Call for contributions to a new journal:
Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication

Empedocles aims to provide a publication and discussion platform for those working at the interface of philosophy and the study of communication, in all its aspects. The editors believe that philosophical reflection and analysis regarding communication is an intellectually exciting enterprise in its own right, but also important for today’s globalising and increasingly mediatised societies. They also believe that approaching traditional philosophical disciplines, topics and questions from the point of view of the impact communicative action and practices have on them is a necessary but underdeveloped area of intellectual activity.

This Journal is published in cooperation with the Section for the Philosophy of Communication of ECREA, the European Communication Research and Education Association. Its editorial team is formed by Dr Johan Siebers (University of Central Lancashire), Prof. Dr. Bart Vandenabeele (Ghent University) and Dr. Tino Meitz (University of Surrey).

Editors
Johan Siebers
University of Central Lancashire
johan.siebers@sas.ac.uk

Tino Meitz
University of Surrey
tino.meitz@gmail.com

Bart Vandenabeele
Ghent University
bart.vandenabeele@ugent.be

Call for Papers
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RELIGION, ATHEISM AND THE COMMUNITY OF REASON IN MODERNITY

Oxford University’s Second Annual Postgraduate Conference in Continental Philosophy of Religion

Regent’s Park College, Oxford University, 22nd September 2008

We invite contributions of 20 to 30 minute presentations from postgraduates (and those who have recently obtained their doctorate) for the above conference. Possible topics may include:

Contemporary Issues:

a.. The persistence of theological tropes in contemporary philosophy (apocalypses and utopias, for example)
b.. The relation between religious and secular ethics
c.. The role of emotion in philosophical accounts of the self and practical reasoning
d.. Cosmopolitanism and communitarianism
e.. The theological turn in recent phenomenology

Historical topics:

a.. The early modern project of demystification (Spinoza, les philosophes, Hume)
b.. The Spinoza controversy and the genesis of ‘philosophy of religion’ in German Idealism
c.. Rationalism and atheism in the reception of Hegel (Feuerbach, Strauss)
d.. The critique of religion in Nietzsche, Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis etc
e.. Polemics against (onto-)theology in French thought in the sixties and seventies (Deleuze, Kristeva and the early Derrida)
Please send abstracts of 500 words to godphil@googlemail.com by the deadline of 20th July 2008.

For more details, see: http://www.theology.ox.ac.uk/news_and_events/RACRIM.pdf

PhaenEx 3, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2008) Special Topics Issue: “Back to the Things Themselves! Edges and the In-Between”
This special topics issue of PhaenEx invites papers that explore the phenomena of the in-between and edges in relation to one another, or as phenomena in their own right.

Details:http://koukaldr.faculty.udmercy.edu/PhaenEx3-2.htm

Deadline:August 1, 2008

“J. M. Coetzee as Moral Philosopher”
A conference at Wits University, Johannesburg, 21-22 March 2009.

Keynote speaker: Dr Stephen Mulhall (Oxford).

Deadline for submissions of papers: 30 November 2008.

Papers should be a suitable length for reading in 45 minutes, and should be submitted to: Lucy.Allais@wits.ac.za

For more information about the Wits Philosophy Department

Iron Man and Philosophy: The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series

Abstracts and subsequent essays should be philosophically substantial but accessible, written to engage the intelligent lay reader. Contributors of accepted essays will receive an honorarium.

Possible themes and topics might include, but are not limited to, the following:

Virtue ethics, Iron Man, and the superhero as moral inspiration; Communism vs. capitalism in Iron Man stories; S.H.I.E.L.D. and the justification of counter-terrorist rights infringement; Iron Man’s revelation of his identities, contractual agreements, and contractual loopholes; The Illuminati, paternalism, and liberalism; The Superhuman Registration Act and the limits of privacy; Iron Man, Plato’s Philosopher King, and the Noble Lie; Genius, invention, and creativity; Role/responsibility of a futurist; If science can do it, should science do it? Weapons of mass destruction and the ethics of technology; Vengeance on my kidnappers: Is revenge ever justified?; Time travel in Iron Man stories, the Butterfly Effect, and determinism; God is dead: Iron Man as the replacement god; Human suffering, the Problem of Evil, and Iron Man as savior; Merging the two Starks (Pocket and Marvel universes) and the question of what counts as personal identity; Iron Man’s “living armor” and the possibility of artificial intelligence; Depictions of Masculinity: Iron Man and Iron John; Robotics, Heidegger, and technology; Capturing consciousness in computer: Mind as computer (Hypervelocity); Iron Man and Captain America: The pragmatist and the idealist; Stark’s alcoholism and the possibility of freedom for the addict; Social pressure and self-deception in Iron Man stories; Civil War: Are (bad) decisions judged by their intentions or consequences?

