Calls for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS - Deadline for submission of abstract: 9th April 2012

Brave New World 2012, the Sixteenth Annual Postgraduate Conference organised under the auspices of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT), will take place on Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th June 2012 at the University of Manchester.

We are pleased to announce that our guest speakers this year are:

Richard Arneson (University of California, San Diego)

Charles Larmore (Brown University)

The Brave New World conference series is now established as a leading international forum dedicated exclusively to the discussion of postgraduate research in political theory. The conference offers a great opportunity for postgraduates from many different countries and universities to share experiences, concerns and research interests, to exchange stimulating ideas and to make new friends - all in a financially accessible and highly informal setting. Participants will also have the chance to meet and talk about their work with eminent academics, including members of faculty from the University of Manchester and guest speakers, who will deliver keynote addresses at the event.

Guest speakers in previous years have included Brian Barry, Simon Caney, G.A. Cohen, Roger Crisp, Cecile Fabre, Jerry Gaus, Peter Jones, Chandran Kukathas, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Susan Mendus, David Miller, Onora O’Neill, Michael Otsuka, Bhikhu Parekh, Carole Pateman, Anne Phillips, Thomas Pogge, Joseph Raz, Andrea Sangiovanni, Quentin Skinner, Adam Swift, Philippe Van Parijs, Leif Wenar, Andrew Williams, and Jonathan Wolff.

Papers focusing on any area of political theory or political philosophy are welcome. If you would like to present a paper then please send a 300-word, anonymised abstract (including the title of the paper) to Brave.New.World@manchester.ac.uk no later than 9th April 2012. Please also include in your email your name and institutional affiliation. Please note that the conference is self-financed and participants are responsible for seeking their own funding. For further details please contact us at Brave.New.World@manchester.ac.uk

ON THE SCOPE OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE:

Relational and Non-relational Views

July 5-7, 2012, Central European University, Budapest

Organized by the Departments of Political Science and Philosophy, CEU and the Global Justice Network

Keynote speakers:

Simon Caney (Oxford University)
Samuel Scheffler (New York University)

Should duties of distributive justice extend to humanity at large or be limited to compatriots? The debate about the proper scope of distributive duties explores whether the concern with individual distributive shares is grounded in our shared humanity, as cosmopolitans claim, or rather duties of justice arise only among those who are subject to the same coercive political institutions, participate in a shared social practice, or share in the same culture, as proponents of the so-called practice-dependent view hold. Parallel to this debate, discussions in the theory of justice have focused increasingly on the problem whether an egalitarian distribution of social resources has independent moral significance, as distributive conceptions propose, or instead any profile of distribution is morally desirable only insofar that it advances egalitarian social and political relations, as social-relational conceptions of justice claim. The workshop aims to bring together these two debates in contemporary political theory, with the expectation that insights from one may shed new light on problems discussed in the other. We especially welcome papers that aim to bridge the two problems, but also interested in papers with new insights in either of the two fields. We welcome papers that discuss general theoretical problems as well as those with a practical political focus.

To apply, please send us an abstract of max. 500 words by January 30^th 2012 to the email address ceuglobaljustice@gmail.com

Accepted participants will be notified by March 1^st, 2012.

For inquiries please write to Eszter Kollar: ekollar@johncabot.edu or Zoltan Miklosi: MiklosiZ@ceu.hu

Kind regards,

Eszter Kollar (JCU, Global Justice Network)
Zoltan Miklosi (CEU)
Andres Moles (CEU)
Orsi Reich (CEU, Harvard)

MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory 2012
Call for Convenors

The MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory 2012 is an annual conference in political theory, organised under the auspices of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory, University of Manchester. The conference in 2012 will be the ninth event in the series and will take place on Wednesday September 5th until Friday September 7th 2012 at the Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester.Over the last eight years, participants from over twenty countries have come together in a series of workshops concerned with issues in political theory/philosophy widely construed. Last year the workshops had more than 200 delegates attending, and the conference is now established as a leading international forum dedicated to the discussion of research in political theory.

Applications for convening a workshop are now being accepted and more information about the event can be found here:
http://manceptworkshops2012.wordpress.com/

If you are interested in convening a workshop or require any further information please e-mail the Workshop convenor Chris Mills at:
manceptworkshops2012@gmail.com

Please see the Felician Ethics Institute website for full details of the CFP: http://felicianethics.wordpress.com/

CALL FOR PAPERS

The sixth annual meeting of the Felician Ethics Conference will be held at the Rutherford Campus of Felician College on Saturday, April 21, 2012, 9 am - 6 pm

223 Montross Ave
Rutherford, NJ 07070

Plenary:

“Abortion and Resurrection”

Dr. Douglas Lackey
Baruch College and Graduate Center, City University of New York

Submissions on any topic in moral philosophy (broadly construed) are welcome, not exceeding 25 minutes’ presentation time (approximately 3,000 words). Please send submissions via email in format suitable for blind review by Feb. 15, 2012 to: felicianethicsconference [@] gmail.com. Please submit fully completed papers, not abstracts or proposals. And please do not double-submit to other conferences on the same or otherwise conflicting dates.

Registration fee is $20 for faculty, and $10 for adjuncts and graduate students. Free to all members of the Felician College community (current students, faculty, staff, sisters).

If necessary, surface mail can be sent to:

Irfan Khawaja, Conference Coordinator
Dept. of Philosophy
Felician College
262 S. Main St.
Lodi, NJ 07644

If you have any questions, please contact Irfan Khawaja, (201) 559-6000 (x6288), or felicianethicsconference [@] gmail.com.

For its third international Authority Beyond States workshop, the AUSTAT network invites submissions from political philosophy, international and comparative constitutional law, and political science to address the exercise of authority by international institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

Global Justice: Norms and Limits
Bucharest, 10 - 12 May, 2012
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest 

Keynote and guest speakers include: Thomas Pogge (Yale), David Miller
(Oxford), Hillel Steiner (Manchester), Véronique Zanetti (Bilefield),
Sebastiano Maffettone (Roma), Paula Casal (Barcelona), Andreas Føllesdal
(Oslo), and Lea Ypi (Oxford).

Worldwide suffering caused by large-scale famine as well as poverty, human
rights violations, military interventions or environmental degradation have
a global dimension, because those responsible are not only individuals, but
also states and international institutions. Recently, what some have
perceived as global injustices related to military interventions and
economic exploitation seem to motivate terrorist and piracy attacks that
cause indiscriminate suffering. Having gained an unprecedented urgency, the
topic of global justice has received increasingly public and academic
attention, and has lately become a central issue in moral and political
philosophy. Our conference seeks to be a forum for discussing the most
important theories of global justice, their central concepts and
constraints.

The conference will be held at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of
Bucharest and is organized by The Center for the Study of
Rationality and Beliefs.

Submission of papers
Contributions are expected from researchers from different academic fields
who are interested in the outlined topic or in closely related ones.
Abstracts should be sent by e-mail as attachment at globaljustice@ub-
filosofie.ro until the 30th of January 2012. The deadline for submitting
the full version of your paper is the 1st of March 2012. Along with the
abstract, please send us your contact details: current affiliation, address
and telephone number.

The organizers cannot support any travel or accommodation costs.

Follow-up:
The organizers intend to publish a volume including papers from the
conference. Acceptance of the paper for the conference does not guarantee
the inclusion in the proceedings. We kindly remind you that by submitting
the paper you implicitly agree to allow its publication in the conference
proceedings. For easier post-conference editorial work, it would be best if
you would format your paper using Chicago style of reference, but this is
not a formal condition for the publication.

Location
The Conference will be held at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of
Bucharest. Address: Splaiul Independentei 204, Sector 6, postcode
060024, Bucharest, Romania. Google Maps: http://goo.gl/DI3K3.

Contact
globaljustice@ub-filosofie.ro

Programme
The conference programme will be available soon at the following address:

http://www.csrc.ro/EN/global-justice

Oxford: 19-20 April 2012 | CFP: 15 January 2012

Via Marius Ostrowski:

Political Theory and the ‘Liberal’ Tradition

Graduate students are invited to submit paper proposals for the inaugural Oxford Graduate Conference in Political Theory, to be held at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, on 19-20 April 2012. The theme for this conference is “Political Theory and the ‘Liberal’ Tradition”, and there will be two keynote addresses, given by Professor Jeremy Waldron (University of Oxford) and Professor Charles Mills (Northwestern University). The theme may be broadly construed, and we welcome papers addressing any of the following themes:

The ‘liberal’ tradition and history of political thought: The canon of great political works is still believed to offer crucial insights for current theorising, thanks to their perception as continuous sources of wisdom about the salient principles of good government. But why are certain thinkers traditionally included, whilst others are not? Why are most ‘great’ thinkers dead, white, and male? Has liberalism been insensitive to the grievances of minorities, and to certain forms of oppression and exclusion? Finally, is the ‘liberal’ tradition a retrospective construct, which paradoxically includes thinkers who never considered themselves ‘liberals’?

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Princeton: 6-7 April 2012 | CFP: 16 January 2012

Via Ted Lechterman, this year’s CFP for a great graduate conference in political theory:

The Committee for the Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University welcomes papers concerning any topic in political theory, political philosophy, or the history of political thought. Papers should be submitted via the conference website by January 16, 2012. Approximately eight papers will be accepted.

The Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University will be held from April 6-7, 2012. This year, we are excited to include Professor Elisabeth Ellis, Texas A&M University, as keynote speaker and conference participant.

The conference offers graduate students from across institutions a unique opportunity to present and critique new work. Each session, led by a discussant from Princeton, will focus exclusively on one paper and will feature an extensive question and answer period with Princeton faculty and graduate students. Papers will be pre-circulated among conference participants.

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Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy has a new Call for Abstracts, and the deadline is in less than a month, on Dec. 15.

To submit, all you need to do is prepare a brief (1,000 word) abstract. The editors then invite full papers based on these abstracts, and those who receive an invitation will be asked to write a full paper by August 15th.

Just in the past year or so, a number of political philosophers have begun conducting experimental studies (e.g., Freiman & Nichols 2011; Hassoun forthcoming), and it will be exciting to see how research in this area continues to develop!

The Twin Cities Review of Political Philosophy is seeking quality undergraduate papers in political philosophy for publication in its Summer 2012 issue. The journal is published as a freely available electronic interactive magazine. Undergraduates, with or without faculty support, are encouraged to submit research work.

The Twin Cities Review of Political Philosophy is interested in diverse subject matter.  As a policy, we prefer scholarly work that: (1) clarifies an unclear or challenging concept, passage, or author in political thought; (2) publicizes a lesser-known argument that merits greater attention; or (3) offers new insight into existing works’ arguments or methods.

Submission deadline: January 30, 2012

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Deadline for submissions: April 1^st, 2012

Tentative publication date: Winter 2012

About the Journal

Raisons Politiques is a well-established journal of political thought currently building an international reputation with the support of Sciences Po, the French renowned research institute for social sciences. The journal endeavors to provide a forum where scholars from various backgrounds and traditions can fruitfully engage with contemporary social and political issues. By contrast with publications intended to a particular discipline, Raisons Politiques adopts a thematic approach and welcome contributions from all branches of social sciences. It encourages submissions in English or French, from both established academics and aspiring members of the scientific community.

Among notable contributors are Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, Gerald Allan Cohen, Mitchell Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, Norman Daniels, Clifford Geertz, Robert E. Goodin, Jürgen Habermas, Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Philip Pettit, Ian Shapiro, Quentin Skinner, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Michael Walzer and Iris Marion Young.

Raisons Politiques is available online through CAIRN, the French portal for social sciences. For more information about the journal, please visit the editor’s website.

Special Issue in English on “Global Justice & Practice-Dependence”

Over the last few years, a new generation of political theorists working in the field of global justice has come to endorse a practice-dependent view about justice. In this view, the content of a given conception of justice depends on the nature of the practices it is intended to regulate, where “practices” refer to existing institutions and every system of formal or informal rules defining the rights and duties of agents involved. Global social and political practices would thus not be governed by the same conception of justice that applies to domestic practices, dramatically different in nature, and that would help to account for the normative discontinuity between the domain of nation-states, where strong egalitarian standards of justice prevail, and the world beyond national borders, where requirements of justice seem closer to a humanitarian moral minimum.

This special issue of Raison Politiques aims to assess the legitimacy of the practice-dependent approach as well as to explore the conclusions that might be drawn from it in the debate on global justice. Authors are thus invited to submit:

-       Articles arguing in favor of the practice-dependent approach from a Rawlsian perspective or within a wider constructivist framework;

-       Articles offering a non-constructivist foundation for the practice-dependent approach;

-       Articles discussing different types of practice-dependence, such as conventionalism, institutionalism and functionalism;

-       Articles exploring whether the practice-dependent approach is supported by a particular view about the nature of justice;

-       Articles rejecting the methodological commitment to practice-dependence and offering reasons to favor an alternative approach to global justice;

-       Articles endorsing the practice-dependent view to develop a substantial account of global justice.

Submission Process

Manuscripts must be 1.5-spaced and no longer than 7,000 words, including footnotes and a 150-word summary. All bibliographical references must come in footnotes, formatted as follow:

-       David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

-       Thomas Hylland Eriksen, “Formal and Informal Nationalism”, Ethnic and Racial Studies (16/1), 1993, 1-25.

-       Kok-Chor Tan, “The Problem of Decent Peoples”, in David Reidy and Martin Rex (eds.), Rawls’s Law of People. A Realistic Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 76-94.

To facilitate blind review, please remove author-identifying information from the text and provide in a separate file a short biographical note (up to 80 words) specifying your title, current affiliation, research interests and relevant publications within the last three years. Send your manuscript and the file containing your personal information in Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format to hugo.elkholi@sciences-po.org.

All manuscripts are anonymously peer-reviewed by two referees within a two months delay – typically, one member of the editorial board and one external expert. Note that works under simultaneous consideration for publication elsewhere and works that have already been published in any form will not be considered.

Cornell University, 27-28 April 2012 | CFP Deadline: 1 Nov 2011

Via Pinar Kemerli at Cornell:

“From Meydan Tahrir to Wisconsin: Rethinking Revolution, Democracy and Citizenship”

An interdisciplinary graduate student conference, hosted by the political theory graduate students in the Department of Government at Cornell University, April 27 – 28, 2012.

From revolutionary awakenings in the Arab world to protests against austerity measures in Europe and assaults on labor rights in Wisconsin, a “specter is haunting the world” – the specter of democracy and equality. This conference aims to bring together a diverse group of graduate students to discuss the significance of these revolutionary mobilizations and moments of solidarity for political thought. How do unfolding events challenge us to reconsider political concepts such as democracy, revolution, and citizenship? In light of these historical developments, papers might address political possibilities and anxieties unleashed by the current revolutionary enthusiasm: To what extent are these demands for economic equality, labor rights, and democracy compatible with contemporary hegemony of (neo)liberalism? Does the Tea Party as a conservative social movement challenge our ideas regarding the content of democratic politics? Is it the attempt to weaken union rights in Wisconsin that represents an undermining of democratic citizenship, or the recall efforts that have followed them? When are “rebels/protesters” justified in claiming popular authority and taking up “constituent power”? How should we interpret the nationalist discourse and imagery evoked in revolutions? What is at stake in the tendency to present the Egyptian revolution as a radical break from the past, as a distinctively “secular moment”? What do transnational connections between the protesters in Tahrir Square and the public workers of Wisconsin tell us about revolutionary enthusiasm from afar, about democracy’s ‘witness’, or about projection of democratic imagery and metaphor?

We seek papers that will engage a wide range of disciplines, including politics, sociology, developmental sociology, history, anthropology, and near eastern studies. In order to be considered, applicants should email their proposals to cornelltheoryconference [at] gmail.com by November 1, 2011. Proposals should include a two-page c.v. and a prospectus of 500-1000 words.

Decisions will be announced by January 15, 2012.

Within the last fifty years, interpretation has become one of the most important intellectual paradigms of humanities and social sciences scholarship. Theories about law and literature, philosophy and political thought, history and theology all rely on textual interpretation. Issues such as the role of intentions in the interpretation of texts, the question of whether texts determine, or constrain, interpretations of them, and how much, if any, contextual information is required for their understanding, concern all those disciplines, and call for cross-disciplinary collaboration and exchange. Finally, the simultaneous proliferation of certain interpretive approaches such as ‘hermeneutics’, ‘deconstruction’, and ‘feminist (re)readings’ of texts across disciplinary divides has shown the permeability of these boundaries, and has thus made this call for collaboration even more pertinent.

This conference will provide a setting in which distinguished proponents and critics of some of the prevalent interpretive approaches currently used in humanities and social sciences research are able to engage, for the first time, in a rigorous debate about the advantages and costs of each approach, and to discuss the political assumptions that inform them, as well as aims that drive them.

One of the primary goals will be to evaluate the validity of each interpretive method in reference to the readings it produces when applied to texts. Some of the key questions in this respect include: What is it that each method can or cannot claim to be able to show? To what extent do these methods succeed both in theory and in practice? Do they prevent or improve our understanding of texts? A second focus of the conference is to shed light upon the political dimension of interpretive enterprises and to decode their ideological presuppositions. There has virtually been no interdisciplinary exchange about the question of whether these approaches are ideologically sustained, and if so, whether ideologically charged approaches in turn induce interpreters to systematically ignore some aspects of texts, whilst emphasizing others. Here, consequences will be drawn for the interpretation of politics, widely construed.

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Call for Papers

Fall 2014 Symposium:  The Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics of Emergencies

The Editors of Reason Papers are soliciting submissions of manuscripts for a special symposium on emergencies (due by March 1, 2014). Send submissions to reasonpapers@gmail.com. Inquiries welcome.

Submissions may grapple with any of a wide variety of issues related to emergencies (not an exhaustive list): How is “emergency” to be defined?  How do we know when we enter/exit an emergency?  How should moral and legal norms be formulated so as to take stock of emergencies-if they should? Are moral norms defeasible in the face of emergencies, or specially contextualized so as to preserve their indefeasibility? Who has special authority for decision-making in an emergency? How best to guard against abuses of power or corruptions of norms in emergency situations?

We’re looking for submissions across the broadest spectrum of relevant disciplines-philosophy, political science, legal studies, history, sociology, anthropology, medicine, criminology/police studies, strategic/military studies, etc.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Bowling Green Workshop in Applied
Ethics and Public Policy

Manipulation

March 16-17, 2012

The Bowling Green Workshop in Applied Ethics and Public Policy will take place in Bowling Green, Ohio on March 16-17, 2012. The keynote speaker will be Marcia Baron (Indiana University).

Those interested in presenting a paper are invited to submit a 2-3 page abstract (double-spaced) by September 30, 2011. We welcome submissions in all areas in applied ethics and philosophical issues relevant to public policy. Special consideration will be given to papers relevant to this year’s conference theme: manipulation. The theme is to be construed broadly, however, and we encourage contributions from any area of moral and political philosophy where manipulation is of interest or concern.

Only one submission per person is permitted. Abstracts will be evaluated by a program committee and decisions made in October 2011. Please direct all abstracts and queries to:
pibarra@bgsu.edu

Further information about the Workshop will be available on the workshop website:

http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/phil/conferences/manipulation

Postgraduate Essay Prize, 2011Res Publica: A Journal of Moral, Legal and Social Philosophy

For the seventh year running, Res Publica will be awarding a prize for the best paper submitted by a current postgraduate student in 2011.  This may be in any area of moral, legal, social or political philosophy. Entries should conform to the normal requirements for submissions - please see the website address below for details. 

