UPDATE: MAY 18, 2026
Here’s the conference schedule for DFW26. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!
Thursday, June 4
Glickman Conference Center, Patton Hall
8:00-9:00am
Check in, registration, coffee
9:00-9:05am
Welcome
Matt Bucher, Conference Chair
9:05-10:00am
Joseph B. Lonergan, “Attending Black Mass”: Randy Lenz and Ethical Limits of Responses to Addiction in Infinite Jest
Lukas Schutzbach, The Poetics of Utopia: Sincerity as Critique in David Foster Wallace’s Style
Moderator: Rob Short
10:05-11:00am
Eli Stock, When Looks Deceive: Joelle Van Dyne and the Politics of Appearance in Infinite Jest
Gwendolyn Hostetter, A Survey of Sincerity: Discerning Familial Transparency in the New Sincerity Novel
Moderator: Danielle Ely
11:05am-12:00pm
Kirill Veselkin, Nuclear Poetics and the Aesthetics of Deterrence in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
Weston Richey, ‘The whole thing had been queer, and lonely’: Speculative Feelings and Infinite Jest’s Queer Crip Search for Love
Moderator: Emilio Englade
12:00-1:30pm
Lunch
1:30-2:45pm
Kyoko Yoshida, Slashing the Big Book: A Proposal to Extend Fanfiction Reading into Infinite Jest
Hailey Paetzel, The Angels Will Return: A Lynchian Reading of Joelle Van Dyne
Michael Weingand, “Flashes of Merriment: Film-Cartridge Theory in Infinite Jest”
Moderator: Danielle Ely
3:00-4:00pm
Deb Olin Unferth, author of Earth 7, Reading, Q&A
Moderator: Matt Bucher
4:10-4:15pm
Announcements, closing
4:15pm
Done for the day; dinner on your own
Friday, June 5
Glickman Conference Center, Patton Hall
8:30-9:15am
Check in, coffee
9:15-10:10am
Mark Lang Saorin, Artifice as Self-Affirmation-Belief and Sincerity in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City
Addison Boozer, After Irony: Commitment, Play, and Community from Infinite Jest to Letterkenny
Moderator: Danielle Ely
10:15-11:10am
Nicholas Anderson, An Anatomy of American Melancholy: David Foster Wallace on the Infinite Longings of the Democratic Soul
Tony Carrano, Breaking Out of Selfishness through Storyworld
-Focused Narrative in Disco Elysium and Novel Explosives
Moderator: Ryan Kerr
11:15am-12:00pm
Hannah Smart, reading from Meat Puppets, Q&A
Moderator: Emilio Englade
12:00-1:30pm
Lunch
1:30-2:25pm
Alexis Young, Infinite Jest: Aging into Addiction
Cory Hudson, “The Soul Is Not a Smithy”; It Is a Set: A Set Theoretical Reading of David Foster Wallace’s Treatment of Truth and Belonging
Moderator: Ándrea Laurencell Sheridan
2:35-3:30pm
Patrick Simpson, From Dialectical Opposition in Infinite Jest and Brief Interviews to Multiplicitous Dis-/Re-Integration in Oblivion and The Pale King
Ryan Kerr, “The Institutional Shuffle”: Infinite Jest, Neoliberal Systems, and the Crisis of Learning
Moderator: Rob Short
3:40-4:35pm
Bret Anthony Johnston, reading from Encounters with Unexpected Animals, Q&A
Moderator: Matt Bucher
4:45-5:00pm
Announcements, closing
Matt Bucher
5:00pm
Done for the day; dinner on your own
Saturday, June 6
Glickman Conference Center, Patton Hall
9:00-9:35am
Check in, coffee
9:35-10:30am
Brandon Lamson, Gen Z Reads Infinite Jest, Grace Nguyen, Sydney Fulton, Richard Cahanap, Aubrey Clayton, Luis Mendez, and Liliana Tomko
Vishal Cain, Approaches to Teaching “Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace for First Year Composition
Moderator:
10:30-11:20am
Todd Ferguson, Negating and Transcending the “I”: The Ethics of Unselfing in Infinite Jest
Hannah Smart, Being Human: “Greatly Exaggerated” and Author-Reader Communication
Moderator: Emilio Englade
11:25am-12:15pm
Carly Johnson, Demapping: Themes of Face and Territory between Infinite Jest and A Thousand Plateaus
Rob Bass, Recursive Threes: Cycle and Sierpinski Gaskets in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
Moderator: Ryan Kerr
12:30-1:30pm
Lunch
1:30-2:20pm
Corinne Scheiner, “Excruciatingly alive and encaged”: Wallace, Nabokov, and Being in the World
Katherine Sinyavin, Learning Empathy from the Master of Style: The Influence of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin on David Foster Wallace’s Girl with Curious Hair
Moderator: Rob Short
2:20-3:10pm
John Jeremiah Sullivan, Rackback Tom, the Sinkiller, and the Pale King: Some Tortured Texas Thoughts
Moderator: Matt Bucher
3:35-3:45pm
Break
3:45-4:00pm
Announcements, closing
4:00pm
Done for the day; dinner on your own
7:00-10:00pm
Closing Night Reception
Longhorn Room, DoubleTree Hotel (303 W. 15th Street)
Come hang out and say goodbye!
