Thursday, March 27:

5 to 7pm:
Keynote address by Professor Chantal Mouffe:
“Agonistic Politics: Ethical or Political.”

7pm-9pm: Opening Reception

via X is Political – CLIFF 2013.

We are delighted to announce that Cambridge Journals will publish Hegel Bulletin from 2013, on behalf of the Hegel Society of Great Britain.

Formerly known as the Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, this move marks a significant moment in the journal’s development. In recognition of its wider circulation, broader scope, and availability online for the first time, the journal is being relaunched as Hegel Bulletin.

This addition to an already distinguished philosophy journals list confirms Cambridge’s place at the forefront of scholarship on Kant, Hegel and German Idealism.

Hegel Bulletin is a leading English language journal for anyone interested in Hegel’s thought, its context, legacy and contemporary relevance. The aim of the Bulletin is to promote high quality contributions in the field of Hegel studies. This field is broadly construed to include all aspects of Hegel’s thought, and its relation and relevance to the history of philosophy; Hegelian contributions to all aspects of current philosophical enquiry, including the modern European and analytic philosophical traditions; German Idealism, British Idealism, Marx and Marxism, Critical Theory, American Pragmatism; studies in the reception history of Hegel and German Idealism.

The Editor of Hegel Bulletin, Dr. Katerina Deligiorgi, commented: “the Bulletin is a journal with an important history but also with an ambitious programme for expansion, so we are very excited to be joining Cambridge University Press, which has an unparalleled record of publications in Hegel and German Idealism and shares our vision about the future of the field.”

Professor Robert Stern, a former Editor of the Bulletin who currently sits on the Council of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, also welcomes the move: “I am delighted to see the journal come under the wing of Cambridge University Press. The journal has always had a strong reputation amongst researchers on Hegel and German Idealism more generally, and this move will help it provide an even more significant forum for debate and scholarship.”

For more information, please visit the journal homepage here.

via Hegel Bulletin – new to Cambridge in 2013 « Humanities « Cambridge Journals Blog.

Quentin Skinner is a deep-fried political historian who thinks all the time about the philosophy and history of liberty from Ancient Roman times through to the present. He finds the contrast between freedom and slavery a key and live issue and it filters his discussions of Ancient Romans, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Marx through to the contemporary scene. He has written many books about all this and is the series editor of the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series. Which of course makes him a dude of a most bodacious cool.

3:AM: You are known as a leading historian of political history and in particular the formation of ideas around human liberty. One of the key ideas you’ve written about is what you label ‘neo-Roman’ liberty.‘ This began back in Ancient Rome didn’t it, where freedom was contrasted with slavery, wasn’t it? Can you tell us what its distinctive traits are?

Quentin Skinner: The vision of personal freedom that interests me is articulated most clearly in the Digest of Roman Law, which is why I have wanted to describe its later manifestations as examples of ‘neo-Roman’ liberty. The fundamental distinction drawn at the outset of the Digest is between the liber homo, the free person, and the servus or slave.

via Liberty before liberalism & all that » 3:AM Magazine.

and Brian Leiter

Charles Comer: Does anyone teach Levinas in lower level ethics? If so, what reading do you use?

Click here to see his post and to reply

Against this background, adopting a baby might have seemed like a small issue. But in fact, all the opposition parties agreed on one thing: they would quickly stop all adoption to the United States, and indeed, in 1995, a law was passed to suspend adoptions from Paraguay until there had been a complete overhaul of adoption procedures.

via The ‘Enabling Violation’ of International Adoption – NYTimes.com.

Occupy Wall Street is best understood, I would suggest, as a new form of what could be called “political disobedience,” as opposed to civil disobedience, that fundamentally rejects the political and ideological landscape that we inherited from the Cold War.

Civil disobedience accepted the legitimacy of political institutions, but resisted the moral authority of resulting laws. Political disobedience, by contrast, resists the very way in which we are governed: it resists the structure of partisan politics, the demand for policy reforms, the call for party identification, and the very ideologies that dominated the post-War period.

via Occupy Wall Streets Political Disobedience – NYTimes.com.

The PhilPapers team is pleased to announce a new online database of job ads in philosophy: 

Posting and viewing ads on PhilJobs is free.

David Chalmers has more details on the project here.

If you are advertising a job in philosophy, we encourage you to submit the advertisement to PhilJobs.  If you are seeking a job in philosophy, we encourage you to search for jobs on the site.  Any feedback would be welcome, either through the feedback form on the site or through posting on the PhilJobs discussion forum.

David Bourget (London)

David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)

Co-Directors, PhilPapers

…

But we do know this: for the foreseeable future, contact with ETI would have to result from their coming here, which would in all likelihood mean that they far surpassed us technologically.  They would be able to enslave us, hunt us as prey, torture us as objects of scientific experiments, or even exterminate us and leave no trace of our civilization.  They would, in other words, be able to treat us as we treat animals — or as our technologically more advanced societies have often treated less advanced ones.

