UC Graduate Student Virtual Conference
2026 Call for Proposals: “Sustenance”
Eligibility
Conference Date
February 13, 2026
Proposal Deadline
Call for Proposals
The UC Riverside Center for Ideas and Society invites proposals for a virtual conference that explores the theme of sustenance. All UC graduate students in the humanities are eligible to apply, as are students in the arts or social sciences with projects that make use of humanities methods, concepts, and theoretical frameworks.
Conference date: February 13, 2026
Presentation proposal deadline: December 19, 2025
Proposal Guidelines
- Up to 24 proposals will be selected for 10-15 minute presentations, organized into panels and moderated by UCR faculty.
- Proposals should reflect creative, critical engagement with the concept of sustenance as a unifying idea, method, or theoretical approach
- Submissions should include title, abstract, and a description of how the proposal aligns with the conference theme
About the Conference Theme: Sustenance
The 2026 conference theme is drawn from the UC Humanities Research Center’s programming initiative on “sustenance.”
- When preparing your proposal, reflect on the following to help develop your engagement with the theme: How does a focus on sustenance constitute different ways of knowing and being in the world, including Black, queer, and feminist autonomous community projects, Indigenous stewardship, climate/environmental justice, and the many forms of caregiving and kinkeeping performed by displaced, occupied, and marginalized communities around the world?
- How have different communities and economies of sustenance shaped the state of California? From the enormous agricultural industry to the innovations of “California cuisine” with its integration—and gentrification—of food cultures far and wide, sustenance has been a central aspect of our state and its history.
- How is sustenance indispensable in biological, social, cultural, and psychological terms? What other kinds of sustenance could and should figure in our thinking and imaginations? What are the cultural, social, and political implications of pursuing sustenance?
- How does sustenance, in its many forms, become sustainable? How do current environmental circumstances intensify the links between sustenance and sustainability? How does sustenance illuminate the environmental challenges facing local, state, and global communities?
- How is sustenance allocated? How does access to sustenance work, or not, and in whose interests? With what relevant histories of struggle? And with what sometimes tragic outcomes, including famine, food insecurity, and chronic disease?
- How does a humanistic, artistic, or qualitative social scientific approach to sustenance illuminate or critically challenge conventional understandings of foodways?
- How might sustenance cut across different historical periods, styles, scales, constituencies, and temporalities? How might it become an axis and/or register of our perspectives on the world?
- What are the current and/or historical connections between food, art, politics, and media aesthetics?
- What kind of sustenance will the university and education in general require in these challenging times?
*see UCHRI’s Sustenance initiative for more inspiration
For questions or more information: Katharine.Henshaw@ucr.edu
Hosted by the UCR Center for Ideas and Society and supported by a grant from the UC Humanities Network and the UC Office of the President.