Mar
15
Fri
Black Women Philosophers Conference @ Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Grad Center
Mar 15 – Mar 16 all-day

What does a philosopher look like? Inevitably, our mental pictures are shaped by the dominant imagery of the white male marble busts of Greco-Roman antiquity—Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca—and their modern European heirs—Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Mill. Even today Western philosophy is largely male and overwhelmingly white—about 97 percent in the U.S., close to 100 percent in Europe. Diversifying the field requires expanding our corporeal imaginary of its practitioners. This conference, timed to honor Professor Anita Allen-Castellitto (Penn), the first black female President in the 100-year-plus history of the American Philosophical Association, aims to showcase the work of a traditionally under-represented population, challenging these preconceptions. Allen and fifteen other black women will speak on their research across a wide variety of philosophical topics.

ORGANIZED BY:
Charles W. Mills & Linda Martín Alcoff

LIST OF SPEAKERS

Anita Allen-Castellitto, University of Pennsylvania
Kathryn Belle, Penn State University
Emmalon Davis, New School for Social Research
Nathifa Greene, Gettysburg College
Devonya Havis, Canisius College
Janine Jones, University of North Carolina Greensboro
Axelle Karera, Wesleyan University
Michele Moody-Adams, Columbia University
Mickaella Perina, University of Massachusetts Boston
Camisha Russell, University of Oregon
Jackie Scott, Loyola University Chicago
Kris Sealey, Fairfield University
Jameliah Shorter-Bourhanou, Georgia College, College of the Holy Cross
Anika Simpson, Morgan State University
Briana Toole, CUNY Baruch College
Yolonda Wilson, Howard University

Stay tuned for schedule details!

Hosted by: The Center for the Humanities and the PhD Program in Philosophy at the The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Co-sponsored by: The American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers, and the Advanced Research Collaborative at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

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Free and open to the public, but please register for Friday, March 15th here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-women-philosophers-conference-day-1-march-15th-2019-registration-56225763773

Please register for Saturday, March 16th here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/black-women-philosophers-conference-day-2-march-16th-2019-registration-56225886139

The venue is wheel-chair accessible.

To download a PDF version of the flyer, click here.

Oct
17
Thu
Positions in Patriarchy: Retooling the Metaphysics of Gender. Robin Dembroff (Yale) @ CUNY Grad Center, rm 5307
Oct 17 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Decades of feminist theory have approached the question ‘what is gender?’ with an eye to gender as a system — in particular, the system that creates and sustains patriarchy. Using this approach, feminists have proposed theories of gender focused on the social positions that persons occupy within a patriarchal system. However, these analyses almost uniformly assume a gender binary (men women), and so look for corresponding, binary social positions. In this talk, I defend the importance of position-based metaphysics of gender, but challenge the assumption that positions in patriarchy can be captured in a binary. Rather than throw out the baby with the bath water, I’ll propose an alternative position-based approach. It begins with modeling the key axes of the patriarchal ‘blueprint’, or the shared beliefs, norms, and attitudes at the core of dominant, western gender ideology. I’ll then build a framework for describing the variety of positions that persons can collectively occupy in relation to this blueprint. A central upshot is that metaphysics intended to illuminate and debunk gender as imagined within the western patriarchal system fails to sufficiently achieve this end when it presupposes the same binary framework. The categories men and women, I’ll argue, are not primarily descriptive, but rather, contested tools with the central function of reinforcing or revising social power.

Presented by SWIP-Analytic

Thinking Beyond the Annihilation of Nature: Conscientia and Schelling’s Ethics of Redemptive Epistemology. Bruce Matthews, Bard @ Wolff Conference Room, D1106
Oct 17 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

In 1804 Schelling diagnosed our impending “annihilation of nature” due to our conceptual detachment from and consequent economic exploitation of our natural world. His critique of Modernity’s Cartesian Idealisms, effected through his inversion of the Kantian categories, results in a philosophical project whose relevance to our ongoing climate crisis is difficult to overstate.

Bruce Matthews
Bard College/BHSEC, professor of philosophy, research in German Idealism and Romanticism, with a focus on life and thought of F.W.J. Schelling, whose recent work revolves around Schelling’s critique of modernity with its anticipation of, as he wrote in 1804, ‘the annihilation of nature,’ and its relevance to the Anthropocene.

“Schelling in the Anthropocene: A New Mythology of Nature,” (Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 2015), “Schelling: A Brief Biographical Sketch of the Odysseus of German Idealism,” in The Palgrave Handbook to German Idealism (2014), and “The New Mythology: Between Romanticism and Humanism,” in The Relevance of Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Books include the forthcoming intellectual biography, Schelling: Heretic of Modernity (2018), Schelling’s Organic Form of Philosophy: Life as the Schema of Freedom (SUNY 2011).

