'Reformation, Revolution and Crisis in European History, Culture and Political Thought'

International Conference, the University of Sydney,
29 November to 1 December 2017

Confirmed speakers to date:

• Professor Lyndal Roper, Oriel College, Oxford
• Emeritus Professor Graeme Gill, FASSA, Dept of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

Today Europe stands at a crossroads unlike any it has faced before. Yet this is far from the first period of crisis Europe has faced. To understand Europe today, we must grasp its history, and the history of the ideas that have shaped it, as a history of crisis.

In 2017, we will commemorate three critical landmarks in European history: the Protestant Reformation (1517), the Russian Revolution (1917), and the signature of the Treaty of Rome (1957), which marked a different kind of ‘reformation’ (re-formation). Other anniversaries marked in 2017 include that of the 1947 Truman doctrine which ‘officially’ started the Cold War, that of the start of the Greek junta, and that of the 1937 bombing of Guernica, made famous by Picasso’s painting, and which marked a key point in the internationalisation of the Spanish Civil War. 2017 even marks the centenary of an (anti )artistic ‘revolution’ of sorts: Marcel Duchamp’s work Fontaine, which shocked the international art world and met with immediate censorship. We will also be looking forward to 2018, which marks the anniversary of another series of European historical landmarks: the ‘Spring of the Peoples’ in 1848; May ’68 and the Prague Spring of 1968; even the Munich agreement of 1938 which set off a processthat led to the largest ‘crisis’ in modern European history: World War II.

We will also be looking forward to 2018, which marks the anniversary of another series of European historical landmarks: the ‘Spring of the Peoples’ in 1848; May ’68 and the Prague Spring of 1968; even the Munich agreement of 1938 which set off a process that led to the largest ‘crisis’ in modern European history: World War II.

This conference examines these and related historical landmarks and their echoes in the present. It brings together scholars working in European Studies, broadly understood.

We encourage contributions from a range of perspectives, including social, political, intellectual and cultural history; social and cultural geography; and social and political science.

Please send an abstract of 250 words, together with a short biography (name, affiliation, research specialisation), to Cat Moir (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Bronwyn Winter (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) by 30 June 2017.

Please note that we are unable to offer scholarships for travel.

Technology, Knowledge, Truth

RMIT Melbourne
13-15 Dec 2017

Website: https://mscp.org.au/conference-2017

SPEAKERS INCLUDE

Ray Brassier, Mladen Dolar, Lucca Fraser, Alison Ross, Frank Ruda, Alessandro Russo, Knox Peden, Cat Moir, Mark Kelly, Jessica Whyte, Justin Clemens, Jon Roffe, Campbell Jones, A.J. Bartlett, Sigi Jottkandt, Russell Grigg, Adam Nash, Ali Alizadeh, Janice Richardson, Robert Boncardo, Emma Wilson, & Bryan Cooke

Conference Theme

Technē is as old as human being. Like language and waste-disposal, it is inseparable from the story of anthropogenesis. If the human being is both, as Aristotle avers, a zōon politikon and a anthrōpon logos echōn, we find ourselves confronted by the question of the nature of the relationship between these distinct constants of the history of humanity: between politics and, on the one hand, purposefully directed arts (technē as poiēsis and entelecheia) and technology/prostheses on the other. Yet does there exist, as Plato asks, a properly political art? Is politics traduced or abandoned the moment it is conceived on the model of technē, as if politics had an end outside itself? The question is further complicated if we take into account another ancient distinction: the distinction between truth and knowledge so vital to philosophy and education alike. Can there be such a thing as a ‘political truth’ and, if so, what might that be? What is truth in science? Is art capable of truth? In reposing such ancient questions, we also find ourselves caught up in the modern reflections on technology, knowledge, and truth from Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt through Gilbert Simondon to Friedrich Kittler and beyond.

