Workshops and Conferences

NEOLIBERALISM AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY:
A collaborative conference between the Department of Philosophy, DePaul University and the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University.

DePaul University, Chicago, IL
APRIL 7 - 8, 2017

On the face of it neoliberalism’s conception of human beings as maximizers of human capital seems far from social democracy’s conception of active citizens guided by the principles of social equality and political freedom. However, neoliberalism has viewed its project as rooted in the intellectual traditions of social democracy. Bringing together scholars from sociology, history, economics, political science and philosophy, this two-day conference will address the relation between social democracy and neoliberalism.

Participants include:
Christina Lafont, Northwestern University
Philip Mirowski, Notre Dame
James Martel, San Francisco State University
Eric Santner, University of Chicago

The Whitlam Institute carries on the work of Geoff Whitlam, who during his brief tenure as Australia’s Prime Minister (1972-1975), which had been proceeded by nearly two decades as leader of the Labour Party, enacted legislation that granted the recognition of Aboriginal land claims, the equal rights amendment for the equality of women, free university education, universal health care, and the abolition of the death penalty.

For additional information please contact Peg Birmingham (pbirming@depaul.edu).  This event is free and open to the public.

KANT’S THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY

DePaul University
Richardson Library
2350 N. Kenmore Ave.
Dorothy Day Room, 400
Chicago, IL

March 31, 2017
10:00 AM - 5:30 PM

Avery Goldman, DePaul University, “Kant on Leibniz: Disentangling the Principle of Sufficient Reason from the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles”
    Commentator:  Kyoungnam (Kay) Park, Loyola University of Chicago

Yoon Choi, Marquette University, “Kant and the Spontaneity of the Understanding”
    Commentator: Chen Liang, University of Illinois at Chicago

Jacqueline Mariña, Purdue University, “The Second Analogy and the Motion of the Subject”
    Commentator: Morganna Lambeth, Northwestern

Daniel Sutherland, University of Illinois at Chicago, “Kant on Pure and Applied
Mathematics”
    Commentator: Anastasia Berg, University of Chicago

For additional information please contact Kevin Thompson (kthomp12@depaul.edu)

Conference Program

 

THE WORKSHOP

The workshop will bring together scholars who have been concerned in recent years with the specific subject of trauma in the context of mass atrocity and extreme forms of violence. There will be two professors coming from Law Departments in Colombia, Prof. Isabel Jaramillo and Prof. Esteban Restrepo from the Universidad de los Andes, in Bogotá, who will address the philosophical challenges of a just and adequate legal representation of trauma resulting from mass atrocity in the context of Colombian violent conflict. Cathy Caruth, a renowned international expert on trauma studies from the University of Cornell, will be working on the relationship between trauma and representation in literary studies inspired by study cases of both street violence in the United States and victims’ recovery cases in Colombia.  Elizabeth Rottenberg and Michael Naas, both professors in the Philosophy Department at DePaul, will be proposing a philosophical elucidation of the problematic challenge that trauma represents for our understanding of language and memory. And prof. Lissa Skitolsky, from Susquehana University, will be sharing with us her personal experience as a philosophy teacher in a maximum security prison in Pennsylvania, oriented by a philosophical reflection on trauma, victimhood, and the way in which, in her opinion, the jail system in the United States reproduces what Holocaust studies have coined as the phenomenon of “social death.” Graduate students in the Philosophy Department, as well as other Faculty members of LAS and undergraduate students interested in the subject will all be able to participate in the discussions during the two days of presentations and engage directly with each one of the speakers.

THE PLAY

The play "Maximum Security" from ID Theater Company (based on New York), was written by a Colombian writer (Piedad Bonnett)and directed by Nelson Celis, the background of the play is the Colombian conflict between guerrillas, paramilitary and army. The play is directly concerned with some of the explicit subjects of the workshop on Trauma and Memory: the conditions of confinement in prisons and the traumatic experiences related to extreme forms of violence. The play stages two actors, an ex-paramilitary and a street delinquent. Through their dialogues and actions onstage one learns not only about their respective traumatic pasts, and their very difficult present in jail, but also of the atrocious forms of violence that are linked to a conflict tied to issues of radical social injustice. At the end of the play we'll have a roundtable with the Director of the Company, Germán Jaramillo, the two actors, Wilmar Saldarriaga and Victor Hugo Grajales, and Michael Naas from the Philosophy Department.

10th ANNUAL SOCIETY FOR RICOEUR STUDIES CONFERENCE

The 50th Annual Meeting of the Heidegger Circle

Future Legacies

Full Program

 

Thinking Universalities

A CONFERENCE ORGANIZED AROUND THE WORK OF ÉTIENNE BALIBAR

DePaul University
Friday & Saturday - October 23-24, 2015
Saturday - Schmitt Academic Center, 2320 N. Kemore, Room 254, 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM