NYU/ Columbia Annual Graduate Conference
Since Plato, western philosophy has been set down a path paved by a disavowal of the sensuous, bracketed material bodies, and delimited aesthetic conceptions, leaving human beings and their built environments separated from the natural world. Such exclusions have left philosophy ill-equipped to deal with the various environmental crises we currently face, as economic rationality and utilitarian logic further de-animate the world and sharpen the human/nature distinction. Even the concept “environment” often, and ironically, brings with it implicit anthropocentric assumptions, conceptualizing, and thereby separating, the human as independent from the surrounding world and reinforcing the human/nature divide. As a result, our (mis)understandings of “nature” and “environment” may make us insensitive to and perpetuate, rather than address, climate change and other environmental catastrophes. To avoid ambiguities and clarify our understanding, we must ask: what role does Nature play within our theories and practices concerning so-called Environmental Philosophy? Furthermore, what spaces, practices, and questions are made possible when we broaden our understanding of “environment” to include a more robust conceptualization of the natural world and how the human being ought to be contextualized within it?
This conference asks how we might reorient the language and practices of philosophy in a way that can enable us to adequately respond to ongoing environmental crises. As a starting point, we propose a need to reimagine the concepts “human,” “nature,” and “environment,” as well as the reciprocal relations that constitute them. To recognize humans as natural organisms, we must reevaluate the sensuous, the material, and the aesthetic and the roles they play in our attempts to construct, understand, and preserve our environment(s). How should we make sense of our practices and our relations to those with whom we share our surroundings? How can we re-situate the human with/in the environment? Do we have the right tools to guide these investigations? How might philosophy look beyond itself—to literature, architecture, music, film, design—to better bring Environment, and thus the world, into view? In the spirit of this, we invite paper as well as project submissions from current graduate students in any discipline.
Possible Topics:
● Environmental Aesthetics: Re-Considering Beauty + the Sublime
● Environmental Justice + Restorative Justice + Transformative Justice
● Environmental Ethics + Sustainable Practices
● Diversity + Biodiversity
● Capitalism and Climate
● Eco-phenomenology
● Eco-deconstruction
● Environmental Racism/Racist Environments
● Ecofeminist conceptions of nature
● Land Rights and Property Relations
● Posthumanism + Object Ontologies
● Afrofuturism + Technological Utopias
● Environmental Ethics In Narratives
● Mastery of Nature in Philosophy
● Anarcho-primitivism
● Queer and Trans Ecologies
● Local and Global Ecologies
● Regionalisms and Globalisms in the Ecological Imagination
Confirmed Conference Keynotes:
Sandra Shapshay, CUNY Graduate Center, New York
Emanuele Coccia, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
Dates and Location:
This conference will be held at the New School for Social Research in New York City from Thursday, April 14, to Saturday, April 16. While we (tentatively) plan to hold the conference primarily in-person we would also like to provide a hybrid option for those who would prefer to participate remotely. Following the conference, on Sunday, April 17, all participants and attendees are invited to participate in a conference hike in Cold Spring, NY (about an hour and a half north of NYC and accessible by the Metro North commuter train).
Call for Papers: Submission Procedure:
Please submit complete papers (Word Limit: 3500) and an abstract of 250 words or less by January 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) or PDF to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com. Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information from the body of the paper. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and paper title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.
Call for Projects: Submission Procedure:
Please submit a project description (Word Limit: 1000) by December 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com, as well as:
For Visual Arts projects: submit 5 images of your work as .jpeg.
For Performing Arts projects: submit video/ audio of your work in .mp4 format
Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and project title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.
If you have any questions please email WithInEnvironments@gmail.com
Eva Bockenheimer . Frederica Gregoratto . Thimo Heisenberg . Axel Honneth . Rahel Jaeggi . Gal Katz . Frederick Neuhouser . Andreja Novakovic . Angelica Nuzzo . Johannes-Georg Schülein . Italo Testa
Eva Bockenheimer. Frederica Gregoratto. Thimo Heisenberg. Axel Honneth. Rahel Jaeggi. Gal Katz. Frederick Neuhouser. Andreja Novakovic. Angelica Nuzzo. Johannes-Georg Schülein. Italo Testa.
