Call for Proposals: Fredric Jameson and the Future of Critical Theory

April 10–12, 2026

Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Keynotes by Michael Denning, Jane Gaines, Achille Mbembe, Toril Moi, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

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Fredric Jameson (1934–2024) insisted on “imagining a future which might be radically and constitutionally other.” The urgency of this task rested on his understanding of Critical Theory “as a way of keeping the negative alive in a period in which praxis, the unity of the negative and the positive, itself seems suspended.” We invite proposals for papers on Jameson’s work and its implications for the future of critical theory.

Over the years, Critical Theory has received scholarly and popular attention; it has simultaneously been pronounced dead and an enduring threat. We invite scholars, including students, to join us at Duke University for a three-day celebration of Fredric Jameson’s enduring legacy—and to keep imagining, with him, the future of Critical Theory. We encourage contributions that think with, expand on, or depart from Jameson’s work within the fields of literature, Marxist theory, modern philosophy, psychoanalysis, cinema, architecture, and music, as well as addressing specific Jamesonian concepts, including but not limited to:

✴ allegory

✴ the cultural logic of capitalism

✴ dialectics

✴ form

✴ historicity

✴ mode of production

✴ modernism and postmodernism

✴ periodization

✴ political unconscious

✴ realism

✴ style

✴ totality

✴ utopia

250-word proposals for 20-minute presentations in English should be submitted here (https://tinyurl.com/jameson2026) by 1 December 2025.

The conference is organized by the Literature Program, where Jameson taught for forty years, and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. We acknowledge the generous support of the Holberg Prize Committee, Norway.