CFP: The Spontaneity of Freedom Summer Workshop

This project investigates a familiar but under-theorized variety of freedom. Spontaneous freedom is the freedom of unplanned, unscripted, unalienated activity. It is the freedom we feel when we set off to explore a city we have never visited before, open a sketchbook to a blank page, or quit a job to take up a new vocation.

The focus of the project’s First Summer Workshop will be the nature of spontaneous freedom and the varieties of spontaneous experience.

Abstract Submission:

We welcome submissions from any philosophical tradition, and from fields including, but not limited to, ethics; political philosophy and political theory; aesthetics; epistemology; philosophy of mind; art history; musicology; literary theory; film studies; anthropology; sociology; and psychoanalysis.

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words and anonymised for review. They should be submitted via email to [email protected] alongside a document listing the paper title as well as the author’s name, institutional affiliation, and career stage. The deadline for submissions is 1 April 2025; selected speakers can expect to be notified by mid-April.

Contributions towards travel costs are available for speakers without access to institutional support.

We aim to make this conference as accessible as possible; speakers should please inform us of any accommodations they would need to participate fully.