CFP: The 27th Annual University of Florida Critical Theory Reading Group/MRG Conference

“Rethinking Institutions”

The Critical Theory Reading Group/MRG, University of Florida

March 27-29, Gainesville, FL 

Keynote speakers: Michael Hardt and Kathi Weeks

Nicole LaRose Alumni keynote speaker: Wesley Beal  

The 2025 Marxist Reading Group Conference invites submissions for “Rethinking Institutions” to explore the manifold issues endured by global institutions and reimagine the former for the present and future. 

Numerous commentators have noted that we live in a time of crisis. Neoliberal austerity tightens its grip on the University; threats of delegitimization haunt journalism; culture wars ward off equitable institutional and political practices; and precarity continues to condition the global labor force. By virtue of these scenarios and many others, we remain stuck in what Lauren Berlant calls “crisis ordinariness” (Cruel Optimism, 2011). This is particularly true of public institutions, which today appear either ill-equipped or unwilling to establish policies and procedures to carry out public concerns about disaster relief, healthcare, labor unionization, and debt cancellation, among others.

Rather than once again theorize crisis, “Rethinking Institutions” asks activists and scholars to reconsider the institutions that are affected by and participate in them. Institutions, we maintain, are crucial mediators that not only direct and redirect the flows of information, money, politics, and so on, but they also produce and reproduce social and political subjectivities and collectivities. 

Thus, this conference wagers to take moments of crisis as moments of critique and reimagine what institutions and institutionality might mean in the twenty-first century. Contemporary institutions of education, journalism, money, health care, and government–all bastions of liberal democracy–are all examples of institutions hollowed out by State outsourcing methods and their reengineering as malfunctioning for-profit entities. Meanwhile, the recession of institutional authority is also indicative of a more general “end of mediation,” Michael Hardt’s term for decline of mid-century institutional and political mechanisms that facilitated powers of government and economics (Subversive Seventies, 2023).

Yet, we ought not be all doom and gloom. Instead, this conference requires us to consider how we might imagine institutions anew. How do works of literature, film, music, and other cultural objects participate in questions of institutions? Moreover, how can they help us do so in self-reflexive and dialectic ways? As for existing institutions, some of the work of unearthing Utopian impulses seems to be taking place in digital spaces; but can we do more? How can we theorize institutions and institutionality at macro-, mezzo-, and micro-levels? How can we reinstate a state that places mediation and care for all at its center?  What kinds of political subjectivities can we cultivate through Leftist institutions?  

The MRG incited papers from all disciplines, including literary studies, film studies, art history, cultural studies, policy history, critical theory, and so on. The conference theme is a guideline for potential presenters rather than a limitation and we are open to other Marxism-specific topics. Possible paper topics may include but are not limited to: 

• The relationship between the academic and para-academic
• Past, present, and future formations of the University 
• Protective and/or retaliatory action
• Literary, film, and culture criticism magazines and journals 
• Aesthetics, histories, and politics of culture industries 
• Representations of institutions in literation, film, television, etc. 
• Recent movements in literary and cultural studies, including New Institutionalism, New Formalism, ecocriticism, postcritique, and others.
• Alternative media outlets and distribution tactics
• Weirdness and joy in and as mainstream politics
• Theories of the state, ideological state apparatuses, hegemony, governance, etc. 
• Older institutional forms of the Party 
• Turns toward local and small businesses
• Money, finance, and monetary policy and theory
• Global projects of decolonization 
• Responses to climate change

Please submit an abstract of up to 250 words with 4-5 keywords for a 15-20-minute presentation, along with contact information and a brief author bio, to theufmrg@gmail.com by January 10, 2025. We will also consider panel proposals, but we do ask that panelists represent multiple institutions and provide a brief description and rationale along with the panelists’ abstracts. Please indicate any A/V requests. Also let us know if you have participated in past MRG conferences or if you are a UF-MRG alumnus. Authors of accepted presentations will be notified by January 24, 2025. 

The conference will be held in-person at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL on the weekend of March 27-29, 2025.

For questions concerning the conference, please contact us at theufmrg@gmail.com. For more information, visit https://ufmrg.wordpress.com.