Hannah Arendt Center presents:
Call for Abstracts
2027 Spring Conference: Authority in Dark Times
Thursday, January 7, 2027
Online Event
This event occurs on:
Thu. January 7
The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities is pleased to announce that our Spring Conference will be held on April 1-2, 2027, at Bard College.
Dana Villa (University of Notre Dame) will serve as keynote speaker and deliver the 5th Annual De Gruyter-Arendt Center Lecture in Political Thinking, co-sponsored by De Gruyter Brill.
Additional presenters will have the opportunity to workshop their papers. A Bard faculty member will provide detailed feedback, which will be followed by an open discussion between the presenter and the members of the audience. We will provide lodging and travel up to $500 for each selected presenter.
The conference theme is “Authority in Dark Times.” For Arendt, “dark times” are not limited to totalitarian conditions. Rather, they signal a breakdown of public trust and the loss of a shared world. Reality becomes fractured by bureaucracy, ideology, and atomization. Under such conditions, the power of the people is difficult to harness, and authority (which requires neither coercion nor persuasion) is nearly impossible to establish. Many would suggest that we find ourselves in a dark time today. This diagnosis raises several important questions:
Submission Details
Eligibility: PhD candidates, postdocs, and early-career faculty.
Abstract Deadline: January 7, 2027.
Decision Notification: January 28, 2027.
Papers will be due two weeks prior to the conference.
For further information or questions, please contact Shasta Kaul at [email protected].
The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities is pleased to announce that our Spring Conference will be held on April 1-2, 2027, at Bard College.
Dana Villa (University of Notre Dame) will serve as keynote speaker and deliver the 5th Annual De Gruyter-Arendt Center Lecture in Political Thinking, co-sponsored by De Gruyter Brill.
Additional presenters will have the opportunity to workshop their papers. A Bard faculty member will provide detailed feedback, which will be followed by an open discussion between the presenter and the members of the audience. We will provide lodging and travel up to $500 for each selected presenter.
The conference theme is “Authority in Dark Times.” For Arendt, “dark times” are not limited to totalitarian conditions. Rather, they signal a breakdown of public trust and the loss of a shared world. Reality becomes fractured by bureaucracy, ideology, and atomization. Under such conditions, the power of the people is difficult to harness, and authority (which requires neither coercion nor persuasion) is nearly impossible to establish. Many would suggest that we find ourselves in a dark time today. This diagnosis raises several important questions:
- Given that political actors tend to rely on persuasion (in the form of demagoguery and media campaigns) or on coercion (through legislation and force), must we rethink the nature of political authority?
- Can legitimate authority be continuously reconstituted in an atomized society?
- Do bureaucracy and technology systematically fracture our perceptions of reality?
- Is our contemporary feeling of “dark times” an epistemic crisis, an institutional crisis, or an existential crisis?
- Can educational, literary, or cultural institutions serve as sites of authority and commonality when political institutions fail?
Submission Details
Eligibility: PhD candidates, postdocs, and early-career faculty.
Abstract Deadline: January 7, 2027.
Decision Notification: January 28, 2027.
Papers will be due two weeks prior to the conference.
For further information or questions, please contact Shasta Kaul at [email protected].