April 22-23 Time TBA
*In-person event
Keynote speaker: Japa Pallikkathayil, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh
Location: Zoom
Organizers: Giovanni and Joe Han
Please email questions to columbianyu.philgradconference@gmail.com
Conference Begins 8:00 am
Breakfast/Registration: 8:00 am – 9:00 am (Kellenberg Hall – Reception Room)
Morning Sessions – (9:00 am – Noon) (Kellenberg Hall = K)
Session 1: (Philosophy and the Catholic Novel)
Chairperson: Glenn Statile (St. John’s University)
Room = K006
1. Father Robert Lauder (Saint John’s University) – “[Maritain, Marcel, Haught]: Philosophical
Resources for Analyzing the Catholic Novels of Graham Greene”
2. Brother Owen Sadlier O.S.F. (Cathedral Seminary; Saint Francis College – emeritus) –
“Philosophical Reflections on Diary of a Country Priest”
3. Glenn Statile (Saint John’s University) – “Brideshead Revisited: Aesthetic, Theological, and
Philosophical Reflections”
Session 2: (Ancient Philosophy)
Chairperson: Chryssoula Gitsoulis (Baruch College – CUNY)
Room = K015
1. Chryssoula Gitsoulis (Baruch College – CUNY) – “The Individual vs the State”: A Study of
Socrates and Antigone”
2. Eric Wickey (Saint Peter’s College) – “A Change of Mind”
3. Mark Zelcer (Queensborough Community College) – “Socrates and the Demos”
4. Alan Kim (Stony Brook University) – “Animal Farm”
Session 3: (Epistemology, Logic, and the Nature of Philosophy)
Chairperson: Christopher French (SUNY Farmingdale)
Room = K020
1. Joseph Biehl (Saint John’s University) – “Selling Truth Short”
2. Jason Costanzo (Conception Seminary College) – “The Fourth Observer: Philosophy and its
Epistemic Paths”
3. Partha Das (Saint John’s University) – “On Double Negation”
Session 4: (Modern Philosophy, Descartes, Hume)
Chairperson: Robert Delfino (Saint John’s University)
Room – K021
1. Sophie Berman (Saint Francis College) – “Descartes on the Infinite Freedom of the Finite
Mind”
2. Rocco Astore (Saint John’s University) – “Devotion Begins in Freedom: An Analysis of the
Relation Between True Love and Freedom in Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy and Passions
of the Soul”
3. Robert Devall (Independent Scholar) – “Hume, the Ideal Critic, and the Problem of Taste”
Session 5: (Political Philosophy, Cities, Confucius, Dasein, Boredom)
Chairperson: Margaret Cuonzo (LIU Brooklyn)
Room – K202
1. Margaret Cuonzo (LIU Brooklyn) – “A Somewhat Paradoxical Argument for the Rights of
Cities”
2. Peter Li (Saint John’s University) – “Political Confucianism and Global Justice”
3. Brandon Kaiser (Boston College) – “Of Dasein and Discourse: Examining the Everydayness
of the Political”
4) Henry Curcio (Western Michigan University) – “Boredom”
Session 6: (Cancer and Brain Death)
Chairperson: John DeCarlo (Hofstra University)
Room = K211
1. Paul Rezkalla (Hillsdale College) – “Elizabeth Anscombe on Brain Death”
2. John DeCarlo (Hofstra University) – “Consciousness and Cancer: An Interdisciplinary
Dialogue”
3. Seth Goldwasser (University of Pittsburgh) – “Finding Normality in Abnormality: On the
Ascription of Normal Functions to Parts of Cancers”
Session 7: (Healing and the Pandemic)
Chairperson: Jennifer Scuro (Molloy College)
Room – K211A
1. Jennifer Scuro (Molloy College) – “Re–narrating Care Work in the Wake of a Pandemic”
2. Keith Bannerman (Stony Brook University) – “An Ancient Approach to the Pandemic
Problem”
