Conference Date: 19th May 2023, University College Dublin

---DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 10th MARCH 2023---

The world is currently beset by crisis. From the COVID-19 pandemic and its after-effects to the conflict in Ukraine, crisis seems to be inescapable. Moreover, crisis has been a recurrent feature of the first two decades of the twenty-first century, with the 2008 crash and its aftermath, as well as the existential threat of the climate emergency. We understand crisis as a moment normatively designated to be of intense difficulty or danger, in which assumptions and norms are often challenged and even overturned. The notion of crisis allows for the exploration of questions of periodization, scale, and normativity. When do crises begin and when are they resolved? Crises are multi-scalar and perspectival—whilst the current hardship in the global north may be seen as exceptional, in impoverished and marginalised communities what is now termed “crisis” has long been the lived everyday experience for many. Claims of crisis are thus also normatively determined—a deviation from the status quo. We can also ask, then, are crises always negative? Whilst the term has catastrophist connotations, what is perceived as crisis by a powerful oppressor may be a potential emancipation for the oppressed. For example, the current political crisis in Iran is viewed by many in the West as an opportunity for the advancement of democratic ideals, such as freedom and emancipation.

In the context of a world defined by crisis, the 2023 PhD Conference of the UCD Humanities Institute is seeking proposals from emerging scholars and artists (doctoral candidates or researchers who received their PhD within the last five years) who are engaged, either conceptually or practically, with crises of any kind.

We invite proposals for individual papers from the fields of literature, philosophy, history, classics, archaeology, art history and other humanities disciplines suitable for a 20-minute presentation, or 3-paper panel sessions addressing topics that include but are not limited to:

• Political, economic, epistemic or ecological crises.

• Interrogating and problematizing the normative determination of crisis.

• Crisis as a form of periodicity, challenging crisis as demarcating particular periods.

• States of exception.

• Crises of literary and cultural production and/or value.

• Crises as a moment of potential transformation or resistance.

• Representations of crisis in social discourses in literature, art, film, computer games, and

  other media

• Personal and identity crises.

• Crisis capitalism and economic “shock therapy”.

• Lived and affective experience of crisis and its psychological impacts.

  Please submit an abstract of 250 words and a bio-note of around 200 words to hiphdconference2023@gmail.com on or before 28 February 2023. All proposals should include

your name, email address and academic affiliation (if applicable). Please also include a main subject field plus secondary subject field in the application.

The conference will be held in English on May 19th 2023. While we encourage in-person participation, limited online participation might also be available by a hybrid format. The conference is convened by Resident Scholars of the UCD Humanities Institute.