the fragility of our own boundaries, confronting us with what must be cast off to constitute a stable self. This fear of bodily disintegration and abjection mirrors the anxieties we project onto broader cultural and institutional structures. While decomposition signifies the inevitable bodily process that follows death, the language of rot can also be invoked to describe political/societal dysfunction, environmental disaster, the temporality of memory, and systemic collapse. Decay thus forces us to reckon with the vulnerability of our corporeal and social environments. This conference aims to examine these deep connections and points of tension between physical, tangible decay and the deterioration of the objects, systems, and spaces that surround us.

The English Graduate Student Association at Georgetown University seeks proposals from various disciplines and theoretical approaches addressing, but not limited to, the following questions: How does physical and bodily decomposition mirror systemic or structural collapse? What can we learn from active environmental agents of destruction such as time, bacteria, fungi, and water that propel the process of decay? How do literature, art, and philosophy conceptualize the abject, liminal space between existence and erasure?

The conference welcomes an interdisciplinary dialogue inviting scholars in a range of fields including literary studies, film and media studies, history, philosophy, sociology, political science, postcolonial studies, trauma studies, environmental studies, critical race studies, diaspora studies, narrative studies, disability studies, and other related fields of study within the combined thematic, theoretical, and critical orientation provided by this call. 

 Potential topics may include, but are not limited to: 

• Social/moral decay: institutional corruption, ethical breakdowns

• Urban/architectural decay: abandoned spaces, the aftermath of gentrification, ruins

• Political collapse: decay of democracy, civil unrest 

• Environmental decay: pollution, climate change/crisis, toxic landscapes, ecosystem failure, waste

• Corporeal/bodily decay: decomposition, death, rotting/festering flesh

• Historical/Temporal decay: aging (forgetting memories), historical revisionism, passage of time  

• Relationships: familial estrangement, breaking of bonds, generational trauma/decay

• Technological/archival decay: physical/digital archives being destroyed, becoming outdated, or fading from time, book banning/burning, the impact of artificial intelligence, what in the archive is preserved versus allowed to fade from view?

• Sensory experiences: Smell/Olfactory aesthetics, tactile interactions with decaying materials (ex. book archives, ruins, fossils, textile, etc.), decaying of the senses 

• Ecological catalysts: water, bacteria, fungi, time as active agents of decomposition

• Horror/sci-fi: zombies, post-apocalyptic worlds, vampires, the undead/living dead

• “Thing”ness: material agency, object-oriented studies

• Bodies and humanity: posthumanism, transhumanism, dissolving human boundaries, hybrid bodies, cyborg bodies, disabled bodies

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Abstracts between 150 and 300 words for a 12-15 minute paper should be submitted to the attached Google Form before the end of October 4, 2026. 

Approved abstracts will be informed by October 16, 2026.The conference will be held at Georgetown University on November 13, 2026.

Submit here!