FLOW RUPTURE

We are thrilled to announce the call for papers for the 2025 Anthropology Graduate Student Conference at The New School for Social Research, centered on the theme “Flow/Rupture.”

To think of flow and rupture, two seemingly contrasting states, is to reimagine how we understand the world, and how we, along with other beings, inhabit it.

Flow embodies movement, continuity, and connection. It shapes our lived experiences in an interconnected world where people, objects, and ideas circulate, creating new possibilities and relationships. Flows of water, electricity, and information sustain life, while their disruption reminds us of the fragility of the infrastructures that support them. Temporally, both personal and collective histories can be imagined as a flowing river, with ongoing debates about their origins, direction, and ultimate destination.

Conversely, rupture signals a break, a moment of disruption that fragments the continuities binding our world together. Rupture can manifest as violence, war, or environmental degradation, leaving lasting scars on societies and ecosystems. Yet, rupture may also serve as a creative force, opening new spaces for reflection, alternative temporalities, and imaginative practices. Rather than simply representing opposites, can flow and rupture coexist, intersect, or even function symbiotically?

This conference seeks to explore flow and rupture as phenomena, concepts, methods, and media. We invite participants, in the specific fields they study, to reflect on questions such as:

• What flows, why, where, and for whom?
• How do flows create or sustain systems of inequality and power?
• Who initiates rupture, and what are its implications?
• How can rupture foster new possibilities and social imaginaries?
• Can we move beyond dualistic thinking about flow and rupture, and what lies at their intersection?

We view the questions above not only as theoretical contemplations but timely reflections on the global problems we face today. To name but a few, continuous wars and massacres, made possible by the global flow of weapons, capitals, and information, have resulted in devastating ruptures in lands and lives; The new U.S. administration brings threatening ruptures in the country’s political landscapes and social imaginaries, while a flow of relevant ideas and practices has nurtured it historically, economically, and ideologically; Climate change embodied in the flows of water, air, and lives alarms the unimaginable rupture in human history. The conference encourages the empirical research that responds to the current issues including:

• Wars, Conflicts, Genocide
• Mobility, Displacement, Diaspora, Immigration
• Racism, Sexism, Transphobia and their Intersectionality
• Labor and Production in an AI era
• Urban Planning, Infrastructures, Gentrification
• Anthropocene and its Future
• An Activist Scholarship: Is it possible?
• State Violence, Civil Disobedience, and Radical Politics
• Affects, Traumas, Care
• Psychedelics, Mental Health Crisis, Therapeutic Regimes
• Religions, Spirituality, and Magic in the 21st Century
• Public Health in the Post-COVID world

among others.

With an appreciation for the potentials of multimodal anthropology and its connections with arts, we are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches and encourage submissions in diverse formats, including text-based papers and creative works in multimedia forms (audio, film, photography, dance, etc.). Together, we will think through flow and rupture, offering collective insights and actions relevant to our historical present.

For more information, please contact us at: anthropologyconferencetns@gmail.com