Conference Schedule
The California Ideology Conference
University of California: Santa Cruz, Cowell Hall Conference Room, April 6-7 2024
Keynote speakers: Alberto Toscano, Banu Bargu, Massimiliano Tomba
Conference Schedule:
Saturday, April 6th
9:00-9:45 Coffee + Snacks
9:45-10:00 Welcome + Introduction
10:00-11:20 Panel 1: California Welcome
Chair: Kyle Proehl
Max Tomba, “California Ideology”
Banu Bargu, TBA
Wesley Viebahn, “Tracing a Genealogy of Nostalgia in the Works of Joan Didion”
Shaun Terry, “Immediate Transcendence and Purifying Violence: On Surfer Fascism”
20 min Q+A
11:20-11:35 15 min break
11:35-12:55 Panel 2: California Politics
Chair: Shaun Terry
Anna Yegorova, “All the way from California to Moscow: Adorno’s Insight into the Personality of a Fascist Leader”
Andrew Merrill, “Post-Californian Ideology, Silicon Valley and the future of U.S. militarism”
James Martel, “California Reich: Why fascism, neoliberalism and American Commercial Culture all amount to the Same Thing”
Kyle Baasch, “The New Spirit of Conservatism”
20 min Q+A
12:55-1:55 Lunch
1:55-3:15 Panel 3: California Frankfurt
Chair: Chris Shambaugh
Jordan Daniels, “Natural Wonders: Adorno on Landscape and Los Angeles”
Ernest Pujol Leon, “Adorno’s Californian Sojourn: Early Critical Theory and the Prehistory of the Californian Ideology”
Will Parrish, “Counter-Revolution and Revolt in California, 1966-1971”
Cara S. Greene, "Los Angeles Physiognomy"
20 min Q+A
3:15-3:30 15 min break
3:30-4:45 Panel 4: California Images
Chair: Ross Hernandez
Martabel Wasserman, “Helios on the Rock”
Agnese Cebere, “Gender Play in Utopia: Cowboys and Barbies in Baudrillard’s America”
Kyle Proehl, “Whitey on the Web”
20 min Q+A
4:45-5:00 15 min break
5:00-6:00 Keynote
Alberto Toscano, “California Über Alles? Theorizing the Right with Mike Davis”
6:00-7:00 Dinner
Sunday, April 7th
9:00-9:45 Coffee + Snacks
9:45-11:05 Panel 5: California History
Chair: Kyle Baasch
Patrick Jaojoco, “Jailbirds in Peacock Chairs: Philippine/American Carceral Commerce from the Panama Pacific Exposition to the Black Panther Movement”
Rahim Kurwa, “The Californian Order: Wesley Swift, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Rise of Policing on Los Angeles’ Frontier”
Ross Hernández, “‘If it has a prison, it is a prison, not a city’: Hypotactical Poetry in Transnational California”
20 min Q+A
11:05-11:20 15 min break
11:20-12:50 Panel 6: California Myths
Chair: Cara S. Greene
Filip Brzezniak, “California Dreamin’ – From Ideology to the Californian Fantasy(-Production)”
Key Macfarlane, “Critique of Automated Life: Henri Lefebvre and the Californian Ideology”
Emma Stamm, “Psychedelic Fascism in the Digital Age”
Kyna Mcclenaghan, “Fringes of Reason”
20 min Q+A
1:10-1:45 Goodbyes
This conference is generously supported by the University of California Humanities Research Institute, Department of Comparative Literature (UC Davis), UCSC Humanities Division, The Humanities Institute (UCSC), Cowell College (UCSC), Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (UCSC), The Arts Research Institute (UCSC), History of Consciousness (UCSC), Sociology (UCSC), and Davis Humanities Institute (UC Davis)