This suggests an argument against SETI that is the reverse of Pascal’s famous wager argument for believing in God.  Pascal’s idea was that even a small probability of bringing about an enormous good (without risking unacceptable evil) was good reason for acting.  This is a reasonable principle: even a small prospect of enormous good can swamp the prospect of more probable but much lesser goods. Pascal’s argument runs into trouble not because of this principle but because of worries about, for example, which God we ought to believe in.  (There is also, as William James pointed out, the disconcerting possibility that God might be particularly ill-disposed to people who believe in him through the calculating reasoning of the wager argument).

via Will the Aliens Be Nice? Don’t Bet On It – NYTimes.com.

The Nordic Network Gender, Body, Health

in collaboration with

RIKK – Center for Women’s and Gender Research

and

EDDA – Center of Excellence at the University of Iceland

2-4 November, 2011

University of Iceland, Reykjavik

The body has become a veritable hot spot in contemporary theorizing that forcefully disrupts given disciplinary identities and fields of investigation. Bodies make themselves present at the very core of a range of different phenomena, such as emotions, desires, identity, and agency. Resisting rigid dichotomies and categories, the materiality of bodies sticks to our thinking in not always comfortable ways, and their singularities question the very possibility of retaining stability in generalizing notions and frameworks of thinking. The field of feminist thinking on the body and materiality has a long history. We might even say that the body has always figured in one way or another into the field of feminist theory and that contemporary understandings of the body have been directly or indirectly shaped by this field. From discussions of motherhood, pregnancy and abortion, of pleasure and sex, of eating disorders and the incorporation of disciplinary regimes to theoretical discussions of embodiment and individuation of bodies, feminist thinkers have played a key role in forming different ideas and understandings of the body in numerous areas.

With the conference Bodies in Crisis we turn attention to a range of different ways in which bodies are brought to presence in times of crisis and bring times and states of crisis to presence, are lived in crisis and are produced and normalized as being in crisis. The conference highlights topics such as bodily integrity, representations and discourses of bodies in crisis, violence and trauma, body weight, organ donation, stigmatization of bodies in crisis, self-injury, sexual health perspectives, reproductive technologies.

For registration information and updates of possible changes in the program please see www.genna.gender.uu.se/bodiesincrisis. For more information, please contact the network coordinator Lisa Folkmarson Käll at body@gender.uu.se.

Wednesday, November 2

Location: Askja 132, University of Iceland

17.00 Welcome

Keynote address

Robin May Schott, Danish Institute for International Studies

18.45 Reception

Thursday, November 3

9-10.30 Parallel Session I

Location: Stanford I, Saga Hotel

I A. Violence Vulnerability and Trauma

“The Body, Violence and Memory”

Rashmika Pandya, The American University in Cairo

“Women war narratives in Kosova: an ideological trap?”

Kassia Aleksic

“An Unsafe Body: The Precarious Threads of an Akratic Subject”

Julia Horncastle, Murdoch University

Location: Stanford II, Saga Hotel

I B. Governing Bodily Integrity

“Sexual Rights: The rights of the human body and bodily integrity”

Sólveig Anna Bóasdottir, The University of Iceland

“Addiction: Science Proves It’s All in Your Head (Brain Actually)!”

Peg O’Connor, Gustavus Adolphus College

“Sadean Bodies in Crisis: Torturous Bodily Encounters as the Symptom of a Decisive Biopolitical Regime in the Writings of Marquis de Sade”

Alexandra Claudia Manta, Central European University

Location: Harvard I, Saga Hotel

I C. Representations and Discourses of Bodies in Crisis

“Chronic diseases: processes of objectifying illness and gender”

Ulrike Manz, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

“Heroin withdrawal: a body in crisis”

Ian Walmsley, University of the West of England

“‘A fearful physical, social and moral wretchedness’: 150 years of vulvovaginal pain in medicine”

Ulrika Nilsson, Stockholm University

11-12.30 Parallel Session II

Location: Stanford I, Saga Hotel

II A. Intersubjective Understandings of Bodies in Crisis

“Global Bodies: Rethinking World-Travelling through Lukas Moodysson’s Mammoth”

Jenny Björklund, Uppsala University

“‘It doesn’t hurt to cut myself, but it hurts like hell not to’: When suffering becomes invisible, mute and constant – how to detect and describe it?”

