Hannah Strømmen and Thomas Lynch are organizing a conference at Chichester University entitled “RADICAL/IZED RELIGION: Religion as a Resource for Political Theory and Practice” that may be of interest to readers of the blog. The keynotes for the conference are Torkel Brekke, S. Sayyid (whose Recalling the Caliphate was the focus of an AUFS book event), Yvonne Sherwood, andØyvind Strømmen. I have copied the CFP below, but you can check out the conference website for more information about the keynotes and scope. Continue reading “CFP: RADICAL/IZED RELIGION: Religion as a Resource for Political Theory and Practice” →

Workshop on Transcendental Materialism
April 24-24, 2015
Loyola University Maryland
Baltimore

CALL FOR PAPERS

‘Transcendental Materialism: Anthropology, Nature, and the Political’
Keynote Speaker: Adrian Johnston, University of New Mexico

Since the publication of 2008’s Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity, the work of Adrian Johnston has aimed at the development of a contemporary materialist ontology which accounts for the emergence of a more-than-material form of subjectivity from a wholly material grounds. Utilizing the intellectual resources of German idealist philosophy, Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxist political theory, and the natural sciences, Johnston’s transcendental materialism aims at the development of an atheist, naturalist, and materialist ontology and theory of subjectivity that rivals the work of figures such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek. Continue reading “CFP: Workshop on Transcendental Materialism” →

Some readers might be interested in submitting something to an upcoming conference at Villanova. Please note that we accept both abstracts and papers from both graduate students and faculty.

2014 Call for Papers -19th Annual Philosophy Conference at Villanova University Sponsored by PGSU
Feminism: Body, Image, Power
Friday, March 21 – Saturday, March 22, 2014
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Lisa Guenther (Vanderbilt)

“The personal is political,” the well-known slogan of the Women’s Liberation Movement, continues to demand that we explore the ways in which our most intimate embodied practices, experiences, and images can be the site of politics, and alternately, how politics are carried out and enacted in the desires, affects, self-consciousness, and relationships of personal and interpersonal life.  Focusing on the highly productive concepts of body, image, and power, this conference aims to engage in discussion of a number of philosophical themes, topics, and approaches that are feminist in method or that deal with the topic of feminism.  How does the body stand at the juncture of the public and the private?  How do our private and collective images conceal or reveal the intersections of imagination and representation?  How does power operate as the conjunction of identity, knowledge, and praxis?  Feminist philosophy and feminism more broadly has much to tell us about the nature of our embodiment, our imaginaries, and the power relations that structure our lived experience, and this conference welcomes papers and artwork that deal with these topics, broadly construed. While all papers addressing feminism and feminist issues, works, authors, etc. are welcome, we especially encourage papers that take on these perennial issues of feminism in a contemporary context.

Possible topics of discussion include, but are not limited to:
–       Public and private spaces of embodied experience
–       Biopolitics and new technologies
–       Reproductive rights, natality, and motherhood
–       Autonomy, dependency, and vulnerability
–       Feminism and affect theory, body image, and imagination in cultural productions (e.g. film and media)
–       Intersections of gender, class, race, sexuality, and ability
–       The relationship between critical phenomenology, feminist philosophy, and political activism
–       Reciprocity of feminist theory with queer theory, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, globalization, and environmental ethics
–       Feminism and psychoanalysis
–       Postfeminism and postmodern feminisms

The Philosophy Graduate Student Union at Villanova University welcomes individuals (including graduate students and faculty) to submit abstracts, papers, proposed panels or artist presentations to be considered for our conference. Please send submissions formatted for blind review to: conferences.library.villanova.edu/gradphil
Submission Deadline: December 15, 2013

Due to unforeseen circumstances the organizers of the Mystical Theology & Continental Philosophy conference have had to change the date of the conference. A message from Simon Podmore is below followed by a link for the PDF of the updated CFP.

‘Due to the larger than anticipated level of interest in the conference some logistical issues have arisen. Effectively this means that in order to accommodate the high interest it now looks like we will have to reschedule the conference from January 2014 to 11-13 July 2014. I am very sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause but I hope that the conference would still be of interest for you as we would like you to join us.

Steven Shakespeare of the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion has asked me to post the CFP for the ACPR’s forthcoming conference held in collaboration with the Mystical Theology Network. You can download the PDF above and the information is repeated below the fold. Continue reading “Mystical Theology and Continental Philosophy CFP” →

The annual graduate conference at Kingston’s CRMEP has just posted their CFP. It is reproduced below for your convenience, but the link takes you to the website for the conference itself. It is my understanding that they are especially keen for female postgrads to submit. Continue reading “Call for Papers, Philosophy and the Outside II: Materiality/Immateriality” →

Apocalyptic Politics: Framing the Present

Villanova University, Friday April 12-Saturday April 13, 2013

Confirmed Speakers:  Mladen Dolar  |  Slavoj Žižek  |  Alenka Zupančič

The present is often characterized as a critical moment that totters between possibilities of irresolvable catastrophe and redemptive restoration. Such claims involve prophecies of an end. Whether consisting in theological predictions of a messianic end, political predictions of a revolutionary end, or historical predictions of an epochal end, claims on the future charge the present with immediate significance through the ethical and political demands they place on it. This is to say, an anticipated end, which in a way is not-yet, is also always enacted in the present.  Apocalyptic futures clearly enter into the structure of contemporary subjects – of their desires and drives, on the planes of fantasy and of theory – but these relations call for clarification. The multiplicity of ways in which prophecy can be received, for instance – whether the foretold end is interpreted as already-accomplished, imminent, or in the indeterminate future, whether the end is met with a spirit of fear or hopeful anticipation, or whether it is understood as necessary and irrevocable or as contingent and preventable, etc. – invites fundamental inquiry into the conscious and unconscious relations of the subject to history and its ruptures.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to the following: the end/temporality of history (Hegel, Marx, Kojeve); political theology and the Messianic: the legacy of Paul in political theology, kariological temporality and klesis (Agamben, Derrida, Benjamin, Bloch); early modern political philosophy: the role of prophecy in shaping societal affects (Hobbes, Machiavelli, Spinoza); phenomenological relationality to the future; revolutionary politics; apocalyptic cinema, science fiction, and art.

The Philosophy Graduate Student Union at Villanova University welcomes high quality submissions from graduate students and faculty.  Abstracts and papers are welcome for review; papers should not exceed 3500 words.

Submission Deadline: February 1st, 2013

Please send submissions formatted for blind review to

Rachel Aumiller and Chris Drain at villanovaphilosophy@gmail.com

We strongly encourage submissions from women and other under-represented groups.