Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT)

We are seeking a graduate or undergraduate student to assist the 3CT team with regular program and operational tasks. The role is for approximately 8–12 hours per week during the academic year and will include occasional evening and weekend hours. This is a Federal Work-Study position.

The Student Assistant reports to the Associate Director of 3CT and works closely with the Program Coordinator. Tasks may include, but are not limited to: event setup and breakdown, including handling food and beverages; distributing posters around campus; creating content for social media and updating website; captioning videos; and maintaining 3CT’s common spaces.

We are looking for someone who:

• Demonstrates strong communication skills, reliability, and excellent attention to detail
• Is able to work independently, take direction, and prioritize their own tasks effectively
• Is familiar with and enthusiastic about the work of 3CT
• Can be flexible: tasks and schedule may vary depending on program needs
• Has some graphic design and/or social media experience (preferred, but not required)

Pay rate: $20/hr

To apply, search for the job posting on Handshake (undergraduate students; ID: 11215406) or GRAD Gargoyle (graduate students; ID: 9388039). Please submit a resume and cover letter, noting your eligibility for Federal Work-Study.

Learn more at https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/now-hiring-3ct-student-assistant-2026-27/

3CT is looking for two coordinators for the new Critical Social Theory Working Group, launching in the 2026–27 academic year. This opportunity is open to any student who will be enrolled in a University of Chicago doctoral program during this period, with priority given to those who are engaged with 3CT’s activity (e.g. attending events or taking classes).

The format and frequency of Working Group meetings are to be determined, but we anticipate each coordinator working approximately 50 hours over the course of the year at $20/hour. Responsibilities might include: drafting and circulating calls for papers; selecting and scheduling presenters; circulating readings; and participating in meetings. 3CT staff will support the coordinators in these and other tasks.

To express your interest in the role, please reach out to Anna Searle Jones, 3CT’s associate director. Learn more at https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/now-hiring-critical-social-theory-working-group-coordinators-2026-27/

We have two new opportunities for University of Chicago students!

———

3CT is looking for two coordinators for the new Critical Social Theory Working Group, launching in the 2026–27 academic year. This opportunity is open to any student who will be enrolled in a University of Chicago doctoral program during this period, with priority given to those who are engaged with 3CT’s activity (e.g. attending events or taking classes).

The format and frequency of Working Group meetings are to be determined, but we anticipate each coordinator working approximately 50 hours over the course of the year at $20/hour. Responsibilities might include: drafting and circulating calls for papers; selecting and scheduling presenters; circulating readings; and participating in meetings. 3CT staff will support the coordinators in these and other tasks.

To express your interest in the role, please reach out to Anna Searle Jones, 3CT’s associate director, by Monday, August 3.

https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/now-hiring-critical-social-theory-working-group-coordinators-2026-27/

———

We are seeking a graduate or undergraduate student to assist the 3CT team with regular program and operational tasks. The role is for approximately 8–12 hours per week during the academic year and will include occasional evening and weekend hours. This is a Federal Work Study position.

The Student Assistant reports to the Associate Director of 3CT and works closely with the Program Coordinator. Tasks may include, but are not limited to: event setup and breakdown, including handling food and beverages; distributing posters around campus; creating content for social media and updating website; captioning videos; and maintaining 3CT’s common spaces.

Pay rate: $20/hr

To apply, search for the job posting on Handshake (undergraduate students; ID: 11215406) or GRAD Gargoyle (graduate students; ID: 9388039). Please submit a resume and cover letter, noting your eligibility for Federal Work Study.

https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/now-hiring-3ct-student-assistant-2026-27/

Congratulations to Lisa Wedeen, director of 3CT and the Mary R. Morton Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science, on her election as a 2026 Fellow of The British Academy, in recognition of outstanding contributions to the humanities and social sciences. Wedeen is the only political scientist of the thirty-two International Fellows elected this year.

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/92-new-fellows-welcomed-to-the-british-academy-in-2026/

3CT's November 2025 conference Authoritarian Imaginaries, part of the A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times project, included a panel titled "Libidinal Investments in Fascist Politics," featuring Jason Frank, 3CT fellow William Mazzarella, and 3CT director Lisa Wedeen. Their presentations from this panel are now published as essays in the Critical Inquiry blog In the Moment.

These scholars focused on questions of censorship, surveillance, repression, ideological uptake, and what Judith Butler has called “fascist passions,” with the essays offering psychoanalytically informed accounts of contemporary MAGA politics. Lisa Wedeen and Jason Frank do this, albeit in different ways, by underscoring the dynamics of revenge, ressentiment, and the pleasure supporters take in identifying with Trump’s freedom to act with impunity. All three interventions posted this week do this by looking at what William Mazzarella aptly terms in his post, the “dialects of incitement and containment.”

