2025 CLIFF Conference: "Science—literature—technology: rupture, relation, constellation"

29th Annual CLIFF Conference
Rackham Assembly Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
March 21-22, 2025
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Tung-Hui Hu, Department of English Language & Literature, University of Michigan

Research begins with a question—an uncertainty—an openness. In both the sciences and the humanities, the core position of the researcher is one of uncertainty on the edge of knowledge and understanding. We hope to bring together research and thought on doubt, dubiousness, and rupture at the intersections of humanist disciplines, as well as on constellations of academic research, life, politics, ethics, science, and technology. This conference asks scholars to think comparatively not just among languages, but among modes of thought and investigation throughout and beyond the academy.

We ask how, when, and why discipline dissolves into discipline; how the role of subjectivity in critical discourse conditions the dynamics of inquiry and observation; how and why the artifacts of art, literature, and culture contribute to intellectual and ethical practice in a world of uncertain futures. The inherent interdisciplinarity of critical discourse in comparative literature reflects both the continuities among disciplines and the ruptures that define their boundaries. In order to negotiate the differing epistemological structures of literary, scientific, and technological materialisms, we invite papers regarding the mechanisms by which science, literature, and technology mediate one another, culture, politics, and their neighbors in the scientific humanities.

We are very pleased to announce that this year’s keynote speaker will be Dr. Tung-Hui Hu, professor of English at the University of Michigan. Dr. Hu is a poet and scholar of digital media. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Greenhouses, Lighthouses, which grew out of his graduate studies in film, as well as two studies of digital culture, A Prehistory of the Cloud and Digital Lethargy: Dispatches from an Age of Disconnection, an exploration of burnout, isolation, and disempowerment in the digital underclass.

If you are planning to attend this event and need accommodations, please notify the organizers by March 7, 2025, so that proper arrangements can be made. The organizers can be contacted at cliff.complit@umich.edu.

Our conference is entirely organized by graduate students in the University of Michigan's Department of Comparative Literature. This year's organizing members are Caroline Sullivan and Ben Woodworth.