CFP: Borders, Identity, and Belonging

The 3rd Annual Susanne E. Foster Graduate Philosophy Conference will be held on Saturday, March 21st as a hybrid in-person/online conference. The in-person location for the conference will be Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The deadline for submitting abstracts is January 15th. 

The theme for the conference is “Borders, Identity, and Belonging.” This theme is inspired, first, by two ongoing department reading groups respectively focused on Indigenous Philosophy and the work of Gloria E. Anzaldúa. Second, by pursuing the question: how does/should philosophy respond to, help shape, and become lived in our current political moment? We welcome connections across various disciplines and approaches, such as social/political philosophy, critical epistemology, metaphysics/ontology, legal studies, literature and writing studies, pedagogy, queer/gender studies, and more.

Possible lines of inquiry include, but are not limited to, the following:

●      What constitutes a border in personal, legal, and/or metaphysical contexts? How should we define the temporal and spatial nature of borders?

●      What is the distinction between personal, communal, and national identity in legal, philosophical, and/or lived contexts?

●      Conceptions of identity, intersubjectivity and the time/place/space of borders.

●      What are the ways ecological crisis intersects with (im)migration, displacement, and environmental racism?

●      Interactions with ecology broadly, from theoretical, metaphysical, and political perspectives.

●      Theories and methodologies of Indigeneity, Diaspora, Immigration/Migration and their crossings.

●      How do theorists/activists/people make sense of the world through art and artistic practice?

●      How have encounters with borders/the border changed given changes in politics, technology, etc?

●      Methodologies of decolonialism, broadly construed. 

●      Anzaldúan approaches to writing, creativity, teaching, identity, and political activism.

●      Interactions between Anzaldúa’s approach to identity and indigenous philosophy, and how might critiques levied against her change her formations and/or how might we build upon their disagreements?

Abstracts are to be prepared for presentations that will be 20 minutes long. Abstracts are to be 500 words or less and submitted via https://bit.ly/PGSA2026. Presenters will be paired with a commentator who will respond to their paper with 5 minutes for conversation. There will be a general Q&A that follows. Full papers will be due to commentators by March 7th. Acceptances will be distributed by February 7th.