CFP Caring Futures: Contradictions, Transformation, and Revolutionary Possibilities

May 27th-30th, 2024

The American University of Paris, France

We invite proposals for a conference on the futures of care to be held at the American University in Paris, May 27 - May 30th, 2024.

This hybrid conference seeks to bring together artists, activists, and scholars from a range of perspectives, disciplines, modalities, and methods to explore how we can revolutionize the way we care. Care is an emerging and contentious focus across the disciplines emphasizing historical and contemporary contradictions and exclusions in care realities–such as the lack of economic and social support for some care relations, the denial of care, the weaponizing of care, the exploitative conditions of care work, and the privileging of normative hierarchies across the globe. But activist, artistic, and intellectual formations also point to transformative possibilities in the dismantling and rebuilding of care infrastructures and caring relations.

We seek works that examine these contradictions and possibilities in caring, care labor, and care theory from cultural, social, economic, or political perspectives. Potential topics may include but are not limited to: care and social justice; social reproduction; care and exploitation; care and precarity; the economics of care; animal studies; medical humanities; care in the digital age; intimacy; care infrastructures; racism in care; care in/and the family; transnational care and care in/and the global South, the environment; care and dis/abilities; mutual aid; abolition and care; radical care; feminist, queer, and trans studies perspectives on care; histories of care. We are particularly interested in work that engages with questions of power and the social and economic contradictions of care.

We welcome submissions from academics, practitioners, creatives, and activists for roundtables, readings, workshops, and traditional panels of 3-4 presenters. We accept both individual submissions and fully formed panels/roundtables/creative panels. For individual submissions, please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words; for panels/roundtables please submit a 300 word panel abstract and the names of participants/panelists and paper titles, if applicable. 

This is a hybrid conference. When submitting an individual paper abstract, please indicate if you plan to attend in person or remotely, and, if submitting a panel or roundtable, please indicate which presenters will plan to attend in person and who will present remotely. Registration fees are sliding scale according to rank and modality. In-person registration fees will be higher because they include some refreshments and meals.

Send submissions and inquiries to caringfutures2024@gmail.com by November 1, 2023.

We look forward to reading your proposals!