All entries must be received by 15 October 2011, with the winner to be announced early in 2012  The winner will receive £100 and a year’s subscription to the journal.  The winning essay will be published in Volume 18 (2012).

Previous winners:
Alexandra Couto, ‘Privacy and Justification’ 12.3 (2006)
Alasdair Cochrane, ‘Animal Rights and Animal Experiments: An Interest-Based Approach’ 13.3 (2007)
Göran Duus-Otterström, ‘Betting Against Hard Determinism’ (14.3, 2008)
Seth Lazar, ‘The Nature and Disvalue of Injury’ (15.3, 2009)
Guy Sela, ‘Moral Luck and Liability Lotteries’ (16.3, 2010)
Christopher Nathan, ‘Need there be a Defence of Equality’ (forthcoming: 17.3, 2011)
The prize will be judged by a panel of referees, along with the journal editors.

Entries should be submitted via the journal’s submission website - www.editorialmanager.com/resp/ - and labelled PG Essay Prize.

There is more information on Res Publica on the Springer website at: www.springer.com/11158

Or contact, the co-editors:
Sune Laegaard     laegaard@ruc.dk
Jonathan Seglow  j.seglow@rhul.ac.uk

MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory, 8th Annual Conference

Manchester, 31 August - 2 September 2011

Call for papers: Liberalism and the Family

The particular difficulty that liberals have in dealing with the internal affairs of families is now well established and remains a contentious and vibrant area of debate. This broad-based workshop is designed to bring together those who are working on any question related to how liberalism ought to view, and deal with, relationships within the family. We invite any papers, or suggestions for roundtable discussions, related to liberalism and the family.  Here are some suggested questions, although we will consider any proposals and papers related to the broader theme.

With respect to children:

• To what extent should liberals allow children to be enrolled into comprehensive doctrines?
• Must liberals ensure children be brought up to be autonomous?
• Should parents provide public reasons for their treatment of their children?
• What is the legitimate extent of parental partiality?
• For what reasons should the state intervene in a child’s upbringing?
• Is there a specifically liberal approach to thinking about reproductive ethics?

With respect to gender roles:

• Should liberals abolish the family? Should liberals endorse marriage?
• What is a just division of labour within the family?
• How far should liberals be concerned with justice between partners?

With respect to the family within liberal theories of justice:

• Is the family part of the ‘basic structure of society’? If so, in what way?
• Can Rawls’s ‘Justice as Fairness’ deal with justice in the family?
• How can liberal theories of justice adequately represent children in their procedures of construction?
• Should we be perfectionist in bringing up children?

Please send proposals, abstracts, and any further inquiries to dean.redfearn@manchester.ac.uk by 31 May 2011.

This workshop is part of the annual Political Theory Workshops organised by the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) in Politics at the University of Manchester. Further details about the conference are available on the website at: http://manceptworkshops.wordpress.com/

Debating Toleration: Attitudes, Practices and Institutions

3 - 5 November, 2011

Faculty of Political Science, University of Pavia (Italy)

Instances of xenophobia, marginalisation and discrimination directed against vulnerable groups are often framed in terms of (in)tolerance on the part of the majority against a minority. Recent cases highlighted in the media include the Swiss referendum which resulted in the banning of new minarets and the expulsion of Roma in France. Yet, while appeals to toleration are often made in order to devise appropriate political responses to such questions, it is far from clear and uncontroversial what such appeals actually mean and require. Are such issues correctly understood and addressed in terms of toleration, or should they instead be interpreted with the aid of other cognate ideals, such as respect or recognition?

The conference invites discussions both of theoretical interpretations of toleration, respect and recognition, and of more applied contributions on the role of these ideals in informing social policies in contemporary democracies.

Participants are invited to address the following questions:
• What does the ideal of toleration require of contemporary societies?
• What particular problems of societal conflict can be usefully analysed in terms of the concepts of tolerance and intolerance?
• Are issues raised by minority claims correctly understood in terms of toleration?
• Are respect and recognition interpretations of toleration, or do they represent different, and sometimes conflicting notions?
• Are group-oriented policies a threat to social cohesion? What alternative policy solutions can be offered to promote a tolerant society?

Keynote speakers

Colin Bird (University of Virginia)
Anna Elisabetta Galeotti (Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli)
Peter Jones (University of Newcastle)

Papers are welcomed from the fields of ethics, political philosophy/theory, law and social policy.

Deadline for paper proposals (500 words): 26 June 2011

Conference registration is free of charge. Accommodation fees and details will be arranged individually.
Anyone who wishes to attend the conference without presenting a paper can write to check availability.
Details about meal arrangements and conference programme to follow.

For further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact: respect[at]iusspavia.it

The conference is kindly supported by the Society for Applied Philosophy (UK) and is a part of the activities carried out within the framework of the RESPECT research project (GA no: 244549), funded under the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme.

The views expressed during the execution of the RESPECT project in whatever form and or by whatever medium are the sole responsibility of the authors. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory, 8th Annual Conference

Manchester, August 31-September 2nd 2011

Call for papers

Deliberative Democracy, Interests and Partisanship

Convenors:

Enrico Biale (University of Piemonte Orientale)

Valeria Ottonelli (University of Genova)

In the last few years the mainstream theory of deliberative democracy has been criticized because it underestimates the value and role of self-interest and partisanship in the political arena. For this reason, deliberative democracy has been accused of (i) lacking any capacity for guidance in real politics (practical critique), (ii) misrepresenting the very nature of politics (ontological critique) and (iii) excluding the least advantaged and their perspectives from the political realm (normative critique). Should these critiques lead to a revision of the deliberative ideal? And if so, along which lines?

This workshop aims to explore the role that interests and partisanship should play in deliberative democracy. Papers discussing these issues in the light of specific case studies (e.g., international, political, and industrial negotiations) are especially welcome.

The following is a representative (and non-exhaustive) list of topics of discussion:

• Deliberative constraints: if self-interest is to be included within the scope of democratic deliberation, should we talk of ‘deliberative bargains’? Which values and criteria should constrain these forms of deliberation?
• Object and site of deliberation: can interests and partisanship play a role in deliberation over any possible topic? Or any possible level (constitutional, legislative, etc.)? Or should they be limited to specific sites and topics?
• Agents of deliberation: Who are the proper agents in a deliberative bargaining? Which forms of partisanship and political mobilization are compatible with, or should be encouraged by, the ideal of deliberative democracy?

Those who are interested in participating in the workshop are invited to send a short abstract (300-500 words) to Enrico Biale (enrico.biale@unipmn.it) or Valeria Ottonelli (vottonel@nous.unige.it) by the 1st of June 2011.