Submission Guidelines:

1. Submission deadline for abstracts (100-500 words) and CV(s): August 15, 2008.

2. Submission deadline for first drafts of accepted papers: February 1, 2009.

Kindly submit by e-mail (with or without Word attachment) to:

Robert Arp: rarp@buffalo.edu

“Counterpoints: Edward Said’s Legacy”
Interdisciplinary Colloquium
University of Ottawa
Carleton University
Ottawa, ON (Canada)
31 October - 2 November 2008

This bilingual English/French colloquium celebrates the works of one of the world’s most compelling intellectuals, the Palestinian-American thinker Edward Said (November 1st 1935- September 23rd 2003), author of “Orientalism,” “Culture and Imperialism,” and “Out of Place” among other famous books. The colloquium revolves around the theme of “Counterpoint,” extensively used by Said as the interplay of diverse ideas and various “discrepant” cultural experiences.

As Said writes in Culture and Imperialism: “As we look back at the cultural archive, we begin to reread
it not univocally but contrapuntally, with a simultaneous awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts.”

Following Said’s legacy this colloquium envisions a polyphonic, interdisciplinary engagement from fields as broad as comparative literature, sociology, anthropology, history, postcolonial studies, Diaspora studies, musicology, and political science with a special focus on Middle Eastern politics.

The organizers seek papers/ panel proposals drawing from or expanding on the following themes:
- Colonialism and Imperialism: A Middle Eastern Context
- Transnationalism and Reflections on Exile
- Overlapping Territories and Imaginative Geographies
- Language, History and the Production of Knowledge
- The Arab World: States, Territories and Refugees.
- Gender, Class and Orientalism
- Criticism and French Philosophy
- Otherness in the Arts
- Representations of the Secular
- Power, Politics and Truth

Please send a 200 word abstract of paper/panel proposals to: counterpoints.conference@gmail.com

Deadline for paper/panel submission: July 15th, 2008

For more information please contact: may.telmissany@uottawa.ca or nahla_abdo@carleton.ca

Theodor W. Adorno’s years in the USA represent a pivotal period in his life and career. Many of the writings that established his lasting significance as one of the outstanding critical thinkers of modernity are works of exile: In Search of Wagner (written in the UK), Minima Moralia, Dialectic of Enlightenment, The Philosophy of New Music, and The Authoritarian Personality (all written in the US). This issue of Telos will reconsider Adorno’s American experience from both intellectual and biographical perspectives, as well as from the interplay between historical and philosophical concerns. Adorno’s biographer Detlev Claussen has argued that Adorno’s American experience fundamentally shaped the development of his philosophy. Which elements of Adorno’s American experience in particular warrant scholarly examination in light of their larger critical significance? What lessons can we draw from his collaborations and intellectual friendships with American scholars and fellow exiles? How can we account for the dialectical tension between Adorno’s bleak views of many American institutions and social customs (the culture industry, the hegemony of empiricist social science, the perils of McCarthyism), and his lesser known embrace of America’s democratic culture and his appreciation of more humane forms of social interaction? Adorno observes in American society the thorough “penetration … [of] humaneness in people’s immediate behavior.” For Adorno, America not only represents “purely a society of exchange,” but also a democracy in which “there is an infinitely greater proximity between the political form of democracy and the people’s feeling of life” (from Adorno’s 1959 lecture “Kultur and Culture”). What are, broadly, Adorno’s American lessons (positive and negative) and how are they articulated in his writings during and after his time in exile? And, more specifically, what can Adorno teach us about America that is still relevant today, and what are, from our historically distanced point of view, the limits and shortfalls of Adorno’s critique of America?

We invite scholars from all disciplines to contribute to this issue. We seek contributions that will shed light on the complexity of Adorno’s life and work in America and the impact of the American experience on Critical Theory; we encourage contributions that do not rehearse the cliché of Adorno as a detached European mandarin of high culture.

Possible subjects for this issue include: Exile, Dialectics, Collaboration, Empirical Research, Pragmatism, Music, Film, Culture Industry (i.e., popular and mass culture), Thomas Mann, Hanns Eisler, Max Horkheimer, New Deal Politics, McCarthyism and American Institutional Reception, Anti-Semitism.

Possible works include: Authoritarian Personality, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Composing for Films, Minima Moralia, Philosophy of New Music, as well as various correspondences and minor works.

