Circuit Breakers is the theme of the 2026 annual symposium for the Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media program. Contemporary technologies — designed for efficiency, scalability and automated governance — obscure the frictions, breakdowns and refusals that shape everyday survival under neoliberal and colonial conditions. Rather than treating malfunction as failure, this symposium frames disruption as a productive site of critical inquiry, care and world-building. Bringing together media studies, rhetoric and critical making, Circuit Breakers foregrounds practices such as improvised infrastructures, technological disobedience, communal repair, Indigenous technological sovereignty, queer glitch and feminist refusal.

The event will take place at D.H. Hill Jr. Library on March 12 from 4 to 6 p.m. and March 13 from 8:30 a.m. to 6 pm. To participate and submit your abstract, go to the Circuit Breakers website.