[csaa-forum] CSAA 2025 cfp: So hot right now

[Rebecca Olive]

RMIT Classification: Trusted

Dear CSAA members,

We're pleased to share the call for abstracts for the CSAA 2025 conference. The cfp is available on the CSAA website<https://csaa.asn.au/csaa-conference-2025/>. We hope to see you there!

So hot right now: Cultures in rising temperatures<https://csaa.asn.au/csaa-conference-2025/>

Cultural Studies Association of Australasia conference // 26-28 November 2025
University of Melbourne campus as part of the Congress of HASS
(Conveners: Rebecca Olive, Gilbert Caluya, Holly Randell-Moon, Andrew Hutcheon)

Temperatures are rising.

Political debate is polarised, reactive, and relentless. Urban heat highlights inequity in housing and greenspace access. Body politics remain charged with tensions in representations, inclusion, and rights. Social media and cultural influencers create a treadmill of “eras” so knowing (or caring about) what’s hot and what’s not requires constant surveillance. Debates about AI content are shifting from ‘should’ to ‘how’? The housing crisis continues to intensify and biodiversity loss is increasing. Even the beach is losing its capacity to offer summer refuge. And, amplifying it all, the impacts of climate change are escalating – the oceans are warming, computer servers are becoming ever-bigger emissions contributors, and extreme weather events of fire, flood, and storms are increasing, making life untenable and unaffordable in some communities.

And yet, people continue to navigate these intensities through their everyday relationships and practices with food, film, literature, craft, art, sport, news, dwellings, protest, play, travel, rest, spirituality, and all the other things that give life meaning.

CSAA 2025 aims to look at intersections, divergences, conflicts, and convergences of ‘heat’ in cultures, practices, media, environments, and forms of governance. Together, we will explore how our relations to each other are heating up across political, environmental and cultural challenges and to explore what rising temperatures might help us imagine or foreclose into the future.

To help spark some ideas, submissions for panels or presentations could include topics such as:


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Cultures of Heat: representing heat/fire in everyday cultures; the rhetoric of fire/heat/temperatures and its effects on culture, politics, society, identity, practice or praxis; theorising ‘slow burn’ in literature and film.
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Hot as Hell: heat/fire in religious and spiritual cultures; the cultural politics of hell.
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Heated media: revisiting McLuhan’s hot and cool media theory; fiery social media communities and cultures; the media of outrage and panic; reporting on/in hot conflict zones; mediated hate speech against women and minorities; toxic fandom in entertainment media.
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Hot bodies: the body politics of heat; screen representations of sex; the gendered and racialised politics of attractiveness; cooling off dating; hot flashes/hot flushes; heatstroke.
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Taking the temperature of technological developments: technological contributions to carbon emissions; AI and climate change; technology’s connections to social and political conflicts.
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Fiery emotions: affects of ‘passion’; passionate debates; the uses and abuses of anger; lust and desire; the politics of passionate ‘races’; the gendered politics of passion.
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Geographies of heat: the geopolitics of climate change; the urban politics of overheating; access to heating/coolness as a right; heat in rural and regional studies; ‘race’, empire and heat vulnerability
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Managing fire: governance and governmentality of heat/climate change/fires; Indigenous approaches to using fire as an environmental management tool; cladding and the cultural politics of building codes; managing fires in the culture of construction industries
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Cultural politics of climate change: the effects of global warming on leisure and recreation industries and cultures; non-humans and more-than-human worlds in climate change; movement, physical activities and sport under global warming; rethinking health and wellness in the context of climate change.
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Critical reflections on ‘the Anthropocene’: the theory of ‘climate change’ or ‘the Anthropocene’; new methodologies for the Anthropocene; the connections between humans, non- humans, and more-than-human worlds in the Anthropocene.
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Creative Arts in heat: creative artist responses to climate change; the role of the arts and craft in climate change politics; sustainability in arts and craft practices.
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Theories, ethics and practices of care in global warming: what are our responsibilities under climate change? What kind of care does the planet need? And how do we enact such care under global warming?
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Colonialities of heat: the geopolitics of race and coloniality in rising temperatures; environmental racism; Indigenous sovereignties and sciences

These are just some provocations to ignite your own ideas with this year’s theme. As always, the CSAA annual conference is open to any hot topics in cultural studies. We’re excited to hear your ideas so fire away!

Email submissions to csaaconference2025 at gmail.com by 25 July 2025.

Submissions must include:

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Title
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Panel abstract of 250 words max OR individual abstract submissions of 150 words max
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Presenter names, institutional affiliations, and email addresses
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Speaker bios of 50-100 words

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Rebecca Olive
Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow<https://academics.rmit.edu.au/rebecca-olive>
School of Global, Urban & Social Studies
RMIT University

Associate Director (Regenerative Environments & Climate Action<https://cur.org.au/themes/regenerative-environments-climate-action/>) @ Centre for Urban Research<https://cur.org.au/>
President: Cultural Studies Association of Australasia (CSAA)<https://csaa.asn.au/>
Project website: Moving Oceans<https://movingoceans.com/>

I acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose lands I live and work, and recognise Elders and Ancestors past and present.

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