AUSTRALASIAN SOCIETY FOR CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCE 2017

UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA (HOBART)

Conference Program: November 29 – December 1

Pre-Conference Postgraduate Day: November 28

Visit Conference Website

The 2017 conference of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy will take place at the University of Tasmania’s Sandy Bay Campus, November 29 - December 1, with a dedicated postgraduate afternoon for professional development and social activities on the 28thof November. The ASCP provides a broad intellectual forum for scholars working within, or in communication with, European philosophical traditions. Its annual conference is the largest event devoted to continental philosophy in Australasia. For the 2017 conference, we seek to challenge commonplace understandings of the boundaries of scholarship in continental philosophy, with a particular focus on the role of feminist, postcolonial and ecological thought in transforming the key questions that drive philosophical inquiry.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

• Lewis Gordon | University of Connecticut
• Sigi Jottkandt | University of New South Wales
• Marguerite La Caze | University of Queensland
• Elaine Miller (Miami University)

The conference will also host a plenary session on the work of Moira Gatens.

1-5 Dec 2017, Crowne Plaza, Newcastle, Australia

https://pesa.org.au/conference/call-for-papers-2017

Submission Deadlines and Details

The PESA 2017 Organising Committee welcomes abstract submission(s) referring to the Conference theme in the first instance, or any other appropriate topics with a focus on educational philosophy and theory. Symposia are also welcomed.

Types of Submissions

Submissions may be in the form of a presentation, refereed paper, or a symposium. All abstracts will be reviewed by the Conference Organising Committee. The Committee will allocate abstracts to the program taking into account the quality of each abstract, the balance of the program and the relevance of the paper relating to the Conference theme.

Abstract Submission Deadline – 17 July 2017

Conference Theme:

Birth, Death and Rebirth: Does philosophy of education need a new Subject?

The most significant life events can be the most educative. Joy, sorrow and hardship have transformative potential; but they can also be the undoing of the self. For the 2017 PESA conference, we invite you to explore these shaping forces in all their manifestations.

• The educative potential of contemplating one's death in recognition of its transformative force.

• The educative potential of being a witness to birthing, to death, the rituals of celebration, of mourning and the different ways these play out in indigenous, Eastern and Western cultures. There are also strong elements of symbolic death and rebirth in ritualized initiations and coming-of-age.

• The educational repercussions of genocide and the violent histories of colonization.

• Engagement with the post-humanism movement which brings into question the nature of life, death, materiality and the educative subject.

• The potential roles of educational systems and educators in the face of mass species decline and the death of the biosphere.

• The moral dilemmas associated with teaching about death or the suffering of others and the educational risks and benefits of greater conscientization, compassion fatigue or ethical desensitization.

• Projections of educational futures looking towards the horizon of life and living in the increasingly digital world particularly the possibility of everlasting life through our digital footprint and the avatars we create, and delete.

• Reflecting on the impending loss of disciplinary knowledge in philosophy of education, consider the implications for intergenerational learning, the future of the discipline, the life and death of theories, new interdisciplinarities in our work and our students’ work.

The conference is situated on the Country of the Pambalong clan of the Awabakal Nation. These peoples live/d on the site of the University of Newcastle, and in recognition of this established Wollotuka, our indigenous centre. Please see the Call for Papers from the PESA Indigenous Philosophy Group.

2017 CSAA Conference: ‘Cultures of Capitalism’

December 6-8 2017
Massey University, Wellington Campus
Aotearoa/New Zealand
 
Keynote Speakers: Professor Patricia Hill Collins (University of Maryland), Professor Jodi Dean (Hobart and William Smith Colleges), Professor Jeremy Gilbert (University of East London), Professor Wendy Larner (University of Victoria, Wellington).
 
Culture is increasingly positioned in economic and political discourse as the solution for ailing communities, industries, and cities. In a global environment riven by climate change, war, and migrations, we are told that communities with the right culture will adapt and sustain while others will be left behind. Labour and manufacturing have undergone radical shifts due to post-industrialisation, with knowledge economy paradigms creating new cultures of work and working identities. Culture is also increasingly valourised in urban planning and municipal infrastructure as key to revitalising city economies through creativity and social participation. Transformations in labour and its value are also linked to the reification of racialised, sexualized, and classed populations and their management through technologies of capital. How labour is valued contributes to an affective economy of precarity and risk that is differentially distributed throughout society.
 
