International Roundtable
33rd Annual International Roundtable
October 28-30, 2026
Engaging Monstrosity, Invoking Spirits: Hauntings of Home and Exile
Wednesday, October 28th
4:45 – 7:15 pm, JBD Auditorium
Film Screening of Sinners and Q&A with Dr. Kinitra Brooks and (tentatively) Tia-Simone Gardner
Thursday, October 29th
11:45 am – 1:15 pm, Kagin Ballroom
Roundtable Conversation: Moderated by Dr.Kinitra Brooks, Panelists: Ahoo Najafian | Alix
Johnson | Getiria Onsongo | Joan Ostrove | Serdar Yalcin
4:45 – 6:15 pm, Keynote Speech by Dr. Kinitra Brooks | Kagin Ballroom
Divine Conjurer: The Conjure Women in Sinners, Horror & Beyond
Friday, October 30
7:00 – 9:00 pm, Frey Theater, O’Shaughnessy, St. Catherine University
Kung Fu Zombie and Southeast Asian Girl Scouts, Theater Mu
Student sessions schedules are being finalized and will be shared on KAIGC’s website very soon.
The time we live in calls for our wildest imagination.
Through the past two International Roundtables, we traveled with themes of anthropocene, belonging, sanctuary, and storytelling. For the 33rd International Roundtable, our storytelling turns toward haunting, monstrosity, and spirits. These ideas resonate given the rise of state violence and resistance against it – here and everywhere. We will engage with our particular place and time: Minnesota, 2026 – while remembering the interconnectedness of all places, and of the histories that brought us here.
We invite multiple narrations, imaginations and interpretations of monstrosity, spirits, and haunting. We acknowledge that what they evoke varies greatly depending on contexts: cultural and ancestral knowledge, war and structural violence, migration and border crossing, disability and challenges of normativity, gender and sexuality, colonization and global capitalism, climate and the anthropocene, religion and spiritual traditions, and science and technological advancement.
We ask what stories of ghosts, spirits, and monstrosity/monsters reveal about the tellers and the societies they live in. We ask how tales of “multispecies ancestors” (Teran Sevea) inform us about the human and more-than-human past, present and future, especially in times of crisis. Where/what is home/exile?
We welcome thinking, doing, and performing – about, with, and for – monstrosity/monsters, spirits, and ghosts, from all disciplines, and from the interstices of disciplines.
We hope that the three days of International Roundtable generate not only theories and findings, but also dreams and visions that hearten us to contend with the normative and dance with the unknown.