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2027 Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Annual Conference: Thresholds
June 3-5, 2027
Fully Online
Deadline for Submissions: Friday, November 20, 2026
The Cultural Studies Association (CSA) invites proposals for participation in its twenty-fifth annual meeting, which will be held fully online. Proposals on all topics relevant to cultural studies will be considered, with priority given to those that engage this year’s theme, Thresholds.
In more ways than one, we exist at the threshold: the resurgence of fascist governance; the potential elimination of Black studies, Ethnic studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies from the University; the tipping point of runaway climate change; mounting violations of privacy via AI and other technology. Yet, scholars push back against presentist conceptions of the threshold. Black, Indigenous, and Queer scholars, for example, have illustrated how their communities have long been impacted by colonial and environmental catastrophe. Our political rhetoric, our economic forecast, our climatological outlook, and our popular imagination calls attention incessantly to our “momentous moment”–perpetually on the brink, at the edge, at an inflection point. This rhetoric of impending catastrophe and permacrisis often serves to maintain the status quo, or obfuscate the actual sites of suffering and loci of power that perpetuate that physical, political, economic and environmental violence. Thus, scholars raise the question, who and what histories are left out by certain framings of the threshold? At the same time, this threshold does not only gesture to an impending doom, but possibilities for imagining otherwise: How might we detour away from the destinies prescribed by Western colonial regimes? How might we re-conceptualize our understanding of difference? The liminality of thresholds calls attention to the increasingly blurry boundaries between assumed oppositions: the human and the technological, the natural and the artificial, along with myriad taxonomies and categories of race, gender, sex, sexuality, ability, and identity. What new possibilities for subversive agency exist among those unruly bodies which exceed the limited categories placed upon them?
Through this year’s theme, we invite submissions that explore thresholds in political, cultural, and discursive practices point toward thinking power relations, negotiating our understanding of the threshold, and/or meditating on resistant socialities which harken to the possibilities within liminality. All proposals should be submitted through the Easy Chair submission link.
POSSIBLE TOPICS INCLUDE:
- Asian American Critique Beyond the Model Minority
- Black Feminist Erotics and Queer Intimacies
- Black Fugitivity at the Threshold of Enclosure
- Borders, Boundaries, and Crossings
- Corporeal Edges: Pain, Pleasure, and Intimacy
- Diaspora(s) on the Brink
- Divides: Taxonomies of Digital Modernity
- Gaza & Thresholds of Recognition/Solidarity
- Indigenous Sovereignty & Anti-Colonial Solidarities
- Inflections: Political Thresholds and the Activation of Anti-Fascist Rebellion
- Liminal Spaces, Liminal Times
- Marxist Materialism at the Threshold of this Historical Epoch
- New Media and the Production of Catastrophe: Data, Surveillance, AI
- Sonic Thresholds: Noise, Silence, Duration
- Technopolitics at the Threshold of Fascism and War
- Tipping Points: Climate Change & Environmental Catastrophe
- Tripping on the Threshold: Theory as Limit Condition or Stumbling Block
- Queer Anti/Futurism at the Brink of the Nuclear Family
- The University at the Threshold: Precarity, Institutional Crisis, and Cultural Studies
- Popular Imaginaries at the Brink: Crisis, Catastrophe, and Other Futures
CONFERENCE FORMAT
This year the annual Cultural Studies Association Conference will be held fully online. Online conferences help a wider cohort of cultural studies scholars of all ranks, nationally and internationally, to present their work. 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).
SUBMISSION AND REGISTRATION
● Friday, October 2, 2026 until Friday, April 2, 2027: Early Bird Registration
● Friday, November 20, 2026: Final Deadline for Submissions
● Friday, January 8, 2027: Notifications sent out
● Friday, March 12, 2027 : Early Registration Ends, Regular Registration Rate Begins
● Friday, May 7, 2027: 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 8, 2026. Remember: registration for the conference and membership in the CSA are combined transactions. Note that while we do not have overhead costs for an online conference, the registration fees collected for this year’s conference allow us to increase our support of graduate student travel for our 2027 in-person conference. Additionally, registration fees cover CSA’s one paid administrative position and provide needed support CSA’s peer-reviewed journal Lateral.
Make sure to create and/or log in to your Easy Chair account before you attempt to submit. All submissions must be made through CSA’s online EasyChair submission portal: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=csa2027. 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 Institutional members can use their included conference registrations for either 2 faculty and 1 student or 1 faculty and 2 students, plus 1 full page advertisement space in the program. 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. For full benefits of institutional membership see: https://culturalstudiesassociation.org/about/membership/
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: Working groups are central to our organization, gathering members around shared topics to foster collaboration and support. Please consider submitting your work to one of CSA’s working groups to connect with colleagues whose interests align with yours. For more information see: https://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/working-groups.html
- 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 (<400 words).
- 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 (<400 words); and abstracts for each presentation (<150 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 (<400 words).
- MEET THE AUTHOR: Meet the Author Sessions are a subcategory of Roundtable presentations and are designed to bring authors of recent books in the field of cultural studies (published one to three years before the conference) together with selected discussants to provide different viewpoints. Enter your submission as a Roundtable and indicate that you are proposing a Meet the Author session.
- 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. We especially encourage submissions from individuals working beyond the boundaries–or on the threshold–of the university: artists, activists, independent scholars, professionals, community organizers, contingent faculty, and community college educators. 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 (<400 words) and a short description of the session (<150 words) to appear in the conference program.
- 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 2027 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). Strong submissions will situate their considerations of cultural practices, critical theories, and/or pedagogies within established and emerging conversations in cultural studies. 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.