The 2017 Cultural Studies Association of Australasia conference will focus on the work that cultures do in constructing, contesting, and constituting capitalism. We seek to critically examine the role of culture in both enabling and articulating new capitalist formations. While culture has been situated as the opiate through which economic dominance is propagated (for instance in the culture industries critique), new capitalist formations indicate the multiple and heterogeneous ways in which culture/s can mediate contemporary economic conditions. In doing so, we seek to return to one of the key concerns of early cultural studies: to make sense of the mutually-determining relation between culture and its capitalist context. If, following Stuart Hall, we understand ‘culture’ as the production of meaning through language and representation, what are the modes of communication through which capitalism/s are created? How are capitalism/s materialised in different spaces? How is it embodied in different identities and communities? What is the role of economy in shaping the possibilities for culture? What is the role of Cultural Studies as critical praxis in the present economic time?

 
Papers are invited to address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
.         The cultural politics of neoliberalism
·         Precarious and/or immaterial labour
·         Digital capitalism
·         Capitalist affects
·         Trump, Brexit and the resurgence of capitalist nationalisms
·         Capitalism, culture and technology
·         The cultural and creative industries
·         Capitalism, culture and sustainability
·         Cultures of surveillance and war
·         Cultural identity and globalisation
·         Cultural resistance and activism
·         Productive and unproductive cultures
·         Base, superstructure and mediation
·         Formal and real subsumption of culture
·         Representations of capitalism, class and markets
·         Political economies of online, digital and social media
·         Anticapitalist, Socialist, Anarchist and Communist cultures
·         Racial capitalism
·         Critical theory, Cultural Marxism and Cultural Studies

 
The conference also accepts papers that fall within the general disciplinary area of Cultural Studies.

 
If you are interested in presenting at the conference, please send a 250 word abstract with your name, e-mail address and affiliation to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by August 1 2017. Any other enquires regarding the event should also be addressed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

 
Organising Committee: Nicholas Holm (Massey University), Sy Taffel (Massey University), Holly Randell-Moon (University of Otago)

Australian Society for French Studies Conference 2017
Truth and Representation

The Australian National University, 13-15 December

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Nicki Hitchcott, University of St Andrews
Dr Chris Watkin, Monash University

What is truth and how do we represent it? For centuries philosophers, artists, theologians, and political thinkers have reflected on the nature of truth, each exploring the various rhetorical and visual strategies with which we might render its universality and its relativity. When we talk about truth, we call upon objectivity, authenticity, and verifiability. But we also inevitably evoke subjectivity, artifice, and mendacity. Indeed, to talk about truth is to recognise its intimate connection to lies.

In our current political climate, terms such as ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ have become ubiquitous. In the wake of Brexit and the American presidential election, and leading up to the 2017 French election, politicians and the media continually call the status of truth and representation into question. How are we to determine what truth is when facts are manipulated to reflect and reinforce the opinions we already hold? How are we to retain our grasp on reality when we see our world increasingly through the mediation of the screen? Such questions bring to mind a much broader problematic surrounding our understanding of social, cultural, and political reality in the light of myriad and ever-evolving ideologies and theoretical orientations.
This conference seeks to reflect on these questions within French and Francophone Studies. What role can our interdisciplinary research play in negotiating the problems of truth and representation in the 21st century, from cultural studies and politics to literature and film? Our aim is to address these problems from a multiplicity of methodological approaches and areas of focus.

We invite proposals for individual papers (20 minutes) and for panels (3-4 papers of 20 minutes each) related to the theme of truth and representation. We will also consider proposals that do not conform directly to this theme. Possible topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:

Philosophical, theoretical, and historical/historiographical understandings of truth-making
Representations of Otherness
Reflections on language and the shaping of political discourse
The role of truth in education, including plagiarism and academic dishonesty in the language classroom
Film and the fluid boundaries of audio-visual representation
Embodied truths, psychic truths, lived realities
National myths and the politics of migration
Life-writing/ Representing the truth of the self
Truth and religious pluralism
Postmodernism and post-truth
Representation in (applied) linguistics and second language acquisition
Imagination, or the truth of fiction


Please send your proposal of 250 words for papers in English or French to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 3 July 2017.

Organising committee: Leslie Barnes, Ashok Collins, Solène Inceoglu, and Gemma King, ANU.



