Worldmaking/Worldbreaking

ASAP/16: Houston

Wednesday, October 22 – Saturday, October 25, 2025

Deadline for Posting Panel/Seminar CFPs: February 14, 2025

Deadline for Finalized Submissions: March 28, 2025

“You won’t break my soul,” Houston native Beyoncé protested in the lead single from her 2022 commemoration of the Black and queer origins of dance music. And yet the future tense of that declaration suggests how staying unbroken is a constant labor of vigilance. In the chronic catastrophes of the present, what resources does art provide for worlds that are sustainable and endurable? Amidst entrenching nationalisms, what models in the contemporary archive could we find for what Adom Getachew calls “worldmaking after empire”? And when everything is breaking, how do we also hold onto a queer impulse to shatter more: to break the structures that break?  

ASAP/16 invites proposals for seminars, panels, and roundtables that inhabit the ambivalence represented by ASAP’s trademark slash, this time both dividing and bridging the actions of worldmaking and worldbreaking. We have chosen a particularly capacious theme to invite wide-ranging collaborations, conversations, debates, and dissensus. And we come to Houston—with its vibrant contemporary arts scene and as the most diverse city in the United States, but in a state whose conservative politicians seem intent on making famous for its reactionary laws—to visit and engage with local creative and activist communities who have long been fighting the political and cultural battles that seem only likely to intensify in the coming decade. The conference will be hosted by faculty at Rice University and feature partnerships with arts organizations across the city, enabling us to learn from arts and activist collectives who are visually and materially building worlds for queer, trans, and migrant communities. 

We invite proposals, due March 28, from scholars, artists, writers, curators, activists and other practitioners whose work addresses and expands upon the study, collection, exhibition, teaching, and writing of art and culture. Panels and seminars that consider a range of disciplines and methods, and that speak across (non)traditional institutional or intellectual divides, are especially encouraged. Panels and seminars are encouraged to engage our theme, but participants are welcome to submit other proposals which contribute to our broader project of exploring the arts of the present, including but not limited to questions posed in the ASAP mission statement.

New this year, ASAP/16 requires all proposed sessions to be pre-constituted and to take one of the following forms:

• Panel with 3–4 presenters, not including chair 
• Roundtable with 5–6 presenters, not including chair 
• Multi-session seminar with 7–12 presenters, not including organizer(s)
• Workshops, including performance or creative/practitioner-led sessions 

We affirm ASAP as a unique space for nurturing student and contingent scholars. Panel roundtable organizers are encouraged, and seminar organizers are required, to submit calls for papers on our website one month before final submission. We will prioritize accepting sessions that boast a diversity of career stages. Beyond pre-constituted sessions, we will host papers-in-progress workshops for graduate students, in which students will pre-circulate work and receive substantive feedback in conversation with members of the ASAP Motherboard and tenured scholars of the larger ASAP membership. 

We will follow this schedule:

• Friday, February 14, 2025: Deadline for session organizers to post a call for panel, roundtable, and seminar participants. This is encouraged for panels and roundtables, but required for seminars. Organizers can set their own deadlines, included in their call, for abstract submissions, but we encourage a date of one month later, on Friday, March 14. 
• Friday, March 28, 2025: Deadline for session organizers to submit fully constituted panel, roundtable, or seminar proposals; deadline for workshop proposals
• Friday, April 25, 2025: Notifications of acceptance for all proposals. 
• Friday, May 2: Deadline for graduate students to apply for papers-in-progress workshops. 
• Friday, May 30, 2025: Final schedule announced 

We have secured discounted accommodations near the conference host site at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University and will have more information coinciding with the proposal process. For all other conference-related questions, please e-mail .