2026 Spring Conference Participants

Students & PhD Candidates

Elliot Bowers (PhD Candidate) will present Beyond Performativity and the Gender Paradox: Gender, Sex, Sexuality and Plurality for the session "(Re)imagining Trans: Mappings, Crossings, and Tracings" at the 57th NeMLA Convention in Pittsburgh, PA, March 5–8, 2026. Additionally, they will present Beyond Performativity and the Gender Paradox: Gender, Sex, Sexuality, and Plurality for the Scientific Committee of the 5th International Conference on LGBT studies in Madrid, Spain, April, 24 - 26, 2026.

Alicia Campos Massó (PhD Candidate) will serve as panel chair for “Ageless Echoes: The Feminine Verse Through Eras From the Middle Ages to Tomorrow” honoring Marguerite Porete at NeMLA in Pittsburgh, PA from March 4-8, 2026.

Sam De Lemos (Cohort ’24) will present Converso Cosmology: An Introduction — From Medieval Iberia into Early Modernity for the session "Mysticism, Transcendence, and Cosmologies: Medieval Pathways to the Twenty-First Century" at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, May 14–16, 2026.

Justin Gallant (Cohort ’24) recently presented The Architecture of Temporal Violence in Carceral Systems at the Transformative Justice and Abolition Criminology Conference on February 13, 2026.

Zindzi Harley (Cohort ’24) will present Shade: Afrofeminist Philosophy Crafting Contemporary Cultural Institutions at the Twenty-First International Conference on the Arts in Society Modeling Life Systems: Art, Algorithms, Ecologies at the Department of Theatre Studies, School of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece to be held June 10–12, 2026.

Rebecca Monaghan (Cohort ’23) will present Mysticism, Transcendence, and Cosmologies: Medieval Pathways to the Twenty-First Century and panel the session “Medieval Association of the Midwest Roundtable” at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, May 14-16, 2026.

Santana Nash (Cohort ’25) will present What Must Burn? Creative Destruction in the Art of Kerry James Marshall at 42nd Annual Graduate Student Symposium held at the Department of Art History at Florida State University March 6, 2026. She will also present the paper Most Neglected, Most Universal: Visual Liberation Through the Black Feminine for the session titled “Resistance from Within: Art as Covert Defiance” at Tufts University's 2026 Graduate Symposium, March 27, 2026.

Terrence Phearse (PhD Candidate) recently presented Mise en Sein: Photography from Duration to Code at the 3rd Essen Symposium for Photography "What Will Photography Be? An Invitation to Speculate" in Essen, Germany from February 4–5, 2026.

Tory Schendel-Vyvoda (Cohort ’23) will present Experiential Learning: Community Memorialization of Early Black Descendants in Evansville, Indiana at the 10th Annual Celebration of Teaching and Learning Symposium on February 24, 2026. She will also present the paper Feminist Perspectivism in Schuermann’s Medieval Latin Epoch for the panel “Ageless Echoes: The Feminine Verse Through Eras From the Middle Ages to Tomorrow” chaired by IDSVA PhD Candidate, Alicia Campos Massó, at NeMLA in Pittsburgh, PA from March 4-8, 2026. Later this season, Tory will present the paper Teaching Approaches in and beyond the Classroom: A Case Study of Hildegard von Bingen and serve as a moderator for the session, "Medieval Texts in Contemporary Philosophy and Teaching" at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, July 6-9, 2026.

Amy Schuessler (PhD Candidate) will present Private- Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg: Non-Catharsis as an Ethics of Opacity at the conference Shifting the Frame – Women’s Photographic Practices (1840–1960) in Porto, Portugal on May 7, 2026.

Natalie Velez (PhD Candidate) will present her paper Forgiveness: Art of Resistance and the Impossible Unconditional at the Derrida Today conference, which takes place at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris from July 13–17, 2026.

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Alumni

Hazel Antaramian Hofman (PhD 2024) will present Poetic Reimaging of 'Physis' at the Twenty-First International Conference on the Arts in Society Modeling Life Systems: Art, Algorithms, Ecologies for the Department of Theatre Studies, School of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece on June 12, 2026.

Jason Hoelscher (PhD 2019) will present Tripping the Aesthetic Singularity: Psychedelics as Complex Adaptive Information Technologies, at the Harvard University Psychedelic Intersections Conference in Cambridge, MA on April 10, 2026. Additionally, he will present The Diffraction of the Author: Textual Swarms and Skeuomorphic Intelligence in Large Language Models, at the Commission on Science and Literature Conference at Ghent University in Ghent, Belgium, June 17-19, 2026.

Michael Hogan (PhD 2025) will present Art of the Street: Derrida and the Aesthetics of Displacement at the Derrida Today conference in Paris, France, July 13-17, 2026.

Mary Mazurek (PhD 2022) recently served as panel chair and presenter for “Aesthetic Noise” at the CAA Conference in Chicago, IL on February 18, 2026.

EL Putnam (PhD 2014) recently presented the paper Myth Machines: Art, Irish Folklore, and Technology as part of the panel "Manufacturing Myths: Art, Ideology, and Spectacle" at CAA on February 20, 2026.

Gabriel Reed (PhD 2024) will present Centering Fire: M.C. Richards, Bachelard, Margulis, and the Imagination of Matter and serve as panel chair at The Nineteenth Annual Meeting of THE COMPARATIVE AND CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY CIRCLE sponsored by the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan, May 28-3, 2026.

Jennifer Rissler (PhD 2021) recently presented Immaterial Labor and Late Stage Higher Education as part of the session "Instrumentalization and Dematerialization of Art” at CAA on February 20th.

Angela Whitlock (PhD 2024) will present Atmospheric Immersion and Empathic Projection in New York City's Technological Environments at MACAA on March 26-27, 2026. She will also present Atmospheric Immersion and Empathic Projection in New York City's Technological Environments for IDSVA’s spring symposium in NYC May 2-3, 2026.