With the seemingly predictable regularity of the “clicks” of a wavering metronome, eruptions punctuate our present: a worldwide pandemic, rampant anti-blackness, large-scale political protests, widespread unemployment, vast precarity surrounding access to healthcare, unfurling political campaigns, and scrupulously advancing sea levels among many others. The quotidian spectacle of 2020 has created a cacophony of political creeds that coalesce into bold-font headlines that many choose to neglect, ignore, or deny. For others, outrage and fear fuel powerful social and political engagements as they grapple to find individual and collective solutions to survive in these times of crisis. Apathy and radical care slide over and under each other, sometimes obstructing our view. They create a zebra-in-the-herd effect as one glances to the immediate future.

This interdisciplinary colloquium seeks to interrogate the places of feminism in a society “unhinged,” when the compass-needle fingers no longer pretend to point true north when asked who’s to blame for such “destruction.” Mobilized by these dubious times, we broadly investigate: how can feminist inquiry disrupt systemic norms and institutional barriers that have been reified in contemporary political and societal landscapes? And how do active engagements with intersectional feminist methods promote a liberatory politics in times of crisis that erupt into the present?

We invite a wide range of submission types (poster, symposium, single-presenter, flash talk, art, music, etc.) that employ feminist research, methods, and/or praxis to better understand the disruptions and eruptions brought about by: politics and elections, the Covid-19 pandemic, anti-black violence and police brutality, increasing unemployment, changing legislation on immigration, debates about free speech, climate change, working from home, self-care and mental health, and other (new and ongoing) issues that have destabilized existing conditions or exacerbated preexisting ones.