Knowledge from the Margins. Social Philosophy and Vernacular Culture in Progressive-Era America

How do marginalized communities generate knowledge about their own conditions, and what role can extra-academic voices play in social critique? This workshop brings together philosophers, historians, and literary scholars to explore these questions through the historical lens of Progressive-Era America — a period of intense social transformation in which questions of race, gender, and class intersected in new and consequential ways. Drawing on the work of Jane Addams and W.E.B. Du Bois as its primary intellectual reference points, the workshop investigates the resources that early twentieth-century American social philosophy offers for thinking about knowledge, power, and the possibilities of social transformation.

Introduction

9:15–9:30 Tullio Viola (Maastricht University): Introduction and Greetings

Morning Session

9:30–10:30  Bryan Wagner (University of California, Berkeley): “The Vernacular Jurisprudence of the Police Matinee”

10:30–11:30  Elvira Basevich (University of California, Davis): “Between Civic and Gendered Virtues in the Black Women’s Club Movement”

11:30–11:45  Coffee break

11:45–12:45  Tullio Viola (Maastricht University): “Tales of Poverty. Jane Addams and W.E.B. Du Bois on Vernacular Traditions as Critical Sense-Making”

12:45–14:00  Lunch break

Afternoon Session

14:00–15:00  Matteo Santarelli (University of Bologna): “James, Addams and the Myth of the War Experience. Some Remarks on Psychology and Epistemology”

15:00–16:00  Franco Palazzi (Maastricht University): “Between Car-Window Sociology and Epistemic Ideology Critique: A Du Boisian Methodology for Political Theory?”

16:00–16:15  Coffee break

16:15–17:15  Núria Sara Miras Boronat (University of Barcelona) and Chiara Ferrari (Università Cattolica, Milan): “Memory, Narrative and Situated Knowledge: Reassessing Jane Addams’s Contribution to Social Theory”

17:15–17:40  Concluding Remarks