CLIFF 2025
science—literature—technology
rupture, relation, constellation
March 21-22, 2025 | Rackham Assembly Hall
Program of Panels
Friday, March 21, 2025
9:00 am - 9:30 am Breakfast
9:30 am - 10:00 am Opening Remarks, Professor Yopie Prins
10:00 am - 11:45 am Panel 1: Optics, Perception, and Memory
Respondent: Mike Brier
Presenters:
Katherine Tapia (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Time Fluttered Round, Whiskered, and Unbinding: Atemporality and Uncertainty of Memory in Pearl
Ben Woodworth (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Messiaen’s Synopticon: visual programming for multimedia performance and analysis
Trey Roark (Georgetown University, Data Sciences), The Lumpen Variable - Reimagining Queerness in Machine Learning
Nathan Bailey (University of Michigan, German), Optical Obsessions: Scopophilia, Scopes, and Schisms in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann
11:45 am - 12:30 pm Lunch
12:30 - 2:15 pm Panel 2: Philosophies, Rhetorics, Uncertainties
Respondent: Ben Woodworth
Presenters:
Anaís Martinez Jiminez (Princeton University, Comparative Literature), Traces of the Unconscious: The Liminal Place of Psychoanalysis in North America
Weilin Kao (University of Washington, Asian Languages and Literatures), The Dialectics of '反' (fan) in the Dao De Jing: Rhetoric, Rupture, and Relational Dynamics Beyond Dualism
Sarah Valdman (University of Michigan, Philosophy), The Impossibility of Common Sense
Jenna Novosel (Indiana University, English), Affliction of the Uninitiated: Mesmeric Entrainment in Teresa Brennan’s Transmission of Affect in Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni (1842)
2:15 pm - 3:30 pm Panel 3: Intersections in 20th and 21st Century Literatures
Respondent: Professor Yopie Prins
Presenters:
Claire Patzner (Indiana University, English), Translating in the Dark: Investigating Tracy K. Smith’s Translations of Yi Lei
Ivan E. Parra Garcia (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Writers, Readers, and Essayists: The Mystery of Menard’s Don Quixote Writing Project
Delsa Lopez (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Japan, Zombies, and Garbage: The Insatiable Waste While Playing Siren 3
3:30 pm - 3:45 pm Coffee Break
3:45 pm - 5:30 pm Panel 4: Humans, Literature, and the Environment
Respondent: Caroline Sullivan
Presenters:
Jessie Croteau (Johns Hopkins University, Political Science), The Potential of Decline: Lucretian Unbecoming and the Toxic Immortality of Plastics
Kirill Veselkin (University of Texas, Comparative Literature), A Disaster Waiting to Happen: Post-Nuclear Poetics in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
Julianne Angeli (University of Michigan, French), Human-Environment Interaction and Social Incompatibility in Bilge Karasu’s “Incitmebeni” and Boris Vian’s L’écume des Jours
Noah Baum (New York University, English), Making Sense: Nuclear Aesthetics in Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm Reception
Saturday, March 22, 2025
9:00 am - 9:30 am Breakfast
9:30 am - 11:00 am Keynote Address and Q&A by Professor Tung-Hui Hu (University of Michigan, English), At the Ends of Exhaustion, A Door
Respondent: Professor Christi Merrill
11:00 am - 11:15 am Coffee Break
11:15 am - 1:00 pm Panel 5: Speculative Histories, Speculative Futures
Respondent: Dr. Ali Bolcakan
Presenters:
Sanjana Ramanathan (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Classics and Controllers: Playing in/with Ancient Pasts
Annie Birkeland (University of Michigan, Linguistic Anthropology), Once Upon an Archipelago… Alternative Origin Stories of Cabo Verde
Linda Huber (University of Michigan, School of Information), “AI” as a Scrying Mirror - for the University We Want, and the University We Have
Sam Patwell (University of Washington, Asian Languages and Literatures), A Foundational Mirage: Exploring the First Science Fiction Magazine Published in Taiwan (1990-1992)
1:00 pm - 1:45 pm Lunch
1:45 pm - 3:00 pm Panel 6: Archival Evidence and Ethnography
Respondent: Dr. Dina Mahmoud
Presenters:
Srimati Ghosal (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), “Science for the Household” and Technology for the Nation: Soviet Science and Technology Textbooks in Cold War India
Sara Ruiz (University of Michigan, Slavic), Forensic Memory: Technologies of Witnessing in Soviet War Crimes Trials
Lai Wo (University of Michigan, Anthropology), Ethical Uncertainties within Intimate Labor Migration between East Java and Hong Kong
3:00 pm - 3:30 pm Closing Remarks