Anita Moe, University of Oslo

“Bodies in crisis: lived emotions and interpersonal space”

Hildur Kalman, Umeå University

Location: Stanford II, Saga Hotel

II B. Body Weight I: The Body and the State

“Visible and Invisible Bodies in the U.S. Financial Crisis”

Jyl Josephson, Rutgers University

“Job loss in economic crisis: The leverage of gender and body weight”

Tinna L. Ásgeirsdóttir, Harpa H. Berndsen, Bryndís Þ. Guðmundsdóttir,

Bryndís A. Gunnarsdóttir and Hugrún J. Halldórsdóttir, University of Iceland

“Neoliberal Bodies and Fatness”

Hannele Harjunen, University of Jyväskylä

Location: Harvard I, Saga Hotel

II C. Bodily Experience of Organ Donation

“Fertility in Crisis, Reproduction in Transition: Cross-Border Egg Donation in Post-Socialist Europe”

Jenny Gunnarsson Payne, Södertörn University

“Exceptional Sub-Humans, Murderous Carers and the Ethics of Organ Donation in Contemporary Dystopian Fiction”

Donna McCormack, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

“Myopic eyes, transplanted hearts: from the suffering body to the hybrid discourses of contemporary theory”

Apostolos Lampropoulos, University of Cyprus

14-15.30 Parallel Session III

Location: Stanford I, Saga Hotel

III A. “Possibilities for a vulnerable citizen: rethinking ethics, politics and agency in the wake of the welfare state”

Ingeborg Svensson, Maria Jönsson, Sara Edenheim and Katarina Andersson, Umeå University

Location: Stanford II, Saga Hotel

III B. Body Weight II: Producing the Perfect Body

“Erasing embodied text: A Critical feminist analysis of the surface text and embodied flesh of ‘anorexic’ bodies”

Helen Malson, University of the West of England

“When I look at my body now, it is not pretty, and I think that I do need those plastic surgeries. I can’t envision a future without removing the excess skin”

Karen Synne Groven, University of Oslo

“‘Today work is beauty is body is thinness’: Unattainable perfect body in Finnish eating disorder novels”

Hanna Mikkola, University of Eastern Finland

Location: Harvard I, Saga Hotel

III C. Categorizations of Risky Bodies

“Ageing and disabled bodies in women-only sports events”

Karin S. Lindelöf, Stockholm University

“Experience of HIV and access to the physical and sport practice: are “the women” an homogeneous group?”

Julie Thomas, Université Montpellier 1

“HIV, Sexual Practice and Biological Citizenship: Exploring Embodied Understandings of Risk and Responsibility”

Ingrid Young, Newcastle University

16-17.30 Parallel Session IV

Location: Stanford I, Saga Hotel

IV A. Mini-workshop

“From suffering to Symposiums: Healing Trauma while Raising Community Consciousness”

Genevieve Brackins, Florida State University

Location: Stanford II, Saga Hotel

IV B. Self-injury and Shame

“Self-injury and Interpellation: The Case of Ellie Nash”

Hans T. Sternudd, Linnaeus University

“Body Shame and Gender: The Shameful Experience of Female Embodiment”

Luna Dolezal, University College Dublin

Location: Harvard I, Saga Hotel

IV C. Reproductive Technologies and Bio-Ethics

“Gendered bodies, gendered subjectivities and regenerative medicine”

Julie Kent, University of the West of England

“Challenging a ‘Panoptics of the Womb’: Phenomenological Responses to the Problem of Diminished Epistemic Authority in Pregnancy”

Lauren Freeman, Concordia University

Friday, November 4

9-10.30 Parallel Session V

Location: Stanford I, Saga Hotel

V A. Vulnerable Bodies

“The Transgender Narrative of a Wrong Body, a Body in Crisis?”

Ulrica Engdahl, Linköping University

“Crisis of Intercorporeal Exposure: The Case of David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly”

Lisa Folkmarson Käll, Uppsala University

“Bioethics: a Crisis of Human Vulnerability”

Eva de Clercq, University of Pisa

Location: Stanford II, Saga Hotel

V B. Sexual Health Perspectives on Bodies in Crisis

“Tolerant, affirming and equal: Youthrelated sex, health and relationship clinics (UMOs) in multicultural environments – a tool for sexual integration?”

Maria Bäckman, Stockholm University

“Experiences of Non-Consensual Sex Among Students of the Polytechnic Ibadan, Nigeria”

Oladipupo Samuel Olaleye, University of Ibadan

“Challenged sexuality: how women suffering from vulvar pain try to reshape their sexual practice”

Renita Sörensdotter, Stockholm University

Location: Harvard I, Saga Hotel

V C. Sharing Experience of Bodies in Crisis

“The Body with Alzheimer’s Disease: Individual and Social Crisis?”

Chung-yi Chu, Ntl. Chung-Hsing University

“Feeling at home: Men with chronic pain and their stories about being in rehabilitation”

Birgitte Ahlsen, Anne Marit Mengshoel, Kari Nyheim Solbraekke, University of Oslo

“Breast, hair, sweat, and tears: Discussion on identity in the wake of breast cancer”

Anna Morval, Linköping University

11-12.30

Location: Stanford I, Saga Hotel

Keynote Address

Ingunn Moser, Diakonhjemmet University College Oslo

…

Moreover, the University of Freiburg in Germany, where Sebald studied German literature, was the very university whose rector in 1933 was none other than Martin Heidegger, the philosopher who became (in)famous for supporting the Nazi regime during its first years in power. Significantly, Sebald’s time as a student at Freiburg coincided with the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, which publicly exposed the atrocities committed in the Nazi extermination camps.

via Times Higher Education – Out of the shadows.