KEYNOTE
ELEANOR KAUFMAN
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Eleanor Kaufman is professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French and Francophone Studies, and affiliate of the Center for the Study of Religion, the Center for the Study of Women, and the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Additionally, she is the current Vice Chair of the University of California Systemwide Committee on Planning and Budget and Chair of its Task Force on Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Her primary interest is in 20th century French Philosophy. She also works on medieval philosophy and Christian theology, literature and philosophy of the Jewish Diaspora, modern American literature, and Maghrebian literature. Among her publications, she is the co-editor of Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy and Culture (Minnesota, 1998) and the author of The Delirium of Praise: Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Foucault, Klossowski (Johns Hopkins, 2001), Deleuze, the Dark Precursor: Dialectic, Structure, Being (Johns Hopkins, 2012), and At Odds with Badiou: Politics, Dialectics, and Religion from Sartre and Deleuze to Lacan and Agamben (forthcoming, Columbia University Press).
Professor Kaufman is working on three additional book-length projects: “Structure: A Counterhistory of Twentieth-Century French Philosophy,” currently supported by UC President’s and Guggenheim Fellowships; “Rocks, Plants, Objects, and Stars: Classification in French Phenomenology”; and “The Jewry of the Plain,” on the archives and cemeteries that commemorate Jewish settlement in remote regions of the American West at the end of the nineteenth century, and simultaneously a meditation on the work of Jacques Derrida.
CLOSING REMARKS
ANNIE MCCLANAHAN
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Annie McClanahan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at UCI. Her research interests include contemporary American literature and culture, economic thought and history, Marxist theory, and theory of the novel. Her first book, Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and 21st Century Culture, which was a co-winner of the Study of the Arts of the Present Best Book of 2016 Prize, explores the ways that U.S. culture—from novels and poems to photojournalism and horror movies responded to the collapse of the financialized consumer credit economy in 2008.
Professor McClanahan is also currently working on two new projects. The first is about cultural representations of contemporary work, especially tipwork, gigwork, and automatable professional-managerial work. The second is a cultural history of the rise of microeconomics and methodological individualism, taking the measure of microeconomics’ influence on critical and political theory across the long-20th century.
PANELISTS
TALIN ABADIAN
Talin Abadian is a first-year PhD student at the Department of Drama at UCI. She received her MA from California State University, Northridge and Tehran University of Arts. Her research interests include political protest in the Middle East, performativity of public assembly and spectatorship, cultural mobility amongst displaced Middle Eastern bodies and Middle Eastern-American drama.
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SPENCER ADAMS
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Spencer Adams is a Ph.D. candidate in the Rhetoric department at UC-Berkeley, working at the intersection of science and technology studies, critical geography, and critical theory. His dissertation offers a comparative analysis of ecological modelling and utopia, as two projective tools among the strategies collectives appeal to in navigating social and environmental crisis and transformation.
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WILLISTON CHASE
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Williston Chase is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at UC Irvine. His dissertation, Professional Alibis, examines 19th century philosophical writing in Chile that attempts to manage elite disappointment with the limitations of education’s potential to produce national subjects. Drawing on unexpected intersections between the discourse of education and theories of political action in contemporary Black Studies, this study offers a critical account of racialized modes of academic withdrawal into conceptual impasse and intellectualizing ambivalence, situated in the Transatlantic passage of European thought’s trouble conceptualizing race to Latin America.
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MARCUS CLAYTON
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Marcus Clayton is an Afro-Latino writer who grew up in South Gate, CA, and holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from CSU Long Beach—where he was awarded the Beatrice and John Janosco Memorial Scholarship in poetry. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California on the nonfiction track, focusing his studies on the intersections between Latinx literature, Black literature, and Punk Rock. He is an executive editor for indicia, and has previously taught English Composition at several Los Angeles colleges. Some published can be seen in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Adroit Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and DUM DUM Zine among many others.
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AARON ELDRIDGE
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Aaron Eldridge is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Critical Theory at UC, Berkeley. His dissertation, entitled “Between Aftermath and Inheritance: Figurations of Arab Orthodox Christianity,” tracks contemporary formations of Orthodox Christian tradition in Lebanon. Staged in the midst of a wavering present, the dissertation works through the architectonics of the soul in Orthodox tradition and its configuration of inheritance, poetics, and theodicy. He has a forthcoming publication in Exchange: Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context, titled, “On AskÄ“sis: Arab Orthodox Christian Monasticism in Ruins.”
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MO/E GÁMEZ
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Mo/e Gámez will receive their MA in English Literature from CSU Long Beach this May. Their research interests are primarily concerned with 20th and 21st century American literature, with specific emphasis on ecopoetics, ecocriticism, and the efficacy of poetic activism.
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BROOKLYN JOHNSON
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Brooklynn Johnson works in painting, sculpture, and performance. Her work explores both the psychology of landscape and the terrain of the subconscious. She received her MFA from UC Davis and is currently based in California.
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STEFFI LANG
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Steffi Lang is a first-year Masters student at CU Boulder. She is interested in postmodern poetics and the intersections of critical theory and theology. Her creative work can be found in Moth + Rust and Reliquiae amid a handful of other places
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AMY LANTRIP
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A.R. (Amy) Lantrip is a PhD student at the University of California, Irvine studying Chinese satire and science fiction. A fan and critic of literature, Lantrip recently began writing creatively and hopes to continue improving and sharing her writing. Her fiction that is ready for the public can be read at arlantrip.wordpress.com.
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CHENGLIN LEE
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Chenglin Lee is a graduate student in English at Cal State Fullerton, who is currently writing their thesis on Artificial Respiration by Ricardo Piglia and Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño. After their master’s, they hope to pursue a doctorate in comparative literature to research Latin American and East Asian studies, as well as affect theory, decolonial thought, and post-Marxism. In their free time, they enjoy soccer, basketball, and cooking.
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SHIQI LIN
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Shiqi Lin is a third-year PhD student in Comparative Literature at UC Irvine. Her research interests include contemporary Chinese media cultures, political theory, translation studies, urban studies and transmedia studies. Drawing upon literary nonfiction, documentary cinema, science fiction, popular music and digital media, she studies the ways in which ordinary lives form affective collectivities in their creative translation of urban and mnemonic dislocations.
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ROSALENA RUIZ
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Rosalena Ruiz is currently in the last semester of her Master's in English program at Cal State Long Beach. Her areas of interest include mid-to-late twentieth and contemporary twenty-first century American literature and film with an interest in Marxist theory, critical theories of race, feminist and queer studies, eco-criticism, radical social protest and resistance, & radical body politics and embodiment studies.
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WILL SALADIN
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Will Saladin is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at UC Irvine. Their research focuses on queer immigrant literature in France, Ireland, and the UK.
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ELLA TURENNE
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Ella Turenne is an artist, entrepreneur, and a student in the Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at UC Irvine. Her research focuses on Black feminist theory and media culture. Turenne's writing has been published in various anthologies including Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out (2005), Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees (2006)(nominated for a 2007 NAACP Image Award), Woman’s Work: Short Stories (2010), Turning Teaching Inside Out (2013) and Through the Wall (2019). Her one woman show, Love, Locs & Liberation won a Producer's Encore Award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2018. She was a fellow in Leadership L.A. and Arts for LA ACTIVATE, and has worked extensively on issues of mass incarceration. For more information, visit www.ellaturenne.com.
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AJ URQUIDI
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Originally from Monterey, AJ Urquidi is a Long Beach-based poet, tutor, and editor. His writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including Faultline, Posit, and DUM DUM Zine. Winner of the Gerald Locklin Prize and participant in the project 1000 Books by 1000 Poets, AJ co-founded the online journal indicia and has led workshops at CSU Long Beach and Beyond Baroque.
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JIAQI WANG
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Jiaqi Wang is a Masters student in the Asian Languages and Civilizations program at University of Colorado Boulder. She presented at the University of Colorado Boulder Asian Studies Graduate Conference in 2020, focusing on the writing of classical poetry and intellectual history at second Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945). Her previous academic training includes modern literature, film studies, culture studies and media studies. She is interested in exploring diverse approaches such as eco-criticism and post-humanism into film studies and modern Chinese literature.
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KAIYANG XU
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Kaiyang Xu received an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Duke University. She is currently a first-year Ph.D. student at University of Southern California. Her research interests lie in contemporary Chinese cinema and media studies. Her MA thesis focused on mediating the relationship between filmmaker and rural subjects under a critical inquiry into how state power and development change rural life and space. Methodologically, Kaiyang is interested in mapping cultural studies, film studies, and anthropological approach.