We have been rethinking the notions of “matter” and “material”. Speculative realists direct our attention to objects beyond human sensory perceptions. Vitalist materialists emphasize the dynamism of matter and the processes of materialization. Transhumanists believe that advances in information sciences can help us discard the physical body and become digital beings because “mind is deeper than matter.” Critical posthumanists claim that we need to go beyond anthropocentrism and other binaries to acknowledge interspecies interdependency. Scholars of capitalism investigate how global infrastructures have been built to capture the cognitive and affective capacities of the material body, human and/or nonhuman. This new mode of production, interestingly, has been described as immaterial because the expansion of capital no longer depends on the production of material goods but resorts to datafication and financialization. Meanwhile, our post-material production and consumption have given rise to the flourishing of old magics and new spiritualities.

  This seminar endeavors to cast a wider net by inviting case studies that examine the rich repositories of folk religion and popular culture around the world and of pre-capitalist, capitalist, and post(?)-capitalist periods to look for conceptualizations of matter/material that supplement, complicate, or challenge existing theoretical discussions. By folk religion we refer to everyday ideas and practices of the ordinary people aimed to manage relationships between human, nonhumans, and forces of the hidden/beyond. These ideas and practices, such as fortune-telling, spirit-possession, and ritual healing, do not always conform to the orthodox teachings of the established traditions. By popular culture we mean the prevailing cultural expressions of a particular society that generates location formations while participating in global circulations. These cultural forms adopt a variety of textual forms and media platforms such as literature, theatre, film, digital games, and social media. We invite participants whose research projects problematize divides such as those between spirit and matter, mind and body, human and nonhuman, culture and nature, virtuality and actuality, and fiction and reality.


Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

- objects, assemblages, and networks

- embodiment, affect, and desire

- the nonhuman, posthuman, and transhuman

- divination and other magical practices

- popular culture and new religious movements

- subjectivities shaped by particular notions of (im)materiality

- world-building across genres and media, techniques of (im)materialization

- (im)material production and consumption

Proposals for contributions to our seminar must be submitted between September 13 and October 14, 2024, directly through https://www.acla.org/annual-meeting

Please feel free to contact the organizers with your questions at

Yuqian Yan：yyuqian@hotmail.com