2022 DePaul Graduate Student Conference: Perspectives on Carcerality and Abolition

We invite submissions for presentations at the DePaul University philosophy graduate student conference titled “Perspectives on Carcerality, Surveillance, Policing, and Abolition.” As Michel Foucault diagnosed, the analysis of technologies of control has become central in understanding and criticizing power and its operations. Among these technologies of power, we can find carcerality, policing, surveillance, punishment, and others. We understand the concept of carcerality, as the logic that exists before, during, and after contact with criminal justice systems, and that both shapes and justifies institutions of imprisonment. Moreover, we understand policing and surveillance broadly as practices that ensure and maintain carcerality in all of its forms and enforce it through multiple forms of punishment. This conference aims to explore critical approaches to these technologies as well as the practices of subversion that allow us to both imagine and create a post-carceral society. These practices include but are not limited to so-called sousveillance, insurrection, and abolition. We welcome proposals for 15-20 minute conference presentations from a broad range of academic approaches (in philosophy and beyond) and practical perspectives (from art to activism) to establish intersectional, inclusive, and interdisciplinary dialogues. 

Possible Topics 

-Carceral spaces, ethics, societies, humanitarianism, aesthetics, education, practices, etc.

-Biopower and Necropower in carcerality, policing, and surveillance

-Insurrection and uprising

-Corruption and accountability

-Criminal justice systems

-Postcolonial and decolonial approaches to questions of carcerality, policing, surveillance, abolition, and insurrection

-The police, policing, legal coercion

-Race, carcerality, policing, criminality

-Disability, mental illness, and incarceration

-Sex work and decriminalization of sex work

-Retributive and restorative justice

-Trans rights and activism

-Grace, forgiveness, revenge and other theological approaches and questions

-Pardoning and perjury

-Feminist questions of justice and care

-Community responses to injustice

-International ethics

-Redistributive, restorative, transitional, and alternative justice

-Panopticism and digital surveillance

-The architecture of carceral spaces

Location and Modality 

The conference will take place on February 18th and 19th, 2022 at the DePaul University Lincoln Park Campus in Chicago, IL. We plan to hold the conference in a double in person and hybrid modality using Zoom. We encourage submissions for either of the formats. A reception will be offered on Saturday, February 19th after the conference for in-person attendees. Accommodations with DePaul graduate students will be provided according to availability.    

Submission Guidelines

Please submit abstracts of maximum 250-words for single papers and 500-words for panel proposal prepared for blind review and as .docx or .pdf files to [email protected]. Please include your name and institutional affiliation (if any) in the email. 

Deadline for Submissions: November 28th, 2021

Notification of acceptance will be sent by December 9th, 2021 

Please send any questions to  [email protected]. Thank you for your submissions!