Sep
12
Thu
International Merleau-Ponty Circle: Affect / Emotion / Feeling @ 12th Floor Lounge
Sep 12 – Sep 14 all-day

Thursday, September 12 Schedule

8:30 – 9 a.m. Registration and coffee
9 – 9:15 a.m. Opening remarks: Shiloh Whitney, Conference Director
Session 1 – Organic Affectivity and Animality
Moderator: Emilia Angelova, Concordia University
9:15 – 10 a.m. Hermanni Yli-Tepsa, University of Jyväskylä: “How to feel like our eyes: tracing the theme of instinctive affectivity in Phenomenology of Perception”
10 – 10:45 a.m. Sarah DiMaggio, Vanderbilt University: “Flesh and Blood: Reimagining Kinship”
10:45 – 11 a.m. Break
Session 2 – Passivity
Moderator: Philip Walsh, Fordham University
11 – 11:45 a.m. David Morris, Concordia University: “The Transcendentality of Passivity: Affective Being and the Contingency of Phenomenology as Institution”
11:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Rajiv Kaushik, Brock University “Merleau-Ponty on Passivity and the Limit of Philosophical Critique”
12:30 – 2 p.m. Lunch Break
Session 3 – Theorizing Emotion 1: Outside-in, Inside-Outside
Moderator: Duane H. Davis, University of North Carolina at Asheville
2 – 2:45 p.m. Ed Casey, Stonybrook University: “Bringing Edge to Bear: Vindicating Merleau-Ponty’s Nascent Ideas on Emotion”
2:45 – 3:30 p.m. Ondřej Švec, Charles University Prague: “Acting out one’s emotion”
3:30 – 3:45 p.m. Break
Session 4 – Theorizing Emotion 2: Intersubjective Dimensions
Moderator: April Flakne, New College of Florida
3:45 – 4:30 p.m. Jan Halák, Palacky University Olomouc: “On the diacritical value of expression with regard to emotion”
4:30 – 5:15 p.m. Corinne Lajoie, Penn State University: “The equilibrium of sense: Levels of embodiment and the (dis)orientations of love”
Winner of the M. C. Dillon Award for best graduate essay
5:15 – 5:45 p.m. Snack Break (light refreshments provided)
Thursday Keynote
Introduction: Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University
5:45 – 7:15 p.m. Alia Al-Saji, McGill University
“The Affective Flesh of Colonial Duration”

Friday, September 13 Schedule

8:30 – 9 a.m. Registration and coffee
Session 5 – Affective Pathologies and Empathy
Moderator: Lisa Käll, Stockholm University
9 – 9:45 a.m. Ståle Finke, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim: “Structuring Affective Pathology: Merleau-Ponty and Psychoanalysis”
9:45 – 10:30 a.m. Catherine Fullarton, Emory University: “Empathy, Perspective, Parallax”
10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Break
Session 6 – Eating and Breathing
Moderator: Ann Murphy, University of New Mexico
10:45 – 11:30 a.m. Whitney Ronshagen, Emory University: “Visceral Relations: On Eating, Affect, and Sharing the World”
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Amie Leigh Zimmer, University of Oregon: “Rethinking Chronic Breathlessness Beyond Symptom and Syndrome”
12:15 – 2 p.m. Lunch Break (and graduate student Mentoring Session in Lowenstein 810)
Session 7 – Critical Phenomenologies 1: Work and Freedom
Moderator: Whitney Howell, La Salle University
2 – 2:45 p.m. Talia Welsh, University of Tennessee Chattanooga: “Toward a Critical Phenomenology of Work and Its Discontents”
2:45 – 3:30 p.m. Laura McMahon, Eastern Michigan University: “The ‘Great Phantom’: Merleau-Ponty on Habitus, Freedom, and Political Transformation”
3:30 – 3:45 p.m. Break
Session 8 – Critical Phenomenologies 2: The “I Can”
Moderator: Cheryl Emerson, SUNY Buffalo
3:45 – 4:30 p.m. Kym Maclaren, Ryerson University: “Criminalization and the Self-Constituting Dynamics of Distrust”
4:30 – 5:15 p.m. Joel Reynolds, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Lauren Guilmette, Elon University: “Rethinking the Ableism of Affect Theory with Merleau-Ponty”
5:15 – 5:45 p.m. Snack Break (light refreshments provided)
Friday Keynote
Introduction: Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University
5:45 – 7:15 p.m. Matthew Ratcliffe, York University
“Towards a Phenomenology of Grief: Insights from Merleau-Ponty”

