2026 Program

Join us at 12 pm in room K8652 for a screening of Preliminary Notes for a Radical Praxis (2026, 40min): a short, experimental documentary directed by Am Johal and Joey Malbon that traces the charged relationship between radical thought and material political change. Rejecting fatalism, the film embraces an insurgent optimism grounded in collective struggle and the refusal to accept politics as usual. How to think past exhaustions and closures?

Through informal and intimate interviews, it brings together Astra Taylor, Matt Hern, Glen Coulthard, Achille Mbembe, Brenna Bhandar, Jodi Dean, Jasbir Puar, Michael Hardt and Alberto Toscano to instigate some preliminary deliberations on how radical thought and material political change are inextricably bound. As useful in the classroom as it will be in the streets, the work asks viewers to think these age old questions anew to breathe life, vitality and novel interrogations into social movements today. 

Lunch will be provided for all presenters, panel moderators/chairs, speakers and volunteers in room K8669. This year, we will be enjoying an assortment of wraps and appetizers from Tayybeh. 

At 1:30 PM, we will be joined by the brilliant Dr. Moira Weigel, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University and the author of Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating (2016) and co-editor of Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do—and How They Do It (2020). Dr. Weigel will be presenting her talk, "Scaling Laws and Social Reproduction", over Zoom, which we will follow with a brief Q&A.

"In this talk, I bring recent interventions that describe AI as a “normal technology” into conversation with feminist political theory. Specifically, I draw on the work of Nancy Fraser to argue that several controversies currently surrounding AI within and beyond the United States constitute expressions of a “normal” tendency within capitalist societies toward crises of social reproduction. Tracing current crises at four analytic levels—datasets, individuals, institutions, and ecologies—I argue that we can further enrich Fraser’s framework and the Marxist feminist tradition more broadly by attending to the role of specific technologies in shaping the terms of “boundary struggles.” I also offer some reflections on Fraser’s current popularity in China, and the utility that social reproduction theory might offer for analyzing recent developments in Chinese digital economy and culture."

This event is open to all interested participants. Click here for more information. 

Click here to join via Zoom.