29th Annual CLIFF Conference
Rackham Assembly Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
March 21-22, 2025
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Tung-Hui Hu, Department of English Language & Literature, University of Michigan

CLIFF 2025

science—literature—technology
rupture, relation, constellation

March 21-22, 2025 | Rackham Assembly Hall

Program of Panels
Friday, March 21, 2025

9:00 am - 9:30 am Breakfast
9:30 am - 10:00 am Opening Remarks, Professor Yopie Prins

10:00 am - 11:45 am Panel 1: Optics, Perception, and Memory

Respondent: Mike Brier
Presenters:
Katherine Tapia (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Time Fluttered Round, Whiskered, and Unbinding: Atemporality and Uncertainty of Memory in Pearl

Ben Woodworth (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Messiaen’s Synopticon: visual programming for multimedia performance and analysis

Trey Roark (Georgetown University, Data Sciences), The Lumpen Variable - Reimagining Queerness in Machine Learning

Nathan Bailey (University of Michigan, German), Optical Obsessions: Scopophilia, Scopes, and Schisms in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann

11:45 am - 12:30 pm Lunch
12:30 - 2:15 pm Panel 2: Philosophies, Rhetorics, Uncertainties

Respondent: Ben Woodworth
Presenters:
Anaís Martinez Jiminez (Princeton University, Comparative Literature), Traces of the Unconscious: The Liminal Place of Psychoanalysis in North America

Weilin Kao (University of Washington, Asian Languages and Literatures), The Dialectics of '反' (fan) in the Dao De Jing: Rhetoric, Rupture, and Relational Dynamics Beyond Dualism

Sarah Valdman (University of Michigan, Philosophy), The Impossibility of Common Sense

Jenna Novosel (Indiana University, English), Affliction of the Uninitiated: Mesmeric Entrainment in Teresa Brennan’s Transmission of Affect in Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni (1842)



2:15 pm - 3:30 pm Panel 3: Intersections in 20th and 21st Century Literatures
Respondent: Professor Yopie Prins

Presenters:
Claire Patzner (Indiana University, English), Translating in the Dark: Investigating Tracy K. Smith’s Translations of Yi Lei

Ivan E. Parra Garcia (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Writers, Readers, and Essayists: The Mystery of Menard’s Don Quixote Writing Project

Delsa Lopez (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Japan, Zombies, and Garbage: The Insatiable Waste While Playing Siren 3



3:30 pm - 3:45 pm Coffee Break
3:45 pm - 5:30 pm Panel 4: Humans, Literature, and the Environment
Respondent: Caroline Sullivan

Presenters:
Jessie Croteau (Johns Hopkins University, Political Science), The Potential of Decline: Lucretian Unbecoming and the Toxic Immortality of Plastics

Kirill Veselkin (University of Texas, Comparative Literature), A Disaster Waiting to Happen: Post-Nuclear Poetics in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

Julianne Angeli (University of Michigan, French), Human-Environment Interaction and Social Incompatibility in Bilge Karasu’s “Incitmebeni” and Boris Vian’s L’écume des Jours

Noah Baum (New York University, English), Making Sense: Nuclear Aesthetics in Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge

5:30 pm - 7:00 pm Reception


Saturday, March 22, 2025

9:00 am - 9:30 am Breakfast
9:30 am - 11:00 am Keynote Address and Q&A by Professor Tung-Hui Hu (University of Michigan, English), At the Ends of Exhaustion, A Door
Respondent: Professor Christi Merrill

11:00 am - 11:15 am Coffee Break
11:15 am - 1:00 pm Panel 5: Speculative Histories, Speculative Futures
Respondent: Dr. Ali Bolcakan
Presenters:
Sanjana Ramanathan (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), Classics and Controllers: Playing in/with Ancient Pasts

Annie Birkeland (University of Michigan, Linguistic Anthropology), Once Upon an Archipelago… Alternative Origin Stories of Cabo Verde

Linda Huber (University of Michigan, School of Information), “AI” as a Scrying Mirror - for the University We Want, and the University We Have

Sam Patwell (University of Washington, Asian Languages and Literatures), A Foundational Mirage: Exploring the First Science Fiction Magazine Published in Taiwan (1990-1992)

1:00 pm - 1:45 pm Lunch
1:45 pm - 3:00 pm Panel 6: Archival Evidence and Ethnography
Respondent: Dr. Dina Mahmoud
Presenters:

Srimati Ghosal (University of Michigan, Comparative Literature), “Science for the Household” and Technology for the Nation: Soviet Science and Technology Textbooks in Cold War India

Sara Ruiz (University of Michigan, Slavic), Forensic Memory: Technologies of Witnessing in Soviet War Crimes Trials

Lai Wo (University of Michigan, Anthropology), Ethical Uncertainties within Intimate Labor Migration between East Java and Hong Kong

3:00 pm - 3:30 pm Closing Remarks