The Persistence of Political Form:
Regime, Ideology, Social Reproduction
CSPT 2026 Conference Schedule and Registration
All events will be held in-person at Cornell University, at the Guerlac Room in A.D. White House (27 E Avenue, Ithaca, NY 14853).
A.D. White House has an ADA accessible entrance at the back door, and an accessible restroom on the ground floor.
Registration is free and open to all, and is required to attend the conference and to obtain the papers. Registration link can be found below. Conference attendees are encouraged to become members of CSPT: please find membership details here.
Thursday May 14, 2026
Location: A.D. White House, Guerlac Room, First Floor
8:30am – 9:00am Breakfast and registration
9:00am – 11:15am Conceptualizing Political Form
Chair: Rayna Kalas (Cornell University)
Giulia Oskian (Yale University) – “Democracy as a New Regime: The Articulation of the Social and the Political in Tocqueville's Thought”
Antonio Vázquez-Arroyo (Rutgers University) – “The Content of Political Form”
Discussants: Elizabeth Wingrove (University of Michigan), Laurie Naranch (Siena University)
11:15am– 11:30am Break
11:30am – 1:00pm Racial Governance, Capitalism, and Social Reproduction
Chair: Alex Livingston (Cornell University)
Michael Gorup (Ithaca College) – “Subsuming Humanity: Race and the Logic of Capital”
Discussants: Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges), Rafael Khachaturian (University of Pennsylvania)
1:00pm – 2:00pm Lunch
2:00pm – 4:15pm Constituencies, Plebiscites, and the Imperative Mandate
Chair: Jason Frank
Arthur Ghins (Université Libre de Bruxelles) – “Rousseau on Imperative Mandates: From Polish Practice to Republican Theory.”
Adam Dahl (University of Massachusetts Amherst) – “Bringing the People In: CLR James and the Anticolonial Plebiscite”
Lisa Disch (University of Michigan) – “Land Use Populism and the Persistence of Political Form in Local Politics"
Discussants: Kevin Duong (University of Virginia), Anurag Sinha (University of Minnesota)
4:15pm– 4:30pm Break
4:30pm – 6:30pm Forms of Democracy
Chair: Jill Frank
Matthew Landauer (Ohio State University) – “Polybius, Cheirokratia, and the Fate of Democracy”
Davide Napoli (Cornell University) – "Forms of Speech as Forms of Government in Classical Greece”
Discussants: Melissa Schwartzberg (New York University), Nicole Giannella (Cornell University)
6:30pm – 8:30pm Dinner
Friday May 15, 2026
Location: A.D. White House, Guerlac Room, First Floor
9:15am – 10:00am Breakfast
10:00am – 12:00pm State and Citizen after Regime Theory
Chair: Karuna Mantena
William Selinger (University of Oklahoma) – “Visions of the Nation-State: On the Politics of the ‘Cambridge School’”
Isaac Nakhimovsky (Yale University) – “Machiavelli Upside Down: From Constitutional Reason of State to the Liberalism of Fear”
Discussants: Katrina Forrester (Harvard University), Noah Dauber (Colgate University)
12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch
1:00pm – 3:00pm Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Property/Ownership
Chair: Nick Mulder (Cornell University)
Robert Nichols (University of California, Santa Cruz) – “The Birth of the Settler Colony as a Political Form”
Joy Wang (University of Chicago) – “Seeing Like a Developmental State”
Discussants: Joshua Simon (John Hopkins University), Siba Grovogui (Cornell University)
Registration
