Paul Kottman, Associate Professor of Literary Studies, gives a lecture entitled “Love as Human Freedom”.
Rather than see love as a natural form of affection, or as a reflection of reigning ideologies, this lecture presents love as a practice that changes over time, through which new social realities are brought into being. Love brings about, and helps us to explain, immense social-historical shifts—from the rise of feminism and the emergence of bourgeois family life, to the struggles for abortion rights and birth control and the erosion of a gender-based division of labor. Drawing on Hegel, via interpretations of literary works, Kottman argues that love generates and explains expanded possibilities for freely lived lives, and is a fundamental way that we make sense of temporal change, especially the inevitability of death and the propagation of life.
About the speaker:
Paul Kottman is the author of Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), A Politics of the Scene (Stanford University Press, 2008) and is the editor of Philosophers on Shakespeare (Stanford University Press, 2009), and The Insistence of Art: Aesthetic Philosophy and Early Modernity (Fordham UP, forthcoming). His next book is tentatively entitled Love as Human Freedom. He is also the editor of a new book series at Stanford University Press, called Square One: First-Order Questions in the Humanities.
Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research.
9th Meeting of the SIPP-ISPP
Our next meeting on ‘Any Body, Anybody : The Matter of the Unconscious’ will take place from November 9-12, 2016, at the New School for Social Research, New York.
With this title, we invite reflections on the body and the materiality of the unconscious. How does psychoanalysis help us think about how bodies become laden with and deprived of identity in a social and political space? The term “Anybody” also asks us to think about how the unconscious is not bound to a known identity but rather emerges from and belongs to a “nobody” that is nevertheless material; the phrase “Any body,” conjures up the psychic ambiguities subtending the way sexuality affects every body including but not limited to trans-sexual bodies. This conference also offers us an opportunity to think about how the targets of recent acts of terrorism are construed as “anybodies” and/or “nobodies.”
For more information, please read our CFP or write to 16SIPP@gmail.com.
David Kishik (Emerson College), Dr Zed Adams (New School for Social Research)
Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, Joe Gould’s Oral History of Our Time, and Joseph Mitchell’s memoir each existed more in their respective author’s imagination than on the written page. In this Friday evening event, David Kishik will discuss the significance of such imaginary literary works for his own Manhattan Project (Stanford, 2015), which draws upon Benjamin, Gould, Mitchell, and others to develop a theory of Manahattan as the capital of the twentieth century. At the event, Kishik will be introduced and interviewed by New School faculty member Zed Adams.
Nabina Liebow, PhD Georgetown University, gives a lecture entitled:
“But Where Are You Really From?” Responding to Racial Microaggressions
Liebow will argue that the particular structure of racial microaggressions makes the potential social cost of confronting microaggressors high for microagressees; this is part of what makes patterns of racial microaggressions difficult to disrupt. This difficulty helps make racial microaggressions effective tools for sustaining racial oppression.
In this talk, Professor Russell describes how notions of race have organized the American concept of kinship. She argues that this history of the association of race and kinship in the American imaginary allows race to serve as a proxy for kinship in the contemporary fertility clinic.
Camisha Russell received her PhD in Philosophy from Penn State University in 2013. Her first book, The Assisted Reproduction of Race: Thinking Through Race as a Reproductive Technology, forthcoming with Indiana University Press, explores the role of race and racial identity in the ideas and practices surrounding assisted reproductive technologies. Her primary research and teaching interests are in Critical Philosophy of Race, Feminist Philosophy, and Bioethics. Her publications include “Black American Sexuality and the Repressive Hypothesis: Reading Patricia Hill Collins with Michel Foucault” in Convergences: Black Women & Continental Philosophy, “Questions of Race in Bioethics: Deceit, Disregard, Disparity, and the Work of Decentering” in Philosophy Compass, and “The Race Idea in Reproductive Technologies: Beyond Epistemic Scientism and Technological Mastery” in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry. She has held both a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2012-13) and a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship (2013-15). Before attending graduate school, she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for the Girls’ Education and Empowerment program in Togo, West Africa. She is currently a Riley Scholar-in-Residence in the Philosophy Department at Colorado College.
“Secularism and Its Discontents”
The New School for Social Research
16th Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference
Keynote Speaker: Gil Anidjar (Columbia)
Keynote Roundtable Featuring: Simon Critchley (The New School) and others TBA
With the increased social secularization in the West, philosophy, politics, and religion have become strange bedfellows. This emphasis on secularization has sparked controversies concerning the role of religion in the political sphere that have taken the form of lawsuits against forced funding of birth control, liberal democratic states outlawing hijabs, and increased focus on religious extremism as a way to define marginalized social classes. Unfortunately, in many liberal rationalizations of the political sphere there is a failure to give accounts of contemporary and historical forms of theology and specifically secularism. Questions are then raised: have politics and religion been separated by secular movements and relegated to their own jargons, ideas, and concepts, or are they both necessary to give fuller accounts of the interplays between them? With new arguments forming both in support of increased space for religion in politics and also in support of the complete separation of religion and politics under the guise of secularization – and both in the name of“freedom,” “equality,” and “rights” – one is forced to ask a fundamental question: what is the role of religion in politics? And what are the political, theological, and philosophical ramifications of this role? From ancient thought to contemporary philosophy, issues of transcendence, absence, silence, resistance, and action have been raised as theological questions within the realm of the political. However, the extent to which religion and politics intersect in the contemporary world has become increasingly contentious in terms of religious expression and secular movements.