3. Cara Cummings (Johns Hopkins University) – “Healing Akrasia and Vice”
Session 8: (Mental Illness, Humor, Unconscious Morality, Moral Nihilism)
Chairperson: Lewis Williams (Oxford University)
Room – K204
1. Heather Rivera (LSU, Shreveport) – “America’s Cruel Treatment of the Mentally Ill and
Criminally Insane”
2. Maksim Vak (Saint John’s University) – “To Genealogy of Jokes or on the Dialectic of
Ressentiment”
3. Sabina Schrynemakers (Independent Scholar) – “Unconscious Moral Choices”
4. Lewis Williams (Oxford University) – “Rehabilitating Moral Nihilism”
Session 9: (Ethics 1)
Chairperson: David Kaspar (Saint John’s University)
Room = K319
1. Clayton Shoppa (Saint Francis College) – “Second–Guessing the Good: Discernment and
Moral Realism”
2. Charles Duke (University of South Florida) – “Purposive Evil?: Experience, Virtue, and the
Prospects of Human Flourishing”
3. Joe Shin (University of Michigan) – “Must Blame: Self vs Others”
4. Rob Lovering (CUNY College of Staten Island) – “A Case for Legalizing Recreational Drug
Use”
Session 10: (The Sublime and Plasticity)
Chairperson: Leslie Aarons (CUNY Laguardia Community College)
Room – K319A
1. Addison Hinton (Stony Brook University) – “The Function of the Sublime in Spirit’s Pursuit
of the Ethical”
2. Wenshu Zheng (Stony Brook University) – “Subjectivity and Alterity: Reconciling Derrida’s
Mourning and the Sublime”
3. Michael Barr (Stony Brook University) – “The Goal of Plasticity: Affects, Signifiers and the
Infinite Judgement from Hegel to Johnston”
Afternoon Sessions – (2:30 pm –5:00 pm) (Kellenberg Hall)
Session 11: (Science and Modern Philosophy)
Chairperson: Glenn Statile (St. John’s University)
Room = K006
1. Yual Chiek (Saint John’s University) – “Leibniz on the Contingency of the Laws of Motion:
The Transference Thesis”
2. Joel Alvarez (University of South Florida) – “Interpreting Leibniz Counterpart Theory or
Transworld Identity”
3. Glenn Statile (Saint John’s University) – “Analogy and the Integrity of Science”
Session 12: (Darwinism, Evolutionary Psychology, and Autopoiesis)
Chairperson: Lowell Kleiman (SUNY Suffolk Community College)
Room = K015
1. Christopher Petersen (Florida State University) – “Is Evolutionary Psychology Impossible in
Principle? A Reply to S.E. Smith’s Matching Problem Argument”
2. Jacob Koval (Florida State University) – “In Defense of Distortion: A Reply to Shafer–Landau
and Vanova”
3. Matthew Menchaca (CUNY Graduate Center) – “Enactive Autopoiesis and the Future of
Dynamic Affective Science”
Session 13: (Aesthetics and Philosophy of Literature)
Chairperson = Margaret Cuonzo (LIU Brooklyn)
Room = K020
1. Brother Owen Sadlier O.S.F. (Cathedral Seminary; Saint Francis College – Emeritus) –
“The Anatomy of an Artificial Body: Aesthetic Reflections on Hobbes’ Leviathan”
2. Alexia Papigiotis (CUNY Graduate Center) – “Rooting for the Devil: Relatability Approach
for Sympathy for Immoral Characters”
3. Joseph Jordan (Holy Apostles College and Seminary) – “A Boethian Response to
Machiavelli, Marx, and Jordan Peterson”
Session 14: (Indian Philosophy, Rhetoric, Borges)
Chairperson: John F. DeCarlo (Hofstra University)
Room = K021
1. Basilio Monteiro (Saint John’s University) – “Sadharanikaran: Exploring Indian
Communicative Philosophy”
2. Meaghan Dunn (Saint John’s University) – “ Philosophy and Rhetoric: A Curious
Ontological Coupling that Once Was? Or Still Is?”