Presented by the Philosophy Department at The New School for Social Research

Nov
8
Fri
Improvising Illocutions and Passionate Perlocutions: Why Sexual Scripts are Insufficient. Lisa McKeown @ New School, rm D906
Nov 8 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Recently, Rebecca Kukla – among others – has argued that consent language is too narrow to adequately capture the ethical obligations and failures arising in the context of sex. Instead, she offers more nuanced scripts for the kinds of communication that occur throughout sex, not just at the beginning. I agree with Kukla that consent language is too narrow; however, I argue that she overlooks the fact that intimate personal communication requires an emotional attunement to context precisely because it cannot be fully scripted. To demonstrate this I turn to Cavell’s category of the passionate utterance which gestures at this dynamic dimension of performatives, but doesn’t deliver a detailed account. In this paper I will expand on Cavell’s idea of the passionate exchange in order to shed light on the active interpretive role of the audience, and how it contributes to performative success.

Nov
14
Thu
Aristotle’s concept of matter and the generation of animals. Anna Schriefl @ Wolff Conference Room, D1106
Nov 14 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

There is a broad consensus that Aristotle introduced the concept of matter in order to develop a consistent account of substantial change. However, it is disputed which role matter fulfills in substantial change. According to the traditional interpretation, matter persists while taking on or losing a substantial form. According to a rival interpretation, matter does not persist in substantial change; instead, it is an entity from which a new substance can emerge and which ceases to exist in this process. In my view, both interpretations are problematic in the light of Aristotle’s broader ontological project and are at odds with the way Aristotle describes the substantial generation of living beings. On the basis of Aristotle’s biological theory, I will suggest that Aristotelian matter is a continuant in substantial generation, but does not satisfy the common criteria for persistence that apply to individual substances.

Anna Schriefl
Anna Schriefl is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (assistant professor) at the University of Bonn, and currently a visiting scholar at the New School. She has published a book about Plato’s criticism of money and wealth, and most recently an introduction into Stoicism (both in German).

Dec
6
Fri
Symposium on Brian Cantwell Smith’s The Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning and Judgment (MIT Press, 2019) @ Kellen Auditorium, Room N101
Dec 6 all-day

Selected speakers:

Zed Adams

The New School

Brian Cantwell Smith

University of Toronto, St. George

Mazviita Chirimuuta

University of Pittsburgh
Dec
7
Sat
Philosophy of Emotion Workshop @ CUNY Grad Center, rm 5307
Dec 7 all-day

Please R.S.V.P.

The City University of New York, Graduate Center, is hosting its second Emotion Workshop. This semester, we are profiling the work of local scholars and visitors to New York.  Topics relate to mind, social philosophy, epistemology, aesthetics, experimental philosophy, and psychology.     The workshop will be 1 day long.  Participants should not feel obligated to attend every session, but we do ask you to RSVP (this is to make sure everyone is allowed Saturday building access).   If you think there is a chance you will join us for any part of the day, please send your name to Sarah Arnaud, postdoc in the Philosophy Program and co-organizer: sarnaud@gc.cuny.edu

PROGRAM

10:00-10:15 Introduction

10:15-11:00 Jesse Prinz (CUNY, Philosophy), “Are emotions socially constructed?”

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:00 Rodrigo Díaz (Bern, Philosophy), “Folk emotion concepts”

12:00-12:45 Juliette Vazard (NYU / Institut Jean Nicod, Paris / University of Geneva), “Epistemic anxiety”

12:45-2:15 Break (lunch)

2:15-3:00 S. Arnaud & K. Pendoley (CUNY, Philosophy), “Intentionalism and the understanding of emotion experience”

3:00-3:15 Break

3:15-4:00 Jonathan Gilmore (CUNY, Philosophy), “Emotion, absorption, and experiential imagining”

4:00-4:45 Jordan Wylie (CUNY, Psychology), “Investigating the influences of emotion on object recognition”

4:45-6:00 Reception

Mar
6
Fri
1st Graduate Conference in Political Theory @ Politics Dept. New School
Mar 6 – Mar 7 all-day

The Politics department at the New School for Social Research will host its 1st Graduate Conference in Political Theory on March 6-7th, 2020.