From political theology to radical orthodoxy to studies on political myth, the meaning of the relation between the sacred and the secular has yet to secure a consistently meaningful definition despite an increased popular rhetoric among various camps in the secularism debates. As such, the question of the influence that politics and religion have on one another is of significant import. This question holds major sway in any debate concerning the possibility of and warrant for a secular society, and to understand secular movements, one must first understand the contemporary and historical connections between the secular and the sacred. In light of this question, the liberal answer to the problem of the role of religion in politics is seemingly simple: new age, new order, a new secular approach to the political. But is the answer really this simple? This is the question we wish to explore.
At this year’s NSSR philosophy student conference, we wish to consider the role of religion in politics and all of the tensions and consequences this role entails specifically in relation to movements toward secularization. By bringing politics, religion, and philosophy into conversation with one another, one will be able to more clearly understand the causes, consequences, and meanings of secularization. At this conference we will think both with and against theology, politics, and philosophy in order to think more deeply about the secular.
We invite the submission of papers no longer than 4000 words prepared for a 30 minute presentation. Papers should be submitted as .pdf files and formatted for blind review. Please include as a separate document a cover letter including your name, paper title, institutional affiliation, and contact information.
Submissions should be sent to secularismanditsdiscontents@gmail.com by January 21st, 2017.
Possible Paper Topics Include:
- · Political Theology
- · Radical Orthodoxy
- · Politics and the Problem of Ontotheology
- · The Lowtich-Blumenberg Debate
- · Theological Materialism
- · Political Myth
- · Politics and a Phenomenology of Religious Experience
- · Silence and the Political
- · Feminism and Religious Experience
- · Presence and Absence in the Political
- · The Politics of Religion
- · When Religion Becomes Law
- · Mystical Anarchism
- · Political Revolution and Religious Revelation
- · Liberation Theology
- · Race and Philosophy of Religion
- · The Doctrine of Religious Restraint
- · Religious Existentialism
- · Violence and Religion
- · Neoliberalism and Religion
Many academics work on issues of social justice, and in this politically tumultuous moment, we want to ask: What is our social responsibility as academics? What does it mean to assume this responsibility?
In response to the untimely suspension of all Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature programs at Stony Brook University, the final graduate conference (co-sponsored by Minorities and Philosophy, NSSR) will be an interdisciplinary event where we aim to confront the limitations of our position as academics and conceive possibilities for moving beyond those limitations.
Schedule
9:45–10:15 Participant Registration/ Coffee & Bagels
10:15–10:30 Opening Remarks
10:30–12:00 Panel 1: Humanities & Political Insight
10:30–11:00 Amy Cook (Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English, Stony Brook University): “Disciplinary Futures and the Political Impact of Counter Casting”
11:00–11:30 Jack Wilson (PhD Student History, UCLA): “The View from the Waste Land: Poetry as Anti-Totalitarian Critique in Postwar Japan and Beyond”
11:30–12:00 Sabrina Tremblay-Huet (LLD Student Université de Sherbrooke, Visiting Research Fellow Fordham School of Law): “Human Rights and the Trap of Speaking for Others: Law in Literature as a Better Source of Resistance Discourse?”
12:00–1:30 Lunch Break
1:30–2:30 Panel 2: Institutional Critique
1:30–2:00 Jonathan Rawski (PhD Student Linguistics, Stony Brook University): “Pirates and Emperors: On Publishers, Journalists, and Academic Elites”
2:00–2:30 Forrest Deacon (PhD Student, Politics, The New School for Social Research): “Foucault’s Clinic and the Academy: Systems of Truth, Intelligibility, and Repetition”
2:30–2:45 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
2:45–3:45 Panel 3: The Praxis of Academics
2:45–3:15 Andrew Dobbyn (PhD Student Philosophy, Stony Brook): “Praxis Makes Perfect: Why Politics Isn’t like Riding a Bike”
3:15–3:45 Laura Pérez (Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, Cornell University Society for the Humanities): “The Objects of Philosophical Inquiry as Public Entities”
3:45–4:00 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
4:00–5:00 Keynote: Professor Patrice Nganang (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, Stony Brook University, Visiting Professor Princeton University): Title TBA
5:00–5:15 Closing Remarks
5:15–6:30 Reception (wine and refreshments)
Presented by The New School for Social Research.
