2025 Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Annual Conference: Imaginary Futures: Utopias, Dystopias & Protopias of Cultural Studies
May 29 - 31, 2025
California Institute of the Arts–Valencia, California
Deadline for Submissions: Sunday, February 23, 2025, 11:59 pm EST
Registration
The Cultural Studies Association (CSA) invites proposals for participation in its twenty-third annual meeting, which will be held, in person, at California Institute of the Arts in the city of Valencia, California. Proposals on all topics relevant to cultural studies will be considered, with priority given to those that engage this year's theme, Imaginary Futures: Utopias, Dystopias & Protopias of Cultural Studies.
How can we as cultural studies scholars make sense of different possibilities for the future, through both optimistic and pessimistic lenses, and the ways in which culture shapes those possibilities? And to what extent can theoretical imaginings structure praxis and make actual these potential futures? The keywords provided by this year’s theme offer some directions: While a utopia denotes a static state of cultural and political perfection—a society when it has become as good as it possibly can get—a dystopia can be defined as a space wherein people are stuck in a kind of recurring pattern of suffering. Alongside these more familiar framings, to what extent can cultural studies imagine a protopian world-in-becoming: a more carefully stated dream of transformation that involves not only making visible existing potentials, possibilities, and capacities, but also actualizing those mutually desirable potentials to reduce social harms and enhance human dignity?
Through this year’s theme, we encourage submissions that explore the production and consumption of future imaginaries, and/or how future imaginaries intersect with lived material conditions, cultural practices, or other major discourses. In doing so, we embrace the call for a “futurist cultural studies” (Powers 2020), one that acknowledges both the possibilities for emancipatory progress, and the consequences of failure to achieve that progress.
POSSIBLE TOPICS INCLUDE:
- Another World is Possible? The Political Afterlives of Anti- and Alter-globalization
- Utopian pasts/Dystopian futures
- Dystopian pasts/Utopian futures
- Queer utopias and hopeful failures
- Experimental communities & applied utopias
- Manifestos and declarations
- Postracial rhetorics and racist dreams
- Afrofuturism, Sinofuturism, & identity-based futures
- “Never again” & genocide’s eternal return
- Decolonizing utopia
- Climate futures: Narratives of hope & despair
- “The singularity” and other AI dystopias
- Pessimism/nihilism: negating the future
- Portrayals of utopian, dystopian, protopian futures in popular media
- The future of/in cultural studies
All proposals should be submitted through Easy Chair using the following link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=csa2025
CONFERENCE FORMAT
This year, the annual Cultural Studies Association Conference will be held in person. While we acknowledge the limitations presented by in person sessions, we also maintain the importance of community, collegiality, and mutual support that in person conferences offer within professional organizations.To allow for both the benefits of an in-person conference and the expanded access of an online conference, the CSA plans to maintain an alternating, biennial structure of in-person conferences (on odd years) and online conferences (on even years).
TRAVEL AND LODGING
Airports:
There are several easy ways to travel between local Southern California airports and the CalArts campus. In addition to ridesharing apps such as Lyft and Uber, there are direct shuttle services available through Prime Time Shuttle, 800-733-8267; and Super Shuttle, 800-258-3826. These shuttles service both Burbank Airport and Los Angeles International Airport and are available by reservation, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The LAX Flyaway Service is a 24-hour bus service that operates between Los Angeles International Airport and LA Union Station, Van Nuys, Hollywood, and Westwood/UCLA. For LAX FlyAway locations, schedules, service hours, parking, passenger drop-off/pick-up, and driving directions, go to the LAX FlyAway web page or call 866-435-9529. The Van Nuys route, which is located the closest to CalArts, at approximately 16 miles, does not accept cash, only credit card or bank card payment.
Buses: Santa Clarita Transit services the Santa Clarita area, including Valencia, Newhall, Saugus, Canyon Country, and Sylmar. There are also express buses to the San Fernando Valley and into Los Angeles, with extra service during morning and afternoon rush hour service. For bus schedules, call 661-294-1287 or visit www.santaclaritatransit.com. MTA (Metro) services the greater Los Angeles area, and has routes throughout Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Please note that MTA buses are accessed in the San Fernando Valley, either using the Santa Clarita Transit buses, the Metrolink train, or car to get there. For more information, call 800-COMMUTE (266-6883) or visit www.mta.net.
Hotels: Recommendations through CalArts can be viewed HERE. Be sure to ask if they have a “CalArts rate.”
SUBMISSION AND REGISTRATION
● Friday, December 6, 2024: Submission System Open
● Friday, December 6 , 2024 until Friday, April 4, 2025: Early Bird Registration
● Sunday, February 23, 2025: Final Deadline for Submissions
● Friday, March 7, 2025: Notifications sent out
● Friday, April 4, 2025: Early Registration Ends, Regular Registration Rate Begins
● Friday, May 9, 2025: Last day to register to participate in the conference. If you do not register by this date and are not a current member, your name will be dropped from the program.
REGISTRATION: In order to participate in the conference and be listed in the program, all those accepted to participate must register before Friday, May 9, 2025. Remember: registration for the conference and membership in the CSA are combined transactions. All proposals should be submitted through Easy Chair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=csa2025
Make sure to create and/or log in to your Easy Chair account before you attempt to submit. Please prepare all the materials required to propose your session according to the given directions before you begin electronic submission. All program information--names, presentation titles, and institutional affiliations--will be based on initial conference submissions. Please avoid lengthy presentation and session titles, use normal capitalization and standard fonts, and include your name and affiliations as you would like them to appear on the conference program schedule.
INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERSHIPS include individual memberships for up to seven affiliate faculty, staff and students at member institutions. Graduate students who wish to submit proposals are strongly encouraged to speak with their Department Chair or Program Director about institutional membership and where possible, make use of the complimentary individual memberships and reduced registration rates. Full benefits of institutional membership see: http://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/institutions.
SUBMISSION FORMATS:
All sessions are 90 minutes long. All conference formats are intended to encourage the presentation and discussion of projects at different stages of development and to foster intellectual exchange and collaboration. Please feel free to adapt the suggested formats or propose others in order to suit your session’s goals.
The CSA aims to provide multiple and diverse spaces for the cross-pollination of art, activism, pedagogy, design, and research by bringing together participants from a variety of positions inside and outside the university. While we welcome traditional academic papers and panels, we also encourage contributions that experiment with alternative formats and intervene in the traditional disciplinary formations and exclusionary conceptions and practices of the academic. We are particularly interested in proposals for sessions designed to document and advance existing forms of collective action or catalyze new collaborations. We encourage submissions from individuals working beyond the boundaries of the university: artists, activists, educators, independent scholars, professionals, and community organizers.
Further information regarding various session formats can be found below. If you have any questions, please address them to Michelle Fehsenfeld at: admin@culturalstudiesassociation.org
- WORKING GROUP SESSIONS: CSA has a number of ongoing working groups. Working Group submissions can either be an individual paper or pre-constituted panel and must be made through CSA’s online EasyChair submission portal. Choose either the Working Group Panel or Working Group Paper tracks, complete the submission information, and choose the appropriate working group from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the page. For more information see: https://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/working-groups.html
- PRE-CONSTITUTED PAPER PANELS: Pre-constituted panels allow 3-4 individuals to offer 15-20 minute presentations, leaving 30-45 minutes of the session for discussion. Panels should have a chair/moderator and may have a discussant. Proposals must include a description of the panel's topic (<500 words); and abstracts for each presentation (<150 words).
- INDIVIDUAL PAPERS: Individuals may submit a proposal to present a 15-20 minute paper. Selected papers will be combined into panels at the discretion of the Program Committee. Submissions must include an abstract of the paper (<500 words).
- ROUNDTABLES: Roundtables allow a group of participants to convene with the goal of generating discussion around a shared concern. In contrast to panels, roundtables typically involve shorter position or dialogue statements (5-10 minutes) in response to questions distributed in advance by the organizer. The majority of roundtable sessions should be devoted to discussion. Proposals for roundtables must include a description of the position statements, questions, or debates that will be under discussion (<500 words).
- PRAXIS SESSIONS: Praxis sessions allow a facilitator or facilitating team to set an agenda, pose opening questions, and/or organize hands-on participant activities, collaborations, or skill-shares. Successful praxis sessions will be organized around a specific objective, productively engage a cultural studies audience, and orient itself towards participants with minimal knowledge of the subject matter. Sessions organized around the development of ongoing creative, artistic, and activist projects are highly encouraged. Proposals for praxis sessions must include a brief statement explaining the session’s connection to the conference theme and describing the activities to be undertaken (<500 words) and a short description of the session (<150 words) to appear in the conference program.
- MEET THE AUTHOR: Meet the Author Sessions are designed to bring authors of recent books deemed to be important contributions to the field of cultural studies together with discussants selected to provide different viewpoints. Books published one to three years before the conference are eligible for nomination. Only CSA members may submit nominations. Self-nominations are not accepted.
- MAKE(R) SPACE: The Make(r) Space is a space for the collaborative and praxis driven portions of Cultural Studies – making space for art, making space for political activism, making space for new modes of knowledge exchange. It is our goal that this space will be created for those that have been historically and systemically left out of these conversations: artists, activists, poets, and other cultural critics and makers. We want to create a space that helps the CSA fulfill some of the implicit praxis portion of its goals to “create and promote an effective community of cultural studies practitioners and scholars.” Building on the poets, dancers, painters, and activists already interested in the space, we welcome proposals for exhibits, performances, workshops, skill shares, story telling, and other ways of meaning-making and art-making in the world that consider the theme of “Imaginary Futures” We especially encourage Make(r) Space submissions from individuals working beyond the boundaries of the university: artists, activists, independent scholars, professionals, community organizers, contingent faculty, and community college educators. Please email Make(r)Space submissions by February 23, 2025 to: admin@culturalstudiesassociation.org.
- LATERAL WORKSHOP: Lateral, the journal of the Cultural Studies Association, invites submissions of emerging work for constructive feedback with the Lateral editors at the Cultural Studies Association 2025 Conference. If you are interested in being considered for the workshop merely check “yes” when prompted to do so in Easychair and, if accepted to the conference, you will also automatically be considered for the workshop. We especially invite participation from junior scholars, graduate students, and those working beyond the bounds of the university, as well as those who intend to eventually submit their work to Lateral (workshop papers that are later submitted to the journal will undergo regular editorial and peer review). Those interested in participating will be notified of their acceptance into the workshop in March, and complete drafts of articles (approximately 4,000–9,000 words in length) will be due two weeks before the conference. Strong submissions will situate their considerations of cultural practices, critical theories, and/or pedagogies within established and emerging conversations in cultural studies. Prospective workshop participants should submit abstracts (no more than 500 words) or draft articles through the submission system by the deadline for submissions.