3. Bartholomew Slaninka (University of Massachusetts, Boston) – “Borges’ “The Aleph” and
Problems in Representing Totality”
Session 15: (Ethics 2)
Chairperson: Lewis Williams (Oxford University)
Room = K202
1. Paul Gyllenhammer (Saint John’s University) – “Mill and Sartre on Oppression,
Individuality, and Virtue”
2. Daniel Doviak (Muhlenberg College) – “Moral Pluralism and the Problem Weight of
Determination for Conflicting Duties”
3. Miriam Ambrosino (Stony Brook University) – “Scheler’s Notion of (Inter) Personal Agency
Founded in Loving”
4. John Park (California State University, Sacramento) – “The Mental and Physical Health
Argument Against Hate Speech”
Session 16 : (Holism, Metaphysics, Heidegger)
Chairperson: Henry Curcio (Western Michigan University)
Room = K211
1. Partha Das (Saint John’s University) – “Holism: A Comparative Study”
2. Jake Khawaja (Rutgers University) – “Actualism, Presentism, and Ontological Commitment”
3. Weian Ding (Loyola Marymount University) – “Become the Becoming: A Heideggerian
Lesson from the Embers and the Stars”
Session 17: (Silence, Ethics, Education, Philanthropy)
Chairperson: Christine Salboudis (Saint John’s University)
Room – K211A
1. Christine Salboudis (Saint John’s University) – “On Silence”
2. Alina Anjum Ahmed (University of Georgia) – “DeCentering Power: Arguing for a
Mandatory Undergraduate Course that Teaches Anti–Oppressive Allyship”
3. Lorenzo Francesco Manuali (Stanford University) – “The Normative Importance of Donor
Self–Legitimation in Philanthropy”
4. Josue Miguel Pineiro (University of Georgia) – “Audiential Injustice and Epistemic
Exclusion”
Session 18: (Theism, Aquinas, Rahner. Ecclesiastes, Scotus)
Chairperson: Seth Goldwasser (University of Pittsburgh)
Room – K204
1. David Kovacs (Loyola Marymount University) – “Toward a New Approach to Theism”
2. Kevin McShane (Saint John’s University) – “Aquinas and Rahner”
3. Vincent Alexis Peluce (CUNY Graduate Center) – “Nothing New Under the Sun:
Ecclesiastian Optimism”
4. Jay Park (Independent Scholar) – “Will and Necessity: Reading Scotus Between Ontological
Priority and Ontological Order”
Session 19: (Ethics, Boethius, Human Dignity)
Chairperson: Alec Koppers (Western Michigan University)
Room – K319
1. Stephen Morris (CUNY College of Staten Island) – “On the Moral Status of Historic Figures
and the Removal of Public Monuments”
2. Matthew Konig (SUNY Suffolk County Community College) – “The Nature of Moral Facts”
3. Arich Hluch (Ohio State University) – “Human Dignity, Autonomy, and Altruism: Reframing
the Debate on Organ Markets”
Session 20: Room – K319A: This room is reserved as a discussion lounge for conference participants
Submissions from any area of philosophy/social science are welcome. The primary author must be an undergraduate, and papers should be no more than 10 pages in length and suitable for 15-20 minute presentations. Electronic submissions should be in Word or PDF format and should be ready for blind review. In your submission email please include your name, the title of your paper, your institutional affiliation, and your preferred email address for correspondence.
Email essays to lagccphilosophy@gmail.com
Submission deadline: April 15, 2022
Please note: This is an in-person event. In order to present you must provide proof of vaccination.
Registration for the conference is free, but required. To register, click here. Note that, as of now, NYU still has several COVID safety protocols in place. In order to be allowed to enter an NYU building, proof of full vaccination against COVID, including a booster shot, must be uploaded to NYU’s COVID portal in advance of the visit. Upon submitting your registration, you will receive an email with instructions for how to upload your proof of vaccination. Your registration will not be valid until you have received an email of approval from NYU Campus Safety informing you that you have been cleared for building access. Moreover, a high-quality mask (such as a disposable surgical mask, an N95, KN95, or KN94) must be worn at all times while indoors. Because of the extra time required to process the vaccination documentation, registration for the conference will close on April 29; no exceptions. It may be that NYU will loosen its mask requirement between now and the conference; we will post an update if that happens. For now, you should only register for the conference if you are firmly planning to attend, and if you are prepared to comply with the indicated requirements.
