For centuries thinking about the future was basically an optimist and progress driven endeavor, aimed at advancing towards the best of possible worlds through the improvement of science and technology.  

Throughout the 20th century, euphoria about progress slowly but steadily turned into discomfort, due to the growing awareness about scientific development’s immense capability to cause pain and infortune. The shortcomings and aporias of the present have strangely produced a new retrotopia, focused on reinventing the past and less on clearly conceiving of the future-to-be. This is caused by the globalization of indifference, the crisis of democratic states, the deepening of cultural and religious wars and the rising visibility of extreme violence, linked to terrorism and war. We are likewise faced with a resource crisis and an obvious planetary exhaustion, just as the fourth technological revolution forces us to question the future of work and hence of the very definition of the human as a homo laborans. 

In view of the different rhythms, contexts and directions of our global communities, given the clear difference of access to basic commodities and even to the social and political right to have rights, given the uneven capability of individuals throughout the globe to shape the future to come, it is clear that future must be graphed in the plural, as futures that are culturally situated in distinct global realities. In addition, ‘futures’ has become a sort of a floating signifier swaying from prospective to finance, from science fiction to organizational theory, from anthropology to psychoanalysis. 

The XIII Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture is dedicated to the study of the representation of the future(s) as trope and idea. Papers are welcome on the following topics, amongst others: 

• Future or futures 

• Culture(s) of the future; culture(s) in the future 

• Imagining the future: representations in literature, cinema and the arts 

• Space and/intime 

• Science and technology: potential and risks for life in the future 

• Innovative tools, materials, systems and techniques 

• Cyberfutures 

• Memory and trauma: between past and future 

• (De)Colonizing the future 

• The future(s) of the Other 

• Speculation, prediction, anticipation and the production of possible futures 

• Futurist thought: ‘new’/’neo’, ‘re’ 

• Dance of prefixes: from u- and dys-topia to retro-topia 

• The protractive or transformative quality of the future 

• The future of woke culture 

• Fear of the future and the fear of no future 

• Crisis, disaster, conflict, and the disruption of the future 

• Nostalgia, hope, and the promise of a brighter future 

• A more than human future: human, posthuman, nonhuman and other possibilities 

We encourage proposals coming from the fields of culture studies, film and the visual arts, literary and translation studies, history, anthropology, media and psychology, among others. 

Paper proposals 

Proposals should be sent to lxsummerschool@gmail.com no later than March 17, 2023 and include paper title, abstract in English (max. 200 words), name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation and a brief bio (max. 100 words) mentioning ongoing research. 

Applicants will be informed of the result of their submissions by March 31, 2023. 

Rules for presentation 

The organizing committee shall place presenters in small groups according to the research focus of their papers. They are advised to stay in these groups for the duration of the Summer School, so a structured exchange of ideas may be developed to its full potential. 

Full papers submission 

Presenters are required to send in full papers no later thanMay 31, 2023. 

The papers will then be circulated amongst the members of each research group. In the slot allotted to each participant (30’), only 10’ may be used for a brief summary of the research piece. The Summer School is a place for networked exchange of ideas, and organizers wish to have as much time as possible for a structured discussion between participants. Therefore, in each slot, 10’ will be used for presentation, and 20’ for discussion. 

Registration fees 

Participants with paper – 300€ for the entire week (includes lectures, master classes, doctoral sessions, lunches and closing dinner) 

Participants without paper – 60€ per day (lunches and closing dinner not included) 

Fee waivers: 

For The Lisbon Consortium students and CECC researchers, there is no registration fee. 

For students from institutions affiliated with the European Summer School in Cultural Studies (ESSCS), members of the Excellence Network in Cultural Studies and members of the Critical Humanities Network the registration fee is 80€. 

This Summer School is devised in close collaboration with the 2023 ESSCSon the topic "Bouncing Forward". The ESSCS 2023 and the XIII Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture are intended as complementary Summer Schools investigating disparate elements of a common concern. Applicants, who wish to attend both Summer Schools, should indicate this in their application. A reduced participation fee will be available for those attending both events. 

Confirmed Speakers 

• Sandra Bermann (PrincetonUniversity) 

• Lucia Boldrini (Goldsmiths, University of London) 

• Marcelo Brodsky (Visual Artist) 

• Timothy Garton Ash (University of Oxford) 

• Richard Grusin (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) 

• William Hasselberger (Universidade Católica Portuguesa) 

• Adriana Martins (Universidade Católica Portuguesa) 

• Nuno Maulide (University of Vienna) 

• Kitty Millet (San Francisco State University) 

• Liedeke Plate (Radboud University) 

• Anne Tomiche (Université Paris-Sorbonne) 

Organizing Committee 

• Isabel Capeloa Gil 

• Peter Hanenberg 

• Alexandra Lopes 

• Adriana Martins 

• Diana Gonçalves 

• Paulo de Campos Pinto 

• Rita Faria 

• Ana Margarida Abrantes 

• Joana Moura 

• Rita Bueno Maia 

• Sofia Pinto 

• Verena Lindemann