Saturday, September 14 Schedule

8:30 – 9 a.m. Registration and coffee
Session 9 – Feeling Beyond Humanism
Moderator: Wayne Froman, George Mason University
9 – 9:45 a.m. Marie-Eve, Morin, University of Alberta. “Merleau-Ponty’s ‘cautious anthropomorphism’”
9:45 – 10:30 a.m. Jay Worthy, University of Alberta: “Feelings of Adversity: Towards a Critical Humanism”
10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Break
Session 10 – Art and Affect
Moderator: Stephen Watson, Notre Dame
10:45 – 11:30 a.m. Veronique Foti, Pennsylvania State University. “Body, Animality, and Cosmos in the Art of Kiki Smith”
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Rebecca Longtin, State University of New York New Paltz: “From Stone to Flesh: Affect and the Poetic Ambiguity of the Body”
12:15 – 2:15 p.m. Lunch Break (and Business Lunch at Rosa Mexicano, 61 Columbus Ave)
Session 11 – Voice and Silence
Moderator: Gail Weiss, George Washington University
2:15 – 3 p.m. Susan, Bredlau, Emory University. “Losing One’s Voice: Merleau-Ponty and the Lived Space of Conversation”
3 – 3:45 p.m. Martina, Ferrari, University of Oregon. “The Laboring of Deep Silence: ‘Conceptless Opening(s),’ the Suspension of the Familiar, and the Dismemberment of the Ego”
3:45 – 4 p.m. Break
Session 12 – Affectivity and Language
Moderator: Galen Johnson, University of Rhode Island
4 – 4:45 p.m. Silvana de Souza Ramos, University of São Paulo. “Merleau-Ponty and the Prose of Dora’s World”
4:45 – 5:30 p.m. Katie Emery Brown, University of California Berkeley. “Queer Silence in Merleau-Ponty’s Gesture”
Banquet
7 – 10 p.m. At Salam, 104 W 13th St.
Oct
23
Wed
Moving Up Without Losing Your Way. Jennifer Morton on Education @ Brooklyn Public Library Information Commons Lab
Oct 23 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds requires that we look at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. Why are students from disadvantaged backgrounds disproportionately burdened with these costs? And how can institutions of higher education contend with them?

facebook event link


Brooklyn Public Philosophers is a forum for philosophers in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience, hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library. Its goal is to raise awareness of the best work on philosophical questions of interest to Brooklynites, and to provide a civil space where Brooklynites can reason together about the philosophical questions that matter to them.

10/23 – Philosophy in the Library: Jennifer Morton on Education @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM

11/6 – Philosophy in the Library: Asia Ferrin on Mindfulness @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM

12/4 – Philosophy in the Library: Sebastian Purcell on Aztec Philosophy @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM

Feb
21
Fri
Philosophy & Education. Fordham University Graduate Philosophy Conference @ Fordham U. Philosophy Dept.
Feb 21 – Feb 22 all-day

We all find ourselves already subject to some educational program and routinely invited into learning and teaching relationships with one another. We are inviting papers that engage philosophy and education from a wide range of perspectives. We welcome both papers that focus on philosophies of education as well as projects which engage the practice of teaching philosophy. Our conference aims to bring together graduate students that work in different areas of philosophy in order to think together about teaching and learning in a warm and convivial environment.

Possible topics may include, but are in no way limited to:

o   How views of education affect how we conceive of what philosophy is

o   The relation between philosophical wonder and learning

o   Normative questions of what role the teacher ought to play in the student’s education

o   How to best approach teaching texts from in and outside the canon

o   Innovative teaching ideas or activities you have used in the classroom

o   Earnest convictions about why we should teach philosophy

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words in a doc file with name and affiliation in the header to Fordhamgradconference@gmail.com no later than Monday, December 2, 2019. Authors of selected papers will be notified by Monday, December 30, 2019.

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.

Apr
6
Mon
Understanding Mathematical Explanation: Uniting Philosophical and Educational Perspectives @ Graduate School of Education, Rutgers
Apr 6 – Apr 7 all-day

The workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation (SES-1921688) and is aimed at bringing together academics who study the notion of mathematical explanation from philosophical and from educational/psychological perspectives. The idea is to bring together philosophers of mathematics, epistemologists, psychologists, and mathematics educators, to discuss how developments in their own fields could meaningfully contribute to the work on mathematical explanation where their fields intersect. In particular, we want to explore the ways in which mathematical explanation engenders understanding, by focusing on (1) the relationship between different types of philosophical accounts of mathematical explanation, (2) educational approaches to the characterization of effective explanations in the mathematics classroom, and (3) work at the intersection of these two perspectives.

All speakers:

Mark Colyvan
University of Sydney

Matthew Inglis
Loughborough University

Marc Lange
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Tania Lombrozo
Princeton University

Alexander Renkl
University of Freiburg

Keith Weber
Rutgers University – New Brunswick

Orit Zaslavsky
New York University