The New School for Social Research Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy
Discourse concerning the role of bridges and walls has become commonplace in our contemporary political scene. Xenophobic, racist, and nationalistic calls for the building of walls are opposed by calls to construct bridges by those seeking to form coalitions of solidarity and resistance. An example of this is given by the way in which colonialism/imperialism has repeatedly used ‘bridges’ as Trojan horses of sorts, by means of which distances were lessened and inequality worsened. Thus, this conference wishes to explore the normative consequences of the ubiquitous discourse of epistemic and geographic stratification by interrogating the way in which this metaphor is used—implicitly and explicitly—within philosophy, to the extent that the latter, as a frame of epistemological and experiential articulation, also builds its own bridges and walls.
It is with this in mind that at this year’s NSSR Graduate Student Philosophy conference we wish to provide a platform for a very particular kind of ‘philosophical investigation’ in which a vast range of approaches concerning the significance and use of spatial metaphors within philosophical debates could take place. Such an investigation of margins, bridges, walls, localization and beyond should be undertaken in a manner that makes room for ontological, ethical, epistemological, phenomenological, political and psychoanalytic discourses. To this end, we encourage full liberty and creativity with how this topic could be approached. This is because we conceive this investigation as an open, interdisciplinary kind of quest whose aim will be to rethink the way in which we conceive of boundaries, gaps, stages and common spaces for the purpose of interrogating the tensions underpinning our current political discourse, while also showing the ways in which these affect the way in which we conceive of Philosophy.
Possible Topics (This list is in no way exhaustive):
- Walls and Bridges as Philosophical Metaphor
- Migration and (In)Justice
- Decolonial Theory and the Use of Walls/Bridges
- The role of Bridges and Walls in the construction of Imagined communities
- Walls/Bridges and Political Membership
- Walls and Solidarity
- Walls/Bridges and Globalization
- Social Epistemology and Imagined Walls
- Persuasion as an Epistemological Bridge
- Political Topologies and the Role of Walls/Bridges
- Privacy, Space and the Political
- Walls/Bridges and Human Rights
- Administrative Violence
- Philosophical Topologies/Political Topologies
- Space and Violence
- Localized Violence
- Violence in Bodies
- Bridges/Walls and Cross-cultural Discourse
- Digital divisions and Digital Connections
- Technology and Changing Spatial Relations
Please submit complete papers by December 20th in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to NewSchoolOnBridgesAndWallsConf@gmail.com
Include your name, institution, and degree-program in the body of the message.
Deadline:
December 20th 2017
Word Limit: 3500
Liberal democratic values seem embattled as never before in the United States, and around the world. The time is right for a serious and wide-ranging exploration of the prospects for liberal democracies in a context that acknowledges the historical and contemporary tensions between democracy and liberal values, both in theory and in practice. This conference convenes a varied group of scholars, journalists, policy expert and veteran public servants, we hope to stage a real meeting of the minds, not the usual partisan sniping that occurs at most academic events – and we are trying to be as inclusive as possible, by inviting thoughtful representatives from the left, right, and center.
Though liberalism and democracy have become intertwined in some contemporary societies, they have evolved along quite distinct paths historically. Democracy is an ancient idea, liberalism a very modern one. Greek democracy was not liberal, nor was the revolutionary democracy championed by the sans-culottes in the French Revolution. To this day, there are many avowedly democratic movements and regimes, both on the left and the right, that explicitly reject liberal values. Moreover, even in liberal democratic societies, there are important tensions between the two traditions.
In this conference, we will examine the prospects for liberal democracies against the backdrop of the historical and contemporary tensions between democracy and liberalism.
Featured speakers and participants
James Miller
Helen Rosenblatt
Robert Boyers
Paul Cartledge
EJ Dionne Jr
Bill Galston
Dipayan Ghosh
Jeffrey Issac
James Kloppenberg
Bill Kristol
Yuval Levin
Marc Plattner
Aziz Rana
Rogers Smith
Michael Tomasky
T Chatterton Williams
Ben Fountain
Fedricho Finchelstein
Jennifer Roberts
Paul Krugman
Teresa Ghilarducci
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Jessica Pissano
Deva Woodly
Natasha Lennard
Astra Taylor
Ira Katrznelson
Josh Begley
9:15 – 9:30 Coffee & Opening Remarks
9:30 – 10:50 Anna Katsman: Freighted Love
11:00 – 12:20 Federica Gregoratto: Eros and Freedom Today
12:20 – 1:30 Lunch Break
1:30 – 2:50 Sara Macdonald: The Art of Friendship: Hegel and Plato
3:00 – 4:20 Gal Katz, “Love’s Rage Is Shame”: Hegel on Sex
4:20 – 4:45 Break
4:45 – 6.05 Paul Kottman: Love as Human Freedom
New York German Idealism Workshop
A joint undertaking of the philosophy departments of Columbia University & the New School for Social Research presents:
MATTERS OF LOVE: A CONFERENCE