Sunday, June 7
Harry Ransom Center
12:00pm
Tour of the Ransom Center Galleries (optional)
Emilio Englade, Docent
Registration is now open! You can register for the conference here.
Featured Speaker: John Jeremiah Sullivan
Jeremiah Sullivan is the author of Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter’s Son and Pulphead: Essays. His essays and short-form work have been published widely in the New York Times, the Paris Review, the Oxford American, and Harper’s. His essay “Corona,” originally published in the Sewanee Review, is included in the 2025 edition of The Best American Essays. He is a finalist for the 2026 National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism. He cofounded the nonprofit research initiative Third Person Project. He resides in Wilmington, North Carolina.
INTERNATIONAL DAVID FOSTER WALLACE CONFERENCE IN AUSTIN
June 4–6, 2026
University of Texas, Austin
The 2026 International David Foster Wallace Conference in Austin will begin on the morning of Thursday, June 4, at the Glickman Conference Center in Patton Hall on the University of Texas campus.
The registration form for attendees and presenters will open soon.
Featured Speaker: Bret Anthony Johnston
A writer with “a virtuosic gift” (The New York Times Book Review), Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling and award-winning author of Encounters with Unexpected Animals: Stories, the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, and Corpus Christi: Stories. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, “Johnston’s genius lies in weaving a web of optimism around a series of difficult topics,” and Italy’s il manifesto hailed Remember Me Like This as “one of the most intense and engaging [novels] of the new millennium.” He edited Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer and wrote the documentary film Waiting for Lightning, which was released in theaters around the world by Samuel Goldwyn Films. Among his many honors are a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the Glasgow Prize, the Jesse H. Jones Award, and the Sunday Times Short Story Award, “the world’s richest and most prestigious prize for a single short story.” His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
After selling his television to buy his first board over 40 years ago, Bret has yet to outgrow skateboarding. After directing the creative writing program at Harvard University for over a decade, he is now the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin where he holds the Mari Sabusawa Regents Chair in Writing.
We do not have a hotel room block this year. Our recommended hotels near the campus are:
The DoubleTree at 303 W. 15th St, Austin TX 78701
Hampton Inn at 1701 Lavaca St, Austin, TX 78701
Hilton Garden Inn at 301 W 17th St, Austin, TX 78701.
You are welcome to stay at any hotel or Airbnb, etc. in Austin, but reach out to us ([email protected]) for further recommendations on accommodations.
INTERNATIONAL DAVID FOSTER WALLACE CONFERENCE IN AUSTIN
June 4–6, 2026
University of Texas, Austin
CALL FOR PAPERS
#DFW26
To mark the 30th anniversary of the publication of Infinite Jest, the 2026 David Foster Wallace Conference invites papers examining Wallace’s masterwork.
This conference is the showcase of serious work devoted to Wallace’s writing and presents a valuable opportunity to meet others in the field. For the 2026 conference in Austin—home of the Harry Ransom Center and Wallace’s archive—we invite papers commenting on Infinite Jest or any aspect of Wallace’s work, thought, influence, or context. Although the primary focus of the conference will be the 30th anniversary of Infinite Jest, we welcome papers and proposals across the broad range of Wallace’s fiction and nonfiction.
Potential topics include but are not limited to:
Infinite Jest and/or related works in relation to race and/or socioeconomic class
Infinite Jest and/or related works in relation to gender, masculinity, misogyny, and sexualities
Infinite Jest and/or related works in relation to politics, philosophy, and/or religion
Issues involving translation and international reception
The role and influence of contemporary film and television in relation to Wallace’s writing
Approaches to teaching Infinite Jest, Wallace’s short stories, or his nonfiction
New close readings of any of Wallace’s works, especially those that might challenge prevailing wisdom or established readings
The International David Foster Wallace Society is committed to promoting and fostering a greater inclusion of women scholars, scholars of color, and otherwise historically underrepresented scholars in Wallace Studies, and we welcome proposals that specifically engage these issues.
We encourage submissions from established scholars as well as postdoctoral researchers, unaffiliated scholars, contingent faculty, faculty in settings other than higher education, graduate and undergraduate students, and non-academics invested in Wallace’s work. Full panel proposals and roundtable proposals are welcome as well. We encourage panels that span a variety of faculty ranks and institutions.
Submit an abstract of 300 words (for a max. 20-minute presentation) and brief biographical info to [email protected] by February 27, 2026. Submissions should include your name, affiliation (if any), and email address. Please specify any special AV or scheduling needs when submitting your proposal.
Further details about the conference, including keynotes and accommodations, will be posted at https://dfwsociety.org/dfw26/.
We intend to communicate decisions on paper selection before April 1, 2026.