Vérité et Représentation
The Australian National University, 13-15 décembre

Séances plénières confirmées:
Professor Nicki Hitchcott, University of St Andrews
Dr Chris Watkin, Monash University

Qu’est-ce la vérité et comment la représenter ? Pendant des siècles des philosophes, artistes, théologiens, et penseurs politiques ont réfléchi à la nature de la vérité, explorant de diverses stratégies visuelles et rhétoriques pour comprendre son universalité et sa relativité. Quand nous parlons de la vérité, nous évoquons l’objectivité, l’authenticité, et la vérifiabilité. Mais de façon inévitable, nous évoquons aussi la subjectivité, l’artifice, et la fausseté. En fait, parler de la vérité est reconnaître sa relation intime avec le mensonge.
Dans notre climat politique actuel, des termes tels que ‘post-vérité’ et ‘fausses nouvelles’ sont devenus omniprésents. A la suite du Brexit et l’élection présidentielle américaine, et précédant l’élection française de 2017, les politiciens et les médias remettent sans cesse en cause la vérité et la représentation. Comment définir la vérité quand nous manipulons les faits pour refléter et renforcer nos opinions établies ? Comment assurer notre connexion avec la réalité quand nous percevons le monde de plus en plus souvent à travers la médiation de l’écran ? De telles questions engendrent une problématique beaucoup plus large sur notre compréhension de la réalité sociale, culturelle, et politique au vu de toute une myriade d’idéologies et d’orientations théoriques en perpétuelle évolution.
Cette conférence vise à considérer ces questions dans le cadre des études françaises et francophones. Comment nos recherches interdisciplinaires peuvent-elles faire face aux questions de vérité et de représentation dans le XXIe siècle, soient-elles en études culturelles ou en sciences politiques, en littérature ou en cinéma ? Notre but est d’aborder ces problèmes depuis une multiplicité de perspectives et d’approches méthodologiques.
Nous invitons des propositions de communications individuelles (20 minutes) et de groupes (3-4 communications de 20 minutes chacune) autour du thème ‘vérité et représentation’. Nous considérerons aussi des interventions qui ne se conforment pas directement à ce thème. Quelques sujets possibles comprennent, mais ne se limitent pas à :

Conceptions philosophiques, théoriques, et historiques / historiographiques de la vérité
Représentations d’autrui
Réflexions sur le langage et la formation du discours politique
Le rôle de la vérité dans l’éducation, y compris le plagiat et la malhonnêteté dans les cours de langue
Cinéma et les limites fluides de la représentation audio-visuelle
Vérités incarnées, vérités psychiques, réalités vécues
Mythes nationaux et politique de migration
(Auto)biographie / Représenter la vérité du soi
Vérité et pluralisme religieux
Postmodernisme et post-vérité
Représentation dans la linguistique (appliquée) et l’acquisition des langues étrangères
Imagination, ou vérité de fiction



Veuillez envoyer des propositions de 250 mots pour des interventions en anglais ou en français à This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. avant le 3 juillet 2017.

Comité : Leslie Barnes, Ashok Collins, Solène Inceoglu, and Gemma King, ANU.

University of Sydney, Australia
15-17 November, 2017
Organisers: Anik Waldow, Jacqueline Broad, Deborah Brown, Qu Hsueh

The Australasian Seminar in Early Modern in Philosophy (ASEMP) is a new bi-annual conference with rotating locations at universities in the Australasian region. The aim of establishing this conference series is to offer high-quality discussions of research presentations in early modern philosophy, while encouraging closer collaboration and network opportunities between Asia-Pacific and Australian universities. Each conference will have a mentoring stream that teams up PhD students and early career researchers with senior scholars to prepare conference submissions for publication.

Conference Theme 2017
Deviant Thinking: Early Modern Philosophy and the Enlightenment

What the Enlightenment stands for has been subject to much discussion in recent years, and many valuable contributions have been made that help us to understand better the significance of this period. This conference takes this discussion further by connecting up the Enlightenment with the early modern period and the “rebellious” ideas that were already formulated and passed around during this time. We seek papers that bring into focus the many challenges philosophers of the 17th and 18th century posed to established intellectual, political, religious and social norms. These challenges touch on a diverse range of topics, spanning from fundamental questions concerning the status of the human being in the natural world, and the prospect of gaining knowledge of that world, to the redefinition of sentiment and affect as defining features of the moral potential of humanity. Reflections on the foundations of the state, self-governance and the rights of individuals and groups often followed on from these questions and thereby led to a novel engagement with the conditions that structure and shape human life.