Further information on the Mancept Workshops can be found at http://manceptworkshops.wordpress.com/.

FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS - Deadline for submission of abstract: 11th April 2011

Brave New World 2011, the Fifteenth Annual Postgraduate Conference organised under the auspices of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT), will take place on Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th June 2011 at the University of Manchester.

We are pleased to announce that our guest speakers this year are:

Joseph Raz (Columbia University)
Andrea Sangiovanni (King’s College London)

The Brave New World conference series is now established as a leading international forum dedicated exclusively to the discussion of postgraduate research in political theory. The conference offers a great opportunity for postgraduates from many different countries and universities to share experiences, concerns and research interests, to exchange stimulating ideas and to make new friends - all in a financially accessible and highly informal setting. Participants will also have the chance to meet and talk about their work with eminent academics, including members of faculty from the University of Manchester and guest speakers, who will deliver keynote addresses at the event.

Guest speakers in previous years have included Brian Barry, Simon Caney, G.A. Cohen, Roger Crisp, Cecile Fabre, Jerry Gaus, Peter Jones, Chandran Kukathas, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Susan Mendus, David Miller, Onora O’Neill, Michael Otsuka, Bhikhu Parekh, Carole Pateman, Anne Phillips, Thomas Pogge, Quentin Skinner, Adam Swift, Philippe Van Parijs, Leif Wenar, Andrew Williams, and Jonathan Wolff.

Papers focusing on any area of political theory or political philosophy are welcome. If you would like to present a paper, please send a 300-word, anonymised abstract, including the title of the paper, to Brave.New.World@manchester.ac.uk, no later than 11th April 2011. Please also include in your email your name and institutional affiliation. Please note that the conference is self-financed and participants are responsible for seeking their own funding. For further details please contact Dean Redfearn at Brave.New.World@manchester.ac.uk, or visit the conference website at http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/events/bnw2011/

This workshop examines various aspects related to the ethics and politics of procreation. Although we often think of procreation as an essentially natural act, in reality states commonly engage in procreation politics” directly affecting children, their parents, and third-party non-parents. For instance, states in numerous ways institute rules and regulations that govern when or how children are brought in the world . Similarly states adopt polices that redistribute the costs and benefits associated with procreating and parenting children. This raises numerous foundational and practical concerns.

Foundational questions we would like to examine in this workshop include:
- Is there a moral right to procreate and, if so, what sort of right?
- What are legitimate reasons for the state to interfere in procreation?
- Who bears the primary responsibility for children?
- What duties follow from the act of procreating a child?
- How does taking into account our obligations towards future generations or the global community alter procreation decisions by private individuals or the state?

We also plan to discuss questions closer to family policy, including:
- Is licensing procreation acceptable?
- How should we regulate access to reproductive assistance?
- What are the limits of state interference with the family? Who should pay for children?
- Does the number of children in a family matter in terms of procreation and parenting rights?
- Should children be allowed to participate more directly in society, including perhaps vote?

These questions are meant to be suggestive rather than exhaustive, and we are happy to consider any papers that fit our broad theme.

To apply, please send a proposal with a brief title and abstract to Anca Gheaus (anca.gheaus@gmail.com) or Jurgen De Wispelaere
(jurgen.dewispelaere@gmail.com) by the 31st of May 2011.

For more info on the Manchester Workshops, please visit the website
at: http://manceptworkshops.wordpress.com/

Call for Papers for the MANCEPT Workshop

Methods of Interpretation and the Politics of Hermeneutics

31^st August- 2^nd September 2011, University of Manchester

Political theorists have responded somewhat ambiguously to the ‘interpretive turn’ that shaped the humanities and social sciences in the mid to late twentieth century. After an initial phase of turning attention to questions of interpretive method in the 1960s and 70s, which led to fierce methodological disputes over contributions from Cambridge historians, they subsequently turned away from such questions in the 1980s and 90s, based on the assumption that all practitioners implicitly agree on how they interpret texts. With the twenty-first century, the vocation has entered a third phase in which there is an increasing recognition that hermeneutic methods have yet to be adequately addressed.

Given that political theorists have almost always imported insights from history and philosophy, there is a need in the discipline for contributions that seek to assess existing approaches to interpretation in terms of their advantages and costs for the study of politics. In particular, there has been no enquiry into the question of whether these approaches are ideologically sustained (whereby ‘ideologies’ are understood as systems of political thinking through which agents interpret the world that surrounds them (cf. Freeden 1996)), and if so, whether ideologically charged approaches in turn induce political theorists to systematically ignore some aspects of texts, whilst emphasizing others?

This workshop invites papers that aim to answer these and related questions with regard to modern accounts of hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricœur), ‘textual’ (Strauss et al.) and contextual approaches (Skinner for the ‘Cambridge School’, Koselleck and Richter for Begriffsgeschichte), Marxian readings (Althusser, Macpherson et al.), as well as deconstructive (Derrida et al.) and feminist interpretations (Okins, Pateman et al.). The workshop thus aspires to shed light on the politics of interpretive methods and to offer a space for innovative thinking about the tools that scholars use in analyzing texts.

Abstracts of up to 500 words are requested by Friday 20^th May 2011. Please submit abstracts, along with your CV to jens.olesen@stcatz.ox.ac.uk. For more information on the MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory, see http://manceptworkshops.wordpress.com/.

The Political Thought Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom will be holding a one-day conference on “Democracy and its Critics: Ancient and Modern” at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University on 22 October 2011 (tentative date and venue). Below is an outline of the aims of the conference and a call for papers. Interested participants should contact either Dr. Evangelia Sembou (evangelia.sembou@hotmail.com) or Dr. Zenon Stavrinides (z.stavrinides@leeds.ac.uk). Please send abstracts to BOTH Dr. Evangelia Sembou and Dr. Zenon Stavrinides. 
 
 (apologies for cross-posting)

DEMOCRACY AND ITS CRITICS: ANCIENT AND MODERN 

Most of the countries of the world are now democracies in that they have representative governmental institutions controlled by freely elected officials which operate under the rule of law and guarantee a wide array of individual rights, including equality and non-discrimination, personal liberty, freedom of expression, association and conscience, fair trials and a variety of social benefits. If a country’s democratic system works tolerably well, the large majority of its citizens would not want to live under a very different political system, such as an absolute monarchy, communism, fascism, one-party dictatorship or anarchism, and this provides some indication of the relationship between citizenry and democracy. Nevertheless,  in the past century or so democracies have had their critics and in some cases powerful enemies who have argued that democracy does not provide society the security, economic development, welfare and the other goods it ‘really’ needs. Some critics, for example, argue that modern liberal democracy is not a ‘real’ democracy as power is actually exercised not by the people, but by an oligarchy or a bureaucratic elite, and they compare this system unfavourably with the direct democracy of Athens and other Greek city-states in the 5th and 4th centuries BC where the body of citizens actually participated, on an equal footing, in making decisions on public issues. However, ancient democracy also had its critics, including great thinkers like Plato and Aristotle. Similar  republican forms of government in ancient Rome also had their critics and enemies.

The aim of the conference is to bring together and encourage discussion among scholars who are interested in the main features of ancient and modern forms of democracy, and seek to assess the purposes and methods of their governments by reference to the wishes and needs of the people. 

Papers are invited that deal with any of the above issues. Please send an abstract to BOTH Evangelia Sembou (evangelia.sembou@hotmail.com) and Zenon Stavrinides (z.stavrinides@leeds.ac.uk) by 30 April 2011. 

Eighth Annual Conference: August 31-September 2nd 2011

http://manceptworkshops.wordpress.com/

Final Call for Convenors - Deadline for Submission: 28th February 

From 2011, the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) in Politics at the University of Manchester will be organizing the annual Political Theory Workshops. Over the last seven years, participants from over twenty countries have come together in a series of workshops concerned with issues in political theory/philosophy widely construed. This note is a call for convenors for the 2011 workshops.

Workshop Structure  

Convenors organize a workshop which can have between 3 and 12 paper-givers.  The reading of these papers takes place over four sessions, each lasting three and a half hours. For workshops with just 3 paper givers this normally requires only one session, with 6 papers 2 sessions and so on. In most cases, paper-givers will be asked to speak for 30 minutes, and will then field questions and comments for a further 30 minutes. However, workshop convenors are free to organize the length of the presentation and question time as they see fit.  In short, a workshop can last for one session, or it may extend through all four sessions. For example, some may find it convenient to squeeze four paper-givers into one session or use 2 sessions with 2 papers read per session. Also, if a workshop has, say, 5 paper-givers, the second session can finish an hour early. On occasion workshop convenors in the past have had a ’round table’ discussion about a particular topic. This could have up to six speakers and would normally last for only one session.

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I am delighted to announce that the Journal of Moral Philosophy has launched our new online electronic submission system. Please either visit our online submission page to submit new work: http://www.editorialmanager.com/jmpbrill/

The JMP normally reviews papers in 6-8 weeks or less. Our acceptance rate is under 8%. We are a quarterly journal of philosophy publishing volume 8 in 2011. For more information, visit our homepage: http://www.brill.nl/jmp

4th Postgraduate Conference in Law and Philosophy, University of Stirling: 28-29 May 2011

CFP: 25 March 2011 

Keynote Speakers
Professor Andrew Simester, Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge and Professor of Law, National University of Singapore
Professor David Archard, Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, Lancaster University

Submission Deadline 25 March 2011

We are now inviting postgraduate students in philosophy, political theory, international relations and other related areas to submit high quality papers on the theme Rights and Cultural Diversity, broadly construed. Each postgraduate presentation should be of a maximum of 30 minutes, and will be followed by a 10 minute reply before an open discussion. Each session will last 90 minutes.

An abstract of 700 words (prepared for blind review) should be sent via email to kth1@stir.ac.uk by 25 March 2011 along with a separate cover letter containing the following information: author’s name, title of paper, institutional affiliation and contact information (email, phone number, mailing address). Selected participants will be required to send a full draft of their paper for review by 22 April 2011.

Please refer to the website http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2417815/L_P/Law_and_Philosophy/Welcome.html for details regarding the conference schedule, dinner, fees and accommodation.

Organizing Committee
Brian Ho kth1@stir.ac.uk
Ruth E Lowe rl332@st-andrews.ac.uk

CfP: 7th CEU conference in Social Sciences:

The Normative Significance of the Crisis

Chair: Andres Moles (molesa@ceu.hu), Central European University

We are as yet uncertain of the effects the recent crisis will have. We have even less certainty about  the extent to which it will challenge some of our normative views about what the global order should be or about how we should organize  domestic political institutions. The panel reflects on how recent changes in the political arena impact on our normative views, and how our normative views can direct whatever changes need to be made to existing institutions and practices.

The organizers provide hotel accommodation (two nights) and meals for all presenters,

Refer to ceuconf2011@yahoo.com for further inquiries. Abstracts should be sent to the panel chair (molesa@ceu.hu)

Deadline for paper proposals: March 1, 2011.

More about the conference: http://ceuconf2011.wordpress.com/panels/

CALL FOR PAPERS - Deadline for submission of abstract: 11th April 2011

Brave New World 2011, the Fifteenth Annual Postgraduate Conference organised under the auspices of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT), will take place on Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th June 2011 at the University of Manchester.

We are pleased to announce that our guest speakers this year are:

Joseph Raz (University of Oxford)

Andrea Sangiovanni (King’s College London)

The Brave New World conference series is now established as a leading international forum dedicated exclusively to the discussion of postgraduate research in political theory. The conference offers a great opportunity for postgraduates from many different countries and universities to share experiences, concerns and research interests, to exchange stimulating ideas and to make new friends - all in a financially accessible and highly informal setting. Participants will also have the chance to meet and talk about their work with eminent academics, including members of faculty from the University of Manchester and guest speakers, who will deliver keynote addresses at the event.

Guest speakers in previous years have included Brian Barry, Simon Caney, G.A. Cohen, Roger Crisp, Cecile Fabre, Jerry Gaus, Peter Jones, Chandran Kukathas, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Susan Mendus, David Miller, Onora O’Neill, Michael Otsuka, Bhikhu Parekh, Carole Pateman, Anne Phillips, Thomas Pogge, Quentin Skinner, Adam Swift, Philippe Van Parijs, Leif Wenar, Andrew Williams, and Jonathan Wolff.

Papers focusing on any area of political theory or political philosophy are welcome. If you would like to present a paper, please send a 300-word, anonymised abstract, including the title of the paper, to Brave.New.World@manchester.ac.uk, no later than 11th April 2011. Please also include in your email your name and institutional affiliation. Please note that the conference is self-financed and participants are responsible for seeking their own funding. For further details please contact Dean Redfearn at Brave.New.World@manchester.ac.uk

Call for Papers

Special Workshop at the World Congress of Philosophy of Law (IVR)
Frankfurt, 15-19 August 2011

Short summary

E-democracy aims for broader and more active Internet-enhanced citizenship involvement but can there be any “democracy” after representative democracy? Should we understand it in terms of deliberative and/or participative democracy? How is e-government impacting on transparency and accountability? What role does institutionalized mediation play in ICTs? What kind of e-governance processes can enhance legitimacy in complex legal systems?