Please send abstract (no longer than 500 words) by July 15, 2008, to Joshua Rayman (joshuarayman@yahoo.com) and Ulrich Plass (uplass@wesleyan.edu). Completed articles should be no longer than 8500 words (including notes) and will be due by June 1, 2009. The volume is scheduled to appear in December 2009.

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research and publications project aims to create a forum for examining the links between living and dying, and some of the contradictions and paradoxes that arise in our attitudes to death.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are warmly invited on any of the following indicative themes (or their combinations):
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For the third issue of ‘Footprint’ we are calling for papers that take account of current discussions in philosophy and architecture on phenomenology with respect to space, place, location. Papers which deal with the late work on ‘topology’ in Heidegger, and the issue of perception and ‘inner spatiality’ in the work of Merleau-Ponty are of immediate interest. We hope also to have papers which deal with Brentano’s work on space. A further topic of special interest is the critique, provided by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, of Descartes, and of functionalism in general. The re-reading of Aristotle by Heidegger with regard to public space, and the development of this in the work of Arendt is also of interest. Papers are welcome on the work of architects who have deployed insights from the philosophical area of research for their work. Examinations of the research of Casey, Malpas, Dreyfus and others including Ihde would be a welcome addition to the issue, either in the form of short notices or reviews. Articles will be peer reviewed, and the issue is expected to be available at the beginning of October. All papers and correspondence should be sent to the editors, Patrick Healy, Brendan O’Byrne, e-mail P.E.Healy[at]tudelft.nl (replace the [at] with a @) and marked issue no.3. The deadline for submissions is the 15th of June 2008.

Glossator publishes original commentaries, editions and translations of commentaries, and essays and articles relating to the theory and history of commentary, glossing, and marginalia. The journal aims to encourage the practice of commentary as a creative form of intellectual work and to provide a forum for dialogue and reflection on the past, present, and future of this ancient genre of writing. By aligning itself, not with any particular discipline, but with a particular mode of production, Glossator gives expression to the fact that praxis founds theory.

Glossator is an peer-reviewed open-access journal, sponsored by The Graduate Center, CUNY. It is available online at http://glossator.org.

Editors: Nicola Masciandaro (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Karl Steel (Brooklyn College, CUNY), Ryan Dobran (Brooklyn College, CUNY).

Section Editors: Erik Butler (Emory University), Mary Ann Caws (Graduate Center, CUNY), Alan Clinton (Georgia Institute of Technology), David Greetham (Graduate Center, CUNY), Bruno Gullí (Long Island University), Daniel Heller-Roazen (Princeton University), Jason Houston (University of Oklahoma), Eileen A. Joy (Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville), Sean McCarthy (Lehman College, CUNY), Sherry Roush (Penn State University), Michael Sargent (Graduate Center, CUNY), Michael Stone-Richards (College for Creative Studies), Frans van Liere (Calvin College), Jesús R. Velasco (UC Berkeley), Yoshihisa Yamamoto (Chiba University).

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The Editors invite submissions for the first volume of Glossator, to be published in 2009.

Glossator welcomes work from all disciplines, but especially from fields with strong affiliations with the commentary genre: philosophy, literary theory and criticism, textual and manuscript studies, hermeneutics, exegesis, et al.

What is commentary? While the distinction between commentary and other forms of writing is not an absolute one, the following may serve as guidelines for distinguishing between what is and is not a commentary:

1. A commentary focuses on a single object (text, image, event, etc.) or portion thereof.
2. A commentary does not displace but rather shapes itself to and preserves the integrity, structure, and presence of its object.
3. The relationship of a commentary to its object may be described as both parallel and perpendicular. Commentary is parallel to its object in that it moves with or runs alongside it, following the flow of reading it. Commentary is perpendicular to its object in that it pauses or breaks from reading it in order to comment on it. The combination of these dimensions gives commentary a structure of continuing discontinuity, which allows it to be consulted or read intermittently rather than start to finish.
4. Commentary tends to maintain a certain quantitative proportion of itself vis-à-vis its object. This tendency corresponds to the practice of “filling up the margins” of a text.
5. Commentary, as a form of discourse, tends to favor and allow for the multiplication of meanings, ideas, and references. Commentary need not, and generally does not, have an explicit thesis or argument. This tendency gives commentary a ludic or auto-teleological potential.

Possible submissions include: critical, philological, and/or bibliographic commentaries on texts, art, music, events, and other kinds of objects. Editions and translations of commentaries, glosses, annotation, and marginalia. Historical, theoretical, and/or critical articles and essays on commentary and commentary traditions. Experimental and/or fictional commentaries and self-commentaries.

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2008

Questions, queries may be directed to Nicola Masciandaro: nicolam@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser— Montaigne