We are interested in receiving abstract submissions on the following subjects:

1.       Early modern and enlightenment ideas that in some important respects deviated from the norms established in 17th and 18th century thought.

2.       Philosophical thought that questioned or challenged ideas that are today understood as central ideals of the Enlightenment.

3.       Interpretations of early modern and enlightenment ideas/figures that deviate from standard interpretations of those ideas/figures.

We also welcome submissions (for both papers and panels) on early modern topics that fall outside the main conference theme.

The deadline for the submission of abstracts (max 800-1000 words) for conference papers (30 minutes presentation time) is 30 June, 2017. Please prepare your submission for anonymous review and add a separate cover sheet with your details.


Confirmed Speakers:

Moira Gatens (Sydney)
Stephen Gaukroger (Sydney)
Peter Anstey (Sydney)
Cecilia Lim (Singapore)
Peter Kail (Oxford)

• Theme Panel 1: “Women, Revolution and Republicanism” (Organiser: Jacqueline Broad)
• Theme Panel 2: “Deviant Religion” (Organiser: Qu Husueh)
• Theme Panel 3: “Deviant Art” (Organiser: Jennifer Milam)
• Book Panel: Deborah Brown & Calvin Normore, “Descartes Ontology of Everyday Life”

Vladimir Jankélévitch in the twenty-first century

A roundtable to be held at the Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic University, Sydney, 15-16th February 2018.

Vladimir Jankélévitch (1903-85) taught at the French Institute in Prague, the University of Toulouse and other universities and then held the chair in moral philosophy at the Sorbonne (1951-78) and published on a range of subjects, especially ethics and the virtues, musical aesthetics, death, and the work of Bergson and Schelling. Researchers of philosophy of music have long read Jankélévitch’s writing on Debussy, Fauré, and Ravel, and his passionate essay ‘Pardonner?’ published in Critical Inquiry in 1996 has provoked a range of responses. Partly inspired by Jacques Derrida’s and Emmanuel Levinas’ discussion of his work, more of Jankélévitch’s texts are being translated into English, thus garnering a wider scholarly interest in the details of his thought. The published translation of his book Forgiveness in 2005, followed by the publication of The Bad Conscience and Henri Bergson in 2015, means that a significant body of his work is available for international twenty-first century readers’ scholarly interpretation and debate, and there has been increasing academic interest in his conceptualizations and philosophical use of forgiveness, apophasis, irreversibility, resentment, repentance, and love. This roundtable aims to further the rebirth of interest in Jankélévitch’s rich, insightful, and beautiful texts, and so papers on any aspect of his work will be considered for inclusion.

We invite papers discussing philosophical problems and concepts in Jankélévitch’s work, its contextualizations and reception within the field of contemporary continental philosophy, as well as the relevance of Jankélévitch’s thought for the current issues of social justice, politics and aesthetics of public memory, temporality and creation.
The deadline for abstract submission has been extended to June 16th, 2017. Please include name, paper title, 250 word abstract, and a brief biographical note.

Please send abstract submissions to Marguerite La Caze ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) and/or Magdalena Zolkos ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ). Notification of whether the abstract is accepted will be sent by July 1st, 2017.

Organizers:
Marguerite La Caze, Philosophy, University of Queensland
Magdalena Zolkos, Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic University, Sydney.

Primary Texts
Jankélévitch, Vladimir. 2015a. The Bad Conscience. Trans. Andrew Kelley. Chicago: University of Chicago.
——. 2015b. Henri Bergson. Trans. Nils. F. Schott, Durham; Duke University Press.
——. 2005. Forgiveness. Trans. Andrew Kelley. Chicago: University of Chicago.
——. 2003. Music and the Ineffable, Trans. Carolyn Abbate. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
——. 1996. ‘Should we Pardon them?’ Critical Inquiry, 22, 552-572.
——. 1959. Ravel. Trans. Margaret Crosland. New York: Grove Press.