We are launching this event to provide graduate students in the history of political thought, political theory and political philosophy an opportunity to present and receive feedback on their work. A total of six (6) papers will be accepted and each of them will receive substantial comments from a New School graduate student, to be followed by a general discussion. We welcome submissions from all traditions, but we are particularly interested in providing a venue for those students working on critical approaches. We would also like to encourage applications from under-represented groups in the field.

We are delighted to announce that Professor Robyn Marasco (Hunter College, City University of New York) will deliver the inaugural keynote address.

Submissions for the conference are due by December 10th, 2019. Papers should not exceed 8,000 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography) and should be sent in PDF format with the help of the electronic form provided below. Papers should be formatted for blind review with no identifying information. Abstracts will not be accepted. A Google account is needed in order to sign-in to the submission form; if you don’t have one, please email us. Papers will be reviewed over the winter break and notifications will be sent out early January 2020.

For any questions, please contact NSSRconferencepoliticaltheory@gmail.com
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfqJWRPS5DBI-zlmS4-3m-FpZA3suckmInHSIlvayKoibzQYg/viewform

https://philevents.org/event/show/77746

Apr
2
Thu
Analytic/Continental What? Dissolving the Philosophical Divide @ CUNY Grad Center
Apr 2 all-day

The 23rd Annual CUNY Graduate Student Philosophy Conference invites graduate students to submit their work engaging with philosophical topics and traditions that consider or bridge the analytic/continental divide. The analytic/continental division typically assumes contrasting notions of what philosophy ‘is’ and what it ought to be. The divide also describes the varying methodologies employed when we practice philosophy. Whether it refers to meta-philosophical commitments or strategies used, the divide can do exactly that – divide. When concerned with the nature of philosophy and how one ought to conceive of the practice the stakes can be high; when we ask, “What counts as philosophy?” we implicitly ask, “What doesn’t ‘count’ as philosophy?” This conference aims to explore issues that need to be explored by the philosophical community at large, especially when the legitimacy of certain practices are under scrutiny. The conference also aims to create a space where we can learn to ask better questions concerning the nature of our academic practices, the traditions we draw from, the methodologies we employ, and the topics we consider.

Keynote speaker: Talia Mae Bettcher (California State University, Los Angeles)

We are particularly interested in papers from all areas of philosophy that:

  • explore the meta-philosophical or sociological questions concerning the analytical/continental divide without exclusionary border-policing. Is such a divide legitimate? What has motivated this divide? What are the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining the divide? How can we bridge or dismantle the divide? Etc.
  • broadly engage with the question of “what can philosophy be?” How can philosophy establish fewer borders and more bridges?
  • engage with philosophers (i.e. Rorty, Badiou, Williams, etc.), philosophical topics (i.e. race, gender, coloniality, etc.), and/or traditions (i.e. critical race theory, feminist philosophy, queer theory, postcolonial/decolonial theory, etc.) that have always or currently do bridge the analytic/continental divide, again without exclusionary border-policing.
  • explore the analytic/continental divide in an interdisciplinary manner drawing from sociology, critical psychology, gender studies, race studies, literature, history, the arts, etc.

The conference is committed to providing a platform for marginalized persons and topics in the discipline. In answering some of the questions presented we highly encourage papers regarding, among other topics: critical race theory, feminist philosophy, queer theory, trans philosophy, and disabilities studies. Speakers from marginalized groups in the discipline are strongly encouraged to submit. Any abstracts that aim to discredit already marginalized philosophers or philosophies are strongly discouraged.

Sep
15
Thu
Book Panel: Chiara Bottici, Anarchafeminism @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Sep 15 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Book Panel with: 

Chiara Bottici (NSSR and Lang College), Judith Butler (UC Berkeley and NSSR) and Romy Opperman (NSSR and Lang College).

Abstract: 

How can we be sure the oppressed do not become oppressors in their turn? How can we envisage a feminism that doesn’t turn into yet another tool for oppression? By arguing that there is no single arche explaining the oppression of women and LGBTQI+ people, Chiara Bottici proposes a radical anarchafeminist philosophy inspired by two major claims: that there is something specific to the oppression of ‘the second sexes’, and that, in order to fight that, we need to untangle all other forms of oppression and the anthropocentrism they inhabit. On the basis of a Spinozist philosophy of transindividuality, Anarchafeminism calls for a decolonial and deimperial attitude and for a renewed awareness of the somatic communism connecting all different life forms on the planet. In this revolutionary vision, feminism does not mean the liberation of the lucky few, but liberation of the planet from both capitalist exploitation and an anthropocentric politics of domination. Either the entire planet, or none of us will be free.

 

External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here: https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors.

 

Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.

Sponsored by the NSSR Philosophy Department & The Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute (GSSI)