Authoritarian Imaginaries

10:00–10:30am
Coffee and registration

10:30–11:15am
Welcome
Lisa Wedeen
Introduction
Judith Butler

11:15am–12:30pm
Libidinal Investments in Fascist Politics
Jason Frank, William Mazzarella, and Lisa Wedeen
Moderator: Adom Getachew

12:30–1:30pm
Lunch

1:30–2:45pm
Gender and the Affective Economies of Authoritarianism
Gillian Branstetter, Jacob Johanssen, and Jane Junn
Moderator: Linda Zerilli

2:45–3:00pm
Break

3:00–4:15pm
Palestine as Template for Repressive Politics in the US
Nadia Abu El-Haj, Amahl Bishara, and Katherine Franke
Moderator: Anton Ford

4:15–5:15pm
Closing roundtable
Judith Butler, Robert Meister, Sianne Ngai, and Brenda Tindal
Moderator: Lisa Wedeen

5:15–6:00pm
Reception

Nadia Abu El-Haj is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and Chair of the Governing Board of the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Her most recent book is Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in post-9/11 America (Verso, 2022).

Amahl A. Bishara is an associate professor of anthropology at Tufts University whose work addresses expressivity, rights, and politics. She is the author of Back Stories: U.S. News Production and Palestinian Politics (Stanford University Press, 2013) and the director of the documentary Degrees of Incarceration (2010).

Gillian Branstetter is Communications Strategist at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project. She works with advocates, storytellers, reporters, and artists to fight for gender justice, including the safety and dignity of queer and transgender people, with work featured in national and local media outlets and her newsletter, The Autonomy.

Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. They served as a co-founder of the Critical Theory Program at UC Berkeley and are currently a PI on the Mellon Foundation-funded grant “A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times.” They are the author of many publications, including Who’s Afraid of Gender? (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024).

Anton Ford is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Deputy Dean of the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago, and a 3CT fellow. He specializes in practical philosophy, focusing on action theory, ethics, and political philosophy, and is currently working on a monograph about the metaphysics and epistemology of human action, titled The Objectification of Agency.

Jason Frank is the John L. Senior Professor of Government at Cornell University. He specializes in historical approaches to democratic theory, with a focus on the modern history of popular sovereignty. He has published five books, most recently The Democratic Sublime: On Aesthetics and Popular Assembly (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Katherine Franke is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law (retired) at Columbia University, where she founded the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, and served on the executive committees of the Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender. Franke is the author of Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition (Haymarket Press, 2019) and Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality (NYU Press, 2015). She serves on the Board of Palestine Legal and the Solidaire Network.

Adom Getachew is Professor of Political Science and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago, and a 3CT fellow. She is a political theorist with research interests in the history of political thought, theories of race and empire, and postcolonial political theory, and the author of Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019).

Jacob Johanssen is Associate Professor in Communications at St Mary’s University in London. His research interests include social media, psychoanalysis, and online misogyny. He is the author of Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere: Male Bodies of Dis/Inhibition (Routledge, 2022). He is a member of the executive committee of the Association for Psychosocial Studies. 

Jane Junn is the USC Associates Chair of Social Science and Professor of Political Science and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California. She researches public opinion, political behavior, and survey methodology, and, with Natalie Masuoka, is the co-author of Women Voters: Race, Gender, and Dynamism in American Elections (Cambridge University Press, 2024). 

William T. S. Mazzarella is the Neukom Family Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College at the University of Chicago, Associate Faculty in the Divinity School, and a fellow at 3CT. He writes and teaches on the political anthropology of mass publicity, critical theory, aesthetics, and is the author of The Mana of Mass Society (University of Chicago Press, 2017). 

Robert Meister is Professor of Social and Political Thought in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he directs the Bruce Initiative on Rethinking Capitalism. His most recent work is Justice is an Option: A Democratic Theory of Finance for the Twenty-First Century (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

Sianne Ngai is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at the University of Chicago. Ngai’s work is most broadly concerned with the analysis of aesthetic forms and judgments specific to capitalism. Her most recent book is Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgement and Capitalist Form (Harvard University Press, 2021).

Brenda Tindal is a public historian and an awarding-winning educator, scholar, and museum practitioner. She is currently the inaugural executive director for Harvard’s Office for Academic Culture and Community and serves as chief campus curator for Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 

Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College, and the Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. She is the author of several books, most recently Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria (University of Chicago Press, 2019).

Linda Zerilli is the Charles E. Merriam Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the College. Her research expands across feminist thought, the politics of language, aesthetics, democratic theory, and Continental philosophy, and she her most recent book is A Democratic Theory of Truth (University of Chicago Press, 2025).