SOCIETY FOR RICOEUR STUDIES CONFERENCE
October 30-31 or October 31-November 1, 2009, at George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia (just outside of Washington, DC).
This conference will be concurrent with the conference of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) to be held in Arlington on October 29-31, 2009.
We have been told that conference room availability at George Mason will not be a problem, but we are awaiting notice of room confirmation. When we do, we will send out a follow-up message about the conference’s exact dates. We wanted to go ahead and make the call for papers available now.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE:
July 15, 2009
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:
Papers addressing all aspects of Ricoeur’s work are welcome. For purposes of consideration for any individual proposal apart from the Panel Proposals or Roundtable (both described below), please submit an abstract only (of roughly 300-500 words) and attach a separate title page that includes the paper’s title, the author’s name, institutional affiliation, mailing address, and email address. Abstracts will be reviewed blind by a committee. Notification of acceptance will be given via email. Final papers should not exceed a length of 3000 words.
Abstracts should be sent to: Professor Dan Stiver at dstiver@hsutx.edu.
In light of helpful responses of members to a survey, we are offering some additional presentation options. Some of the interests have been met in the Ricoeur session for SPEP (described below). Some other specific possibilities are the following:
Panels
We are open to a limited number of proposals for a panel discussion of a theme, a book, or an author (for a time period of 1:15 minutes). This proposal would involve a brief description of the topic and its rationale (of roughly 300-500 words) along with a list of the panel members.
Panel on Ricoeur and Religious Imagination
In his unpublished Lectures on Imagination, Ricoeur says that there are four types of imagination: 1) social and cultural; 2) epistemological; 3) poetic; and 4) religious. He discusses the first in his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, and the second and third in his Lectures on Imagination, but he has not written systematically on the fourth.
This panel seeks papers attempting to fill this lacuna. Themes that might be addressed would include:
1) what does Ricoeur in fact write about religious imagination;
2) how is religious imagination parallel to or different from the other types;
3) if throughout his writings on imagination, Ricoeur wants to promote the availability and distinctiveness of productive – i.e. creative – imagination (as in fiction), what role does productive imagination play in religious imagination;
4) what is the relationship between claims of religious imagination and claims of religious truth;
5) what comparisons can be drawn between Ricoeur’s notion of religious imagination and that found in other religious thinkers (see, e.g., Garrett Green, Theology and the Religious Imagination; Gordon Kaufman, The Theological Imagination; David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination).
To apply to present in this panel, complete the submission instructions noted above for individual proposals and add that the submission is for the “Panel on Ricoeur and Religious Imagination.”
Roundtable
*Attention New Scholars and Graduate Students:*
This year in addition to author- and topic- specific panel presentations, including our SPEP panels on Ricoeur’s political ethics and on Ricoeur’s Living Up To Death, we would like to organize a roundtable discussion on Ricoeur’s philosophical theology/theological philosophy. Our aim is to invite 3-4 authors to give discussion papers on this topic. We also aim to pair each discussion paper with respondents. To this end, we are calling on graduate students and new scholars to act as respondents. If you would like to act as a respondent, please send a 100 word statement to Molly Mann at mann@yorku.ca outlining your approach to Ricoeur’s philosophical theology/theological philosophy by the Ricoeur Society Conference abstract deadline. You may act as a respondent in addition to giving a paper in another session at the conference.
