All posts by Timothy Harfield

2015 Annual Emory Graduate Philosophy Conference: Call For Papers


Keynote Speaker and Text-Seminar: Professor Linda Alcoff, Hunter College CUNY

Emory University, March 20 and 21, 2015

 Extended Deadline: February 6, 2015

Intersections of Experience: Culture, Violence, and Power

While the language of “culture” is often employed to demarcate distinct sets of practices, it is also used to denote their normative content, as in the term “rape culture”. The binding force of norms, in turn, can operate through relations of power and violence that are enacted on bodies, physical and figurative, keeping in mind the semantic link made by violence’s etymon: vīs: “power, force, strength.” We welcome papers that approach this set of problematics—culture, violence, and power—through the intersections of experience. That is to say, intersections of “race,” “gender,” “sexuality,” “disability,” etc. Submissions on any topics related to these concerns will be considered.

Although primary consideration will be given to philosophy, we are interested in receiving submissions from multiple fields and theoretical approaches, including but not exclusive to: comparative literature, women and gender studies, African American studies, cultural studies, political science, and religious studies. Conference presentations should not exceed twenty minutes. Please submit a blinded 500-word abstract plus a cover sheet with your name, university affiliation, contact information, and a brief biography of your academic interests and achievements. Please send your proposal as an email attachment in .docx or .pdf format to mmubiru [at] emory [dot] edu.

Suggested Topics Include:

  • Exploring intersectionality (between race, sexuality, gender, disability, ethnicity, social class, indigeneity, et al.) as it relates to culture, violence, or power.

  • Novel treatments of “power” as a conceptual tool to understand social relations.

  • Theorizing recent events or trends (Ferguson, ISIS, rape and institutional bodies, e.g., the military, the university, etc.) through contemporary or historical thinkers.

  • Phenomenological, psychoanalytical, and other philosophical approaches to the experience of trauma.

  • Epistemological and metaphysical analyses of the phenomenon of trauma.

  • Analyses of rape culture, micro-aggression, pornography, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and/or compulsory sexualities as they relate to broader theoretical and social concerns.

  • Politics of bodies and trauma, including their legal frameworks (e.g., “Yes means yes”),  their discursive frameworks, and their marketing (Undercover Colors, rape whistles, etc.).

  • Reflections on the effect of representation for the experience of marginalized political and cultural identities.

  • The relation of class to the experience of and response to trauma, rape, domestic violence, etc., and structural inequalities in access to security and justice.

 

 

2014 Annual Graduate Philosophy Conference: CFP

FRIENDSHIP

Keynote Speaker: Julia Ireland, Whitman College

Text Seminar: John Lysaker, Emory University

Emory University, March 21-22, 2014

The term ‘Philosophy’ originally means love of wisdom. This definition hinges upon a love which takes a particular form—one must love wisdom as one would love a friend. Plato wrote that Socrates erotically loved philosophy. This meant that Socrates lacked the capacity to be a friend to wisdom but still desired this capacity above all else—a desire which oriented his entire philosophical practice. Aristotle took up the question of friend- ship as a virtue central to and indicative of living the good life, claiming that no one would choose to live an otherwise complete life without friends. Montaigne and Emerson also seriously consider philosophies of friendship in their essays and in the 20th century this topic emerges with renewed vigor. Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Derrida follow paths opened by Nietzsche in contributing to ongoing discussions of the limits and possibility of friendship. Meanwhile, Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt locate friendship at the center of their political theories and concerns.

This conference will explore the question of friendship across the history of philosophy
and in relation to contemporary ethical and political concerns. Some questions this conference may address include — What is the significance of philia in the formulation of the term ‘philosophy’? How and why should one distinguish the friend from the lover? How is being a friend different from being an acquaintance or an enemy? Who can be your friend and who can you befriend? What is at stake in the capacity (or incapacity) to be a friend to yourself? What role can friendship play in developing and understanding subjectivity and inter-subjectivity? Is friendship merely a humanist concern? How does friendship function at the level of the political? Can friendship play a particular role in understanding affects? Can developing and exploring conceptions of friendship contribute to ongoing discussions in feminist, queer, race, and disability theories?

Please submit completed papers of 3,500 words or less prepared for blind review to Katherine Davies at ksdavie [at] emory [dot] edu.

Submission Deadline: February 15, 2014