E-democracy has been cutting the edge a while, yet we need to integrate the current state of the art with the toolkit of the analytical and normative perspectives of legal and political theory. The purpose of the workshop is to go beyond the polarization between the apologists that hold the web to overcome the one-to-many architecture of opinion-building in traditional democratic legitimacy, and the critics that warn cyberoptimism entails authoritarian or paternalistic technocracy.

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I just received a call for papers through the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics list that might be of interest to Public Reason members.  As you’ll see, it’s encouraging submissions very soon (within a few days for best chance of acceptance).  (Update: originally I said I’d be posting two calls, but the second turned out not to be very relevant.)

Call for Papers

The 37th Conference on Value Inquiry “Liberty, Equality, and Business” will be held at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska 14-16 April 2011.  Broad participation is sought.  Papers and proposals for papers that address moral considerations such as liberty and equality and their interplay in business and society are particularly welcome.  Early Submission is strongly encouraged and advised.  Early notification of acceptance will begin February 1st.

Papers should be between 20-25 minutes reading time.    Papers may be practically or theoretically oriented.  Topics may be disciplinary and range over issues within a single field of value inquiry such as normative ethics, applied ethics, aesthetics, political theory, or economics.  Topics may be interdisciplinary and range over issues between two or more fields of value inquiry.  Topics may even be meta-disciplinary and range over purely conceptual issues important for fuller understanding of values in business and society at large.

Recent events in the financial sector have shown us again that shared values of trust, integrity, and fairness are essential for the well-being of society. Philosophers have always pointed this out: the virtue ethicist seeks excellence and a healthy society, the Thomist seeks the common good, the Hobbesian a social contract which will bring peace and stability, the Kantian pursues a just kingdom of Ends, the Utilitarian seeks the greatest good for the most, the Rawlsian seeks a society of justice and fairness. Right values are the foundation for a society which functions well. This year we especially encourage submissions which broadly pursue this theme from either a theoretical or applied perspective.

To submit a paper, an abstract, or a proposal, or for additional information contact: Dr. Andy Gustafson, College of Business Administration (BA 423), 2500 California Plaza, Creighton University, Omaha, NE  68178 e-mail:  andrewgustafson@creighton.edu  ph:402-669-9846 Conference Website:  http://wpmu.creighton.edu/business/cvi

Warwick: 4-6 July 2011 | CFP: 15 March 2011

The 2011 conference of the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy will be held at the University of Warwick on 4-6 July 2011. The theme of the conference is “Authority, Legitimacy and Rights.” Sub-themes include:

• Legitimacy and authority
• Human rights
• Diversity, pluralism and toleration
• Political power and punishment
• Environmental justice
• Democracy
• Property rights
• Just war.

The keynote speakers are Tom Christiano (Arizona) and Anthony Duff (Minnesota/Stirling). Send an abstract of no more than 400 words to Dean Machin (dean.machin [at] warwick.ac.uk) by 15 March 2011.

Notre Dame: 13-15 October 2011| CFP: 15 February 2011

The Association for Political Theory (APT) invites proposals for its ninth annual conference, October 13-15, 2011, at the University of Notre Dame.  To learn more about the Association and its annual conference, please visit the APT website.  The Association for Political Theory welcomes proposals from all approaches and on all topics in political theory, political philosophy, and the history of political thought.  Faculty, advanced PhD candidates, and independent scholars are eligible to participate.  We also encourage faculty to volunteer to serve as chairs and/or discussants.

How to Apply:  To apply online, click here. Proposals are due by midnight on Tuesday, February 15, 2011 (PST).  Please review the proposal guidelines described below before completing a proposal form.  Each participant may submit one paper and one co-authored paper proposal.  To propose a paper, each participant must submit an abstract of 300-400 words and a recent copy of his/her vita.  If a copy of the CV can be found online, the applicant can provide the web address in the relevant box on the proposal form.  Otherwise, the applicant must email a copy of the CV to aptproposals [at] gmail.com with his or her name as the subject line.  Each participant is required to submit a proposal form, even if the proposal is part of a co-authored paper.  Please note:  you must both submit the proposal form and email your CV in order for your proposal to be considered by the Program Committee.

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Northwestern SETPP: 19-21 May 2011 | CFP: 15 February 2011

The Northwestern University Society for Ethical Theory and Political Philosophy will hold their fifth annual conference on 19-21 May 2011. The keynote speakers are Philip Pettit and R. Jay Wallace.  Submissions from faculty and graduate students are welcome, as some sessions will be reserved for student presentations. Please submit an essay of approximately 4000 words and an abstract of at most 150 words. Essay topics in all areas of ethical theory and political philosophy will be considered, although some priority will be given to essays that take up themes from the works of Philip Pettit and R. Jay Wallace, such as responsibility, practical reasoning, freedom, democratic theory, constructivism, contractualism, individual agency, and collective agency. Essays and abstracts should be prepared for blind review in word, rtf, or pdf format. Graduate submissions should be sent by email to leegoldsmith2012 [at] u.northwestern.edu; faculty submissions should be sent by e-mail to garthoff [at] northwestern.edu. Notices of acceptance will be sent by 31 March 2011. For more information, please contact Jon Garthoff at the e-mail address above or visit our website.

NO WAR: 3-5 Nov 2011 | CFP: 1 March 2011

Dave Shoemaker is sending out a call for abstracts for the first biennial New Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility (NO WAR), to be held in New Orleans, LA at the Intercontinental Hotel on November 3-5, 2011.

Abstracts are welcome in any area or on any topic having to do with agency and/or responsibility.  Perspectives beyond just those from moral philosophy (e.g., psychology, legal theory, neuroscience, economics, metaphysics, and more) are welcome.  (To see more about the workshop’s general aims and other details, follow this link.)

Abstracts should be 2-3 double-spaced pages and are due no later than March 1, 2011.  Please send abstracts by e-mail to David Shoemaker, dshoemak [at] tulane.edu.  A program committee will evaluate submissions and make decisions by early May.

NO WAR is a biennial workshop featuring the presentation of sophisticated original research on issues roughly captured under the label “agency and responsibility.”  This general area involves investigation of such questions as: What does it mean to be an agent?  How (if at all) does the nature of personhood and personal identity across time bear on questions of agency?  What is the nature of, and relation between, moral and criminal responsibility?  What is the relation between responsibility and the metaphysical issues of determinism and free will?  What do various psychological disorders (autism, psychopathy, cognitive disabilities) tell us about agency and responsibility?  What is involved in the development of moral agency?  What is the will, willpower, and weakness (or strength) of will?  What do the results from neuroscience imply (if anything) for our questions about agency and responsibility?  What is the nature of autonomy and how is it related to agency and responsibility?