Visit https://critinq.wordpress.com/2026/07/20/libidinal-investments-in-fascist-politics/ to read these essays: "Carnality and the Counterrevolution" by Jason Frank, "Fascist Temptations in the Era of Trump" by Lisa Wedeen, and "What Economy?" by William Mazzarella.

One week until the deadline for paper submissions for the Lauren Berlant 3CT Graduate Student Conference! Graduate students, submit your abstract (max. 300 words) and CV via this Google Form (https://forms.gle/Fj4r9oAk5r8b6Q5K6) by June 30, 2026.

In Case of Emergency: Catastrophe, Climate, and Capitalism
November 5–7, 2026

Jason W. Moore (Binghamton) and Gökçe Günel (Rice) will deliver keynote addresses at the conference, which will also feature a curated program of poetry readings and film screenings. In Case of Emergency is organized by Aditi Kini, Tadhg Larabee, Ernest Lee, and Yolian Ogbu in collaboration with the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and with support from the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization.

https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/call-for-papers-2026-lauren-berlant-3ct-graduate-student-conference/

Call for Papers: Lauren Berlant 3CT Graduate Student Conference

In Case of Emergency: Catastrophe, Climate, and Capitalism
November 5–7, 2026
Keynote speakers: Gökçe Günel and Jason W. Moore

We invite proposals from graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, as well as artists, writers, and other practitioners. Our goal is to create space for imagination and speculation with people of varied backgrounds, interests, and praxes. We welcome interdisciplinary scholarship and cultural criticism attentive to the cultural, aesthetic, historical, and political dimensions of crisis. We imagine submissions might discuss:

• Technosolutionism and the dilemmas of growth
• Speculation, commodities, and disaster capitalism
• Fossil life as economy and desire
• Green neoliberalism as a political and cultural form
• Enclosure and destruction of the commons: water, forests, air and more
• Hydrocolonialism, oceanic crisis, and blue humanities
• Border ecologies, displacement, and the production of space
• State-making, world-making, and the remaking of political, social and ecological orders
• Toxic temporalities, slow violence, and “post”-colonial precarity
• Apocalypse and new worlds in literature and culture
• Climate pessimisms and the politics of fear and hope in crisis
• Resistance, strikes, and land back: movements and solidarity
• Community, care, and affective ecologies of crisis

To apply, submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and a CV by Tuesday, June 30, at 11:59pm CT. View the full Call for Papers and submit a paper proposal at https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/call-for-papers-2026-lauren-berlant-3ct-graduate-student-conference/

Video is now available from our April 13, 2026 event with Dominique J. Baker, Ron Lieber, and Lauren A. Rivera, titled “Aspiring to Elitism: How the Admissions Office Remade the Corporate University.”

Watch the video at https://youtu.be/5tLUepJUs78?si=Yujg3oEJ1nupsYSnW

Video is now available from our February 5, 2026, Theorizing the Present event with Leah Feldman, Exhausting Internationalism.

Watch the video at https://youtu.be/on3nDVtzSHA?si=_cBJYJkW0g8DvZAN

Call for Papers: Lauren Berlant 3CT Graduate Student Conference
In Case of Emergency: Catastrophe, Climate, and Capitalism
November 5–7, 2026
Keynote speakers: Gökçe Günel and Jason W. Moore

Crisis discourse often privileges spectacular catastrophe while obscuring the slow, uneven, and racialized forms of ecological violence embedded in everyday life. With the sirens blaring, it is easy to lose sight of the material impacts of the ideology of crisis across time and space. We can also miss the ways in which the permanent emergency warps our cultural production and social relations, concealing the most pressing contradictions of capitalism today. How might we map the cartography of crisis? In doing so, might we open space for alternative ways of thinking and living within and against crisis? How do we hold crisis at bay long enough to bring about a “real state of emergency,” as Benjamin says is our task?

We invite proposals from graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, as well as artists, writers, and other practitioners. Our goal is to create space for imagination and speculation with people of varied backgrounds, interests, and praxes. We welcome interdisciplinary scholarship and cultural criticism attentive to the cultural, aesthetic, historical, and political dimensions of crisis.

To apply, submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and a CV by Tuesday, June 30, at 11:59pm CT. View the full Call for Papers and submit a paper proposal at https://ccct.uchicago.edu/news/call-for-papers-2026-lauren-berlant-3ct-graduate-student-conference/

This conference is organized by Aditi Kini, Tadhg Larabee, Ernest Lee, and Yolian Ogbu in collaboration with the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and with support from the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization.