2025 Conference
2025 Meeting of the Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts
September 25-27, 2025
Embassy Suites Austin Central
Austin, TX
“Justice”
Keynote Speaker:
Niki Kasumi Clement, Rice University
Niki Kasumi Clements is the Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Associate Professor of Religion with a courtesy-appointment in the Department of Philosophy at Rice University (Houston, U.S.A.). She is a specialist in the work of Michel Foucault, modern philosophy, and late ancient Christian asceticism (which come together in her 2020 monograph, Sites of the Ascetic Self). On the basis of her research in the Foucault archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France since 2019 (the sixth collection of which she inventoried for the BnF in 2024), Clements is completing two books – Chez Foucault: Foucault’s Histories of Sexuality and Foucault the Confessor – focused on Foucault’s unpublished archives to chart his shifting conceptual apparatus of power-knowledge-ethics, notably through his engagement with the history of Christianity and ancient ethics.
A governing member of the Centre Michel Foucault, a 2025 invited researcher with the Institute for Advanced Study in Strasbourg, a 2024 invited researcher with the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme (EHESS, Paris), an editorial board member for Foucault Studies, and the co-inaugurator of the Foucault Seminar at the American Academy of Religion, Clements is also the co-editor of the volume Foucault’s Confessions with James Faubion and Daniel Wyche (Columbia University Press). She has published widely on Foucault, Cassian, asceticism, gender, sexuality, affects and emotions, hermeneutics, cognitive neuro-science, and medical ethics.
Justice has been central to our political and philosophic culture from the beginning. Plato’s Republic opens with the question: “what is justice?” And yet, while almost everyone believes that justice is something real, that things actually are just or unjust, there is very little agreement on what justice is either in the abstract or whether a given act is just or unjust. Rather we frequently feel wronged. We cry out for justice. In our narratives, our cultural productions, our discourse, the question of the just is then both central and often highly unstable. In recognition of this centrality, and the pressing urgency of questions of justice under current conditions, the SCLA has elected to devote its next three conferences to this topic .
For our coming 2025 conference in Austin, Texas, we welcome contributions that examine the notion of justice in comparative studies and literary theory. How do we mobilize the idea of justice in the face of atrocities and abuses of power? What is justice? Who can claim it? And who is or has been excluded from its appeal? When we evoke “social justice,” “economic justice,” or “racial justice,” are we really talking about the same thing? And, finally, which forms or deployments of justice do existing systems of power find less or more threatening? With an eye for justice’s multiple meanings, and the divergent circumstances under which it emerges, this conference will consider justice’s relevance and force in the world. Topics of interest could include:
- Justice and the philosophical tradition
- Justice and posthumanism
- Environmental justice
- Justice and violence
- Justice and politics
- Law and justice
- Justice in Palestine
- Justice and terror
- Indigenous sovereignty
- Decolonization
- Global Black Lives Matter
- International law
- Concepts of guilt and innocence
- What is a just peace
- Solidarity and justice
- Queer justice
- Class struggle
- Prisons and justice
- Restorative justice
- Reparative justice
Panel and paper proposals related to the conference theme are especially encouraged, but all topics are welcome. Please submit panel proposals (500 words) and individual abstracts (250 words) by June 1, 2025 to scla2025@gmail.com.
Please include in the body of the email your name, academic affiliation, status (faculty, grad student, etc.), and mailing address. For panel proposals, include the names, addresses, and affiliations for all participants.
Graduate students submitting a paper proposal may be eligible for an SCLA travel scholarship.
Hotel Information:
The conference will be held at Embassy Suites Austin Central, 5901 North Interstate HWY 45, Austin, TX. The hotel is five miles from downtown Austin. The SCLA group rate is $169 dollars per night from September 24th-27th. Rooms must be reserved by August 10th, 2025.
Reservation can be made here: [Hotel Reservation]
Our you can also call Hilton Central Reservations at 1-800-HILTONS (445-8667). Guests can refer to the Group Code “CES913” or the Group Name “Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts.”
Registration
Before September 1, the pre-registration fee is $120 for faculty, $65 for graduate students, $35 for undergraduates. After September 15, the fee is $130 for faculty, $75 for graduate students, and $40 for undergraduates; on-site registration will be available at these increased rates, payable with a credit card. In addition to the registration fees, you must be a member of SCLA. Registration and/or membership fees should be made using these secure links:
