CSPT 2026 Conference Schedule and Registration

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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. 

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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. ​​

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Thursday May 14, 2026

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Location: A.D. White House, Guerlac Room, First Floor​

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8:00am – 8:30am           Welcome and registration

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8:30am – 10:30am          Conceptualizing Political Form

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Giulia Oskian (Yale University) – “Democracy as a System: The Articulation of the Social and the Political in Tocqueville's Thought”

Antonio Vásquez-Arroyo (Rutgers University) – “The Content of Political Form”

Discussants: Elizabeth Wingrove (University of Michigan), Laurie Naranch (Siena University)

 

10:30am– 10:45am           Break

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10:45am – 1:00pm          Constituencies, Plebiscites, and the Imperative Mandate

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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) – “City Leaders are Sending Bulldozers to Raze your Home: Comprehensive Land Use Planning 

                                                                and the Persistence and Transformation of Political Forms in Local Politics" 

Discussants: Kevin Duong (University of Virginia), Anurag Sinha (University of Minnesota)

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1:00pm – 2:00pm            Lunch

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2:15pm – 4:15pm           Forms of Democracy 

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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)

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4:15pm– 4:30pm           Break

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4:30pm – 6:30pm                Racial Governance, Capitalism, and Social Reproduction

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Ayten Gündoğdu (Barnard College - Columbia University) – “'A Hybrid Form of Government': Racial Bureaucracy under Imperial Rule

                                                                                                    and Border Governance”

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)

 

6:30pm – 8:30pm           Dinner

 

Friday May 15, 2026

 

Location: A.D. White House, Guerlac Room, First Floor

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10:00am – 12:00pm           Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Property/Ownership

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Robert Nichols (University of California, Santa Cruz) – “The Form and Force of the Settler Colony”

Joy Wang (University of Chicago) – “Regime Theory from the South? Development Economics as Postcolonial Realism”

Discussants: Joshua Simon (John Hopkins University), Siba Grovogui (Cornell University)

 

12:00pm – 1:00pm Lunch

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1:00pm – 3:00pm        State and Citizen after Regime Theory​

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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)

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