Comparative Political Theory: Pluralizing a Global Field of Inquiry Virtual Mini-Conference

As reflected in the theme for the 2021 meeting, “Promoting Pluralism,” recent
scholarship in Political Theory has called for the expansion, deparochialization,
decolonization and problematization of the discipline. The aim of this conference is to
bring together recent scholarship that travels under the rubric of comparative political
theory, a field of inquiry that takes up these various challenges, informed by a range of
approaches, concerns, practices, genres, regions, and historical epochs. The conference
includes four panels highlighting critical research in comparative political theory via
studies of abolition, cartography, revolution, political imagination, and post-colonial
thought. The program concludes with a roundtable taking stock of the emergence and
transformation of comparative political theory as both an area of scholarship and an
institutionally sanctioned academic field over the course of the past 24 years. The goal of
this mini-conference is to highlight emerging work in the field while collectively
interrogating the contemporary challenges it faces.