The NYU Center for Bioethics is pleased to welcome submissions of abstracts for its 1st Annual Philosophical Bioethics Workshop, to be held at NYU on Friday, April 3, 2020.
We are seeking to showcase new work in philosophical bioethics, including (but not limited to) neuroethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics, reproductive ethics, research ethics, ethics of AI, data ethics, and clinical ethics.
Our distinguished keynote speaker will be Frances Kamm.
There will be four additional slots for papers chosen from among the submitted abstracts, including one slot set aside for a graduate student speaker. The most promising graduate student submission will be awarded a Graduate Prize, which includes coverage of travel expenses (up to $500, plus accommodation for two nights) as well as an award of $500. Please indicate in your submission email whether you would like to be considered for the Graduate Prize.
Please submit extended abstracts of between 750 and 1,000 words to philosophicalbioethics@gmail.com by 11:59 pm EST on Friday, January 24, 2020. Abstracts should be formatted for blind review and should be suitable for presentation in 30-35 minutes. Notification of acceptance will take place via email by Friday, February 14, 2020.
When submitting your abstract, please also indicate whether you would be interested in serving as a commentator in the event that your abstract is not selected for presentation. We will be inviting four additional participants to serve as commentators.
A conference hosted by the Motherhood and Technology Working Group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference on the theme of “Conception and Its Discontents.”
Medical technologies have radically transformed the biological and social experience of motherhood. Advances in genomic and reproductive care, the circulation of novel kinship structures, the entrenchment of existing global networks of power and privilege, and the politics of contested bodily sites mark this emerging constellation.
Technological advancements have in particular impacted not just the understanding of conception, but the very process by which a human embryo is created, implanted, and matured. Egg freezing, embryo storage, IVF, and surrogacy afford women new freedoms in choosing when and how to become mothers, while also raising troubling questions about the pressures of capitalism and the extension of worklife, as well as the global inequalities present in the experience of motherhood. In addition, technologies have arisen allowing for unprecedented control over not just who becomes a mother, but what kind of embryo is allowed to be implanted and to grow. Technologies such as CRISPR and NIPT have re-introduced the question of eugenics, radically shifting the very epistemology of motherhood and what it means to be “expecting.” And contemporary abortion debates draw on technology in order to make arguments both for and against access, with imaging technologies being instrumentalized in the building of a sympathetic case for the unborn, and the very notion of a “heartbeat bill” reliant on the misreading of technologies for measuring fetal activity.
While these problems are urgent today, questions of conception and technology are by no means recent developments. The 18th century saw a flourishing of philosophical and scientific theories regarding the start of human life and its formation within the womb. Such theories relied on modern technologies, such as autopsy, to atomize and visualize the body. In the 19th and 20th centuries, eugenic medical science produced theories of reproductive difference between differing racial and social groups, leading to forced sterilization laws in both the US and in Germany. This long history of racializing the rhetoric of fertility and motherhood continues to influence political debates on immigration and demographic changes in the present.
Full conference details and schedule to come.
Please email disability@columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs
The 6th ELSI Congress welcomes all with an interest in the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genetics and genomics. Researchers, scholars, practitioners, trainees, policymakers, journalists, and the general public are invited to share and explore the latest ELSI research at ELSIcon2024.
exact location TBA.
Registration is free but required. Registration will open online in early April.
Friday, May 10
9:00–9:25 Check–in and Coffee
9:25 Welcome
9:30–11:30 Environment I
Speaker: Zachary Vereb (Mississippi University)
Commentator: Kimberly Brewer (Princeton University)
11:45–12:45 Animals I (Virtual)
Speaker: Nico Dario Mueller (University of Basel), Précis of Radical Kantianism for Animals
12:45–2:15 Lunch Break
2:15–4:15 Animals II
Speaker: Patrick Kain (Purdue University)
Commentator: Michelle Kosch (Cornell University)
4:15–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 Environment II
Speaker: Angela Breitenbach (Cambridge University)
Commentator: Haley Brennan (New York University)
6:30–7:30 Reception
Saturday, May 11
9:30-10 Check–in and Coffee
10:00–12:00 Environment III
Speaker: Toby Svoboda (Colgate University)
Commentator: Desmond Hogan (Princeton University)
12:00–1:30 Lunch Break
1:30–3:30 Animals III
Speaker: Matthew Altman (Central Washington University)
Commentator: Anja Jauernig (New York University)
3:30–3:45 Coffee Break
3:45–5:45 Animals IV
Speaker: Helga Varden (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Commentator: Andrew Chignell (Princeton University)
5:45–6:45 Reception
Andrew Chignell (Princeton) and Anja Jauernig (NYU)
Sponsors: NYU, Princeton University Center for Human Values