Imagining Feminist Alternatives

“Imagining Feminist Alternatives” 

MSU Graduate Philosophy Conference

Conference Dates: March 26th and 27th, 2027

Location: Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 

Submissions: Papers of between 3,000 and 4,000 words may be submitted via Google Forms by 11:59pm January 8, 2027.

Keynote speaker: Dr. Johanna Oksala (Loyola University Chicago)

The 21st Century world is experiencing a widespread retreat from feminist ideals and 20th Century advances. A confluence of forces increasingly drives toward an apocalyptic future while their necessity to the given world casts feminist resistance as world-ending. In