News & Events
Present Tense / Future Possibilities Conference
Call for Submissions
Present Tense / Future Possibilities: The 4th Annual WGSS Interdisciplinary Conference
The USF Department of Women鈥檚, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for the Present Tense / Future Possibilities Conference to be held on February 13, 2026, at the USF Tampa campus. Students, staff, and faculty
from the USF community are encouraged to submit an abstract, along with students,
staff, and faculty in Florida-based WGSS programs and those doing related, relevant
work in the State of Florida.
In a moment that feels as if it is defined by fear, vulnerability, and chaos, we celebrate
ways in which artists, academics, and community members work against these dark themes
to imagine, create, and live worlds that offer more.
Aimed at exploring, developing, and implementing feminist, queer, crip and other politics
of refusal, this conference explores what Lauren Berlant described as their commitment
鈥渢o the political project of imagining how to detach from lives that don鈥檛 work and
from worlds that negate the subjects that produce them鈥� and to create possibilities
鈥渢o live beyond survival, toward flourishing not later but in the ongoing now.鈥�
This conference centers conversations that wrestle with the realities of the moment
while creating more livable presents and futures. We ask: What does it mean to live
in this present with a politics rooted in futurity? How do movements centered in the
intersections of antiracist, queer, and feminist politics imagine, build, and sustain
alternative worlds? This space engages with these questions and welcomes intellectual
explorations, artistic expressions, and embodied practices that challenge normative
temporalities and oppressive structures while acknowledging and celebrating the mess,
resistance, and labor of this politics of transformation.
Submissions may include creative projects, full panels, single papers/presentations,
and posters. Topics could include but are not limited to: strategies of resistance;
using oppression and suppression as fodder for expression; turning confusion, anger,
or other such emotions into fuel for change; practices of self- and other-care; teaching,
learning, and thinking in these times; the role of artistic expression in times of
political foment; how the past subtends the future; reviving past action for present
progress.
We encourage collaboration, and we welcome multi- and interdisciplinary research from
the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, and applied/professional disciplines.
Proposals for performances, readings, and other artistic presentations are welcome.
Deadline for submissions: December 12, 2025
Conference Details
- Date: February 13, 2026
- Deadline for submissions: December 12, 2025
- Location: Marshall Student Center (MSC) 3rd Floor, located at 4103 Cedar Circle, Tampa, FL 33620
- Parking: Visit the USF Parking site
Proposal Workshop
We will be hosting a virtual workshop on how to write a conference proposal for anyone interested in submitting a proposal for the Present Tense / Future Possibilites Conference. This will be tailored to undergrad and graduate students who haven't submitted for a conference before, but it is open to anyone looking to brush up on the conference proposal skills.
November 4, 12:30-1:30pm
Microsoft Teams
Email for the meeting link