Saturday, May 14
9:30–11:10 Speaker: Allen Wood (Indiana University, Bloomington)
“Kant on Friendship”
Commentator: Colin Marshall (University of Washington)
Chair: Paul Guyer (Brown University)
11:25–1:05 Speaker: Gary Hatfield (University of Pennsylvania)
“The Subjectivity of Visual Space: Descartes and After”
Commentator: Nick Stang (University of Toronto)
Chair: Andrew Chignell (Princeton University)
2:55–4:35 Speaker: Pat Kitcher (Columbia University)
“Kant’s Conscience and Freud’s Superego”
Commentator: Karl Schafer (University of Texas at Austin)
Chair: Sally Sedgwick (Boston University)
4:50–6:30 Speaker: Hannah Ginsborg (University of California, Berkeley)
“Self-consciousness, Normativity, and the Agential Perspective”
Commentator: Stefanie Grüne (Free University, Berlin)
Chair: Karl Ameriks (University of Notre Dame)
Sunday, May 15
9:30–11:10 Speaker: Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Humboldt University Berlin)
“Hegel on Subjects as Objects (according to the Phenomenology of Spirit)”
Commentator: Scott Jenkins (University of Kansas)
Chair: Michelle Kosch (Cornell University)
11:25–1:05 Speaker: Richard Moran (Harvard University)
“Swann’s Medical Philosophy: Pessimism and Solipsism in Proust”
Commentator: Nick Riggle (University of San Diego)
Chair: Chris Prodoehl (Barnard College)
2:55–4:35 Speaker: Tyler Burge (University of California, Los Angeles)
“Kant on Primacy of Practical Reason”
Commentator: Anja Jauernig (New York University)
Chair: Christopher Peacocke (Columbia University)
4:50–6:30 Speaker: Béatrice Longuenesse (New York University)
“A Philosophical Journey”
Chair: Don Garrett (New York University)
Our 12th annual workshop will take place entirely on-line. The workshop will focus on the topic of “Expanding the Early Modern Canon.” We are calling for papers on figures, topics, texts, and genres that have been standardly neglected within the study of early modern philosophy; e.g., women philosophers, philosophy of education, letters, and novels.
Please submit anonymized abstracts of 250-500 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com by April 1st, 2022.
Speakers:
Organisers:
Details
The workshop, which is now in its 12th year, aims to foster exchange and collaboration among scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in Early Modern Philosophy (roughly the period from 1600-1800). This year’s workshop will be entirely online. We are calling for papers on figures, topics, texts, and genres that have been standardly neglected within the study of Early Modern Philosophy (e.g., women philosophers, philosophy of education, letters, and novels).
Please submit anonymized abstracts of 250-500 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com by April 1st, 2022.
Is feminism in crisis? Recently, in the United States and abroad, historic events rendered ever more precarious the lives and well-being of people marginalized by their sex, gender, race, and class, often in complexly intersecting and regionally specific ways. The rise of right-wing populism transnationally and attacks on reproductive rights, for example, exacerbate the challenges feminists confront. At the same time, as external conditions shift, feminism’s own faultlines continue to deepen. Feminism’s rising trans-exclusionary contingent, certain feminists’ hesitancy to reckon with complicity in racial and colonial violence, and the ongoing cooptation of feminism by neoliberalism signal serious internal fractures.
As feminism faces external and internal pressures, how can philosophy help us understand this moment of potential crisis and what, if anything, can philosophy do to address it? To devise answers to these urgent questions, we welcome contributions that focus on:
1. The relation between feminism and philosophy, including how feminism should intervene in philosophical debates, and how philosophy should intervene in feminist debates;
2. Questions concerning the nature and practice of gender, sex, sexuality, race, class, and disability that draw on feminist literatures or methodologies;
3. Perspectives that integrate different feminist traditions to build intersectional and transnational feminist coalitions;
4. Analyses of discourses on sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability in media, law, and the sciences;
5. Translating feminist views on sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability into public policy and social advocacy.
We welcome contributions from scholars working in philosophy and who draw on a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Scholars of all identities, especially those from groups underrepresented and/or marginalized in academia, are encouraged to submit contributions.
Please send anonymized abstracts of up to 500 words to cunygc.philosophy.conference@gmail.com, along with any questions you may have. The deadline for submissions is September 7th.