Tennessee Value and Agency (TVA): Grief, Trauma, Anger, and Resilience.

Call for Submissions: TVA 2026 (Knoxville, TN, October 23-25, 2026): Grief, Trauma, Anger, and Resilience.

The Tennessee Value and Agency (TVA) conference ran annually from 2012 to 2020, when the world was hit with a pandemic. The TVA had attracted some of the most active philosophers on topics revolving around value and agency and has featured as keynotes some of the most prominent philosophers of our time. In 2026, this storied conference will be revived. This time (as in 2019) we aim to attract participants and presenters from a wide spectrum of psychological, social and political sciences and involve an equally diverse set of presenters. In 2026 the TVA will again bring together prominent keynote speakers whose work has had a significant impact both within their fields and across disciplines. The theme for the 2026 revival of the TVA conference is Grief, Trauma, Anger, and Resilience.

Confirmed keynotes:

• Michael Cholbi (Philosophy, University of Edinburgh)
• Nancy Snow (Philosophy, Center for Democratic Governance, University of Kansas)
• Mariam Thalos (Philosophy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
• Melissa Burchard (Philosophy, UNC Asheville)

The conference will explore the conceptual, moral, and social-political dimensions of a range of so-called negative affective experiences (e.g., grief, trauma, anger) alongside those counterparts routinely acknowledged as constructive or life-affirming (e.g., joy, resilience). We are particularly interested in how these phenomena shape (and in turn are shaped by) agency, responsibility, embodiment, and our relations to others. While trauma and related concepts have received increasing attention across the psychological and social scientific disciplines, there has been comparatively little sustained philosophical engagement with the concepts themselves and their broader normative implications. Our aim is to create a space for rigorous, interdisciplinary conversation that brings philosophy into dialogue with psychology, psychiatry, literature, social theory, public health, and related fields.

Contributions are solicited for presentations of approximately 25 minutes.

Submissions will be accepted until Friday May 8th, 2026.

Please submit an extended abstract of up to 1500 words, plus a short abstract of 150 words, in a single PDF document without any author identifying information, here: