North American Sartre Society 31st Annual Conference

North American Sartre Society

31st Annual Meeting

Call for Abstracts

23-24 October 2026

Virtual Zoom Conference 

Submission Deadline: May 15, 2026

Theme

A.I., Virtual Worlds, and Digital Existentialism

The North American Sartre Society invites proposals for our 31st meeting.  Our conference theme is A.I., Virtual Worlds, and Digital Existentialism. We encourage papers that explore existentialism as it relates to A.I., social media, data centers, and virtual worlds. We encourage papers on topics and questions such as: 

·       How does artificial intelligence reshape our understanding of selfhood, agency, and responsibility?

·       Can virtual worlds provide authentic forms of meaning, identity, and community, or are they structurally alienating?

·       What does “existence” mean when one’s social, emotional, and creative life is increasingly mediated by A.I. systems and platforms?

·       Do A.I.-generated personas and avatars challenge distinctions between authenticity and bad faith?

·       How should we understand freedom and choice when algorithmic systems increasingly guide behaviors, desires, and commitments?

·       What ethical obligations do creators of A.I. and virtual worlds have toward users’ existential well-being and sense of meaning?

We invite proposals from any area of Sartre studies and from any disciplinary background. In the spirit of Sartre’s eclectic thinking, we encourage proposals that address philosophy, literature, theater, aesthetics, psychology, politics, intellectual history, art, music, and other disciplines. Aiming to foster diverse and pluralistic approaches, we understand Sartre Studies broadly to indicate work in the existentialist tradition, including work emerging from thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Angela Davis, Albert Camus, Anna Julia Cooper, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Lewis R. Gordon, Frederick Douglass, Kathryn Sophia Belle, Steve Biko, Naomi Zack, Chabani Manganyi, Emilio Uranga, Jorge Portilla, W.E.B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire, Keiji Nishitani, Azzedine Haddour, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Gabriel Marcel, Emmanuel Levinas, Sara Ahmed, danielle davis, bell hooks, Kamau Brathwaite, Nathalie Etoke, Achille Mbembe, Suzanne Césaire, James Baldwin and others. 

Keynote Speaker: Stefano Gualeni

Title: Existential Immersion and Care in Virtual Worlds

Stefano Gualeni is a Full Professor at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta. His academic books include Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools (Palgrave, 2015), Virtual Existentialism (Palgrave Pivot, 2020, with Daniel Vella), and Fictional Games: A Philosophy of Worldbuilding and Imaginary Play (Bloomsbury, 2023, with Riccardo Fassone). Stefano’s games, essays and philosophical fictions can be found on his webpage at www.gua-le-ni.com

Stefano’s philosophical fictions include The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction (Routledge, 2024), What We Owe the Dead (Set Margins', 2025), Scholar's Codex (Tune and Fairweather, 2026), and Errata Corpora (Set Margins', forthcoming in 2027)

The submission process:

●      The submission deadline is May 15. 

●      We are accepting abstracts of 300-500 words. Reading time for papers is 20-25 minutes. 

●      We will accept proposals for both individual papers and panel proposals. Please indicate if you are interested in the teaching existentialism session. 

●      English or French is acceptable.

●      Please submit your abstract (or any questions) by email to NASS President, Dane Sawyer, [email protected]

●      Graduate students are encouraged to submit.

●      All proposals will be forwarded to the program committee for review.

Contacts:

●      Dane Sawyer, NASS President: [email protected]

●      Paul Gyllenhammer, NASS Co-President: [email protected]

●      Kiki Berk, NASS Past-President [email protected]

●      Kimberly Engels, NASS Treasurer: [email protected] 

●      Damon Boria, NASS Member-at-Large: [email protected] 

●      T Storm Heter, NASS Member at Large: [email protected] 

●      James Sares, NASS Member-at-large: [email protected]

●      Tom Meagher: NASS Member-at-large: [email protected]

●      Thomas Payre, NASS Member-at-large: [email protected]

●      Varun Chandrasekhar, NASS Member-at-Large: [email protected]

●      NASS Webpage: https://www.northamericansartresociety.org

●      NASS Knowledge Commons Page: https://hcommons.org/groups/north-american-sartre-studies-society/

●      NASS Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/SartreSociety/

●      Sartre Studies International https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/sartre-studies/sartre-studies-overview.xml