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CALL FOR PAPERS

The fifth annual meeting of the Felician Ethics Conference will be held at the Rutherford Campus of

Felician College
223 Montross Ave
Rutherford, NJ 07070
on Saturday, April 30, 2011, 9 am - 6 pm

Plenary Speaker: John E. Hare
Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology
Yale Divinity School, Yale University
Author of The Moral Gap (Oxford, 1996)
will present “Can We Be Good without God?”

Submissions on any topic in moral philosophy (broadly construed) are welcome, not exceeding 25 minutes’ presentation time (approximately 3,000 words). Please send submissions via email in format suitable for blind review by Feb. 15, 2011 to: felicianethicsconference@gmail.com..
Undergraduate submissions are invited for a proposed session consisting of undergraduate papers.

Alternatively, send surface mail to:
Irfan Khawaja, Conference Coordinator
Dept. of Philosophy
Felician College
262 S. Main St.
Lodi, NJ 07644

If you have any questions, please contact Irfan Khawaja, (201) 559-6000 (x6288), or felicianethicsconference@gmail.com.

***DEADLINE EXTENDED FROM 4/1 to 4/4*** 

*CALL FOR PAPERS*

“The Power to Imagine Better”: The Philosophy of Harry Potter

This interdisciplinary conference will be held at the campus of

Marymount Manhattan College

221 East 71^st Street

New York, New York 10021

Saturday, October 29, 2011, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. (Regina Peruggi Room)

“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”   -J. K. Rowling

Literary Scholar John Granger maintains that the Harry Potter corpus has become the “shared text” of the 21^st century.  Our attraction to this series, however, goes beyond its narrative appeal: the Harry Potter books contain a wide variety of philosophical themes that invite our study and discussion.

Submissions are welcome on any philosophical theme or issue arising in the Harry Potter corpus that intersects with metaphysics, ethics, religion, literature, and/or politics, not exceeding 20-25 minutes’ presentation time (approximately 2,500 words). Please send full essay submissions with a 150-word abstract via email (in Word, rtf, or pdf) in a format suitable for blind review by April 1, 2011 to: cbiondi@mmm.edu.  Notification of acceptance will be made by June 1, 2011, and a binder of the papers accepted for presentation will be made available to all of the presenters by the end of Summer 2011.  (Conference registration fee will be $25.)

If you have any questions, please contact the Conference Coordinator, Carrie-Ann Biondi (Assistant Prof. of Philosophy, Dept. of Philosophy & Religious Studies), at (212) 517-0637 or cbiondi@mmm.edu.

Public Reasoners,

We are trying to produce an electronic publication with articles written for and by undergraduates interested in political philosophy.  Our student board has sent out a Call for Papers for undergraduate scholarship that promotes in interesting read in political philosophy and/or serves as exemplary research work at the undergraduate level.  While the journal is produced by students in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis/Saint Paul, submissions are open to all.  If you have any interested undergraduates, or you happen to be one who is reading this, please consider contributing.  The papers selected for publication will be selected by the student board, and undergraduates will work with the student board in producing a finished draft of their submission for publication this summer. Below is the CFP our students wrote.  Thanks for your attention.

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I am delighted to announce a new book series in moral philosophy:

Studies in Moral Philosophy is a new book series affiliated with the Journal of Moral Philosophy. This new series will publish books in all areas of normative philosophy, including applied ethics and metaethics, as well as moral, legal, and political theory. Research book proposals exploring non-Western traditions are also welcome. The series seeks to promote lively discussions and debates among the wider philosophical community by publishing work that avoids unnecessary jargon without sacrificing academic rigour.

Prospective authors interested in contributing to this series should contact the Series Editor, Thom Brooks, in the first instance.

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!

The Annual Conference of the Canadian Political Science Association takes place in Waterloo, Ontario from May 16-18, 2011.

Loren King and I are the section heads for the political theory section of the conference. I encourage you to consider submitting a paper proposal (deadline is Nov. 3rd) via the online submission site.  And please help spread the word about the conference.

Submissions on any topic in political theory are welcome.

We also invite submissions for our Workshop on the themes Global Justice and Global Governance. Some details about the workshop:

The workshop organizers invite political theorists to submit proposals that explore the themes of global justice and global governance. What obligations and duties do we have to non-nationals? Which principles and (existing or possible) global institutions are best suited to address the diverse concerns that arise in the world today? And which historical figures in the canon of political theory (e.g. Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, etc.) promote ideas and concepts that can help us address the challenges of today’s interdependent and complex world?

We seek papers that cover these themes, and related issues, from all areas of political theory (e.g. normative theory, history of political thought, applied theory, etc.) that bring precision and reflection to the topics of global justice and global governance. From cosmopolitanism and nationalism, to concerns of global health, immigration and international institutions, we invite papers that link theory to the practical concerns that arise in an era of globalization.

The workshop will consist of a number of panels with three papers and a commentator in each panel.

I hope some of you will be able to join us in Waterloo for the CPSA conference in May!

Cheers,
Colin

This is a call for papers for a Panel(s) on ‘Genetics and Justice’ for the forthcoming PSA Conference in London. The conference takes place from the 19-21st April 2011 and the conference theme is ‘Transforming Politics: New Synergies’, including the notion of developing new and revisiting old theory.
 
Panel Organiser/Chair: Dr. Oliver Feeney, National University of Ireland, Galway oliver.p.feeney@nuigalway.ie

Panel Abstract: This PSA Panel seeks to explore how current and speculative advances in new genetic technologies affect our understanding of social justice. This exploration focuses both on how contemporary theories of social justice can be applied to the ‘post-genetic’ world and also how such attempts to apply these theories may highlight certain strengths and weaknesses within social justice in the first place. Overall, the Panel seeks to answer a narrow question (What access to new genetic technologies would be just?) and a wide question (What does the first answer tell us about justice?). The answer to the wide question will have implications far beyond genetic technology. Papers in any area of the social justice implications of new genetic technologies are very welcome as well as papers that discuss the closely related questions on the treatment versus enhancement distinction, permissible versus morally obligatory interventions, designer disability and respect for parental autonomy versus the rights of the child for an ‘open future’ and so on.

If you are interested, please send an email to me, including a paper title with abstract of not more than 200 words. Submissions must be received by Wednesday 22nd Sept to be considered for the overall 24th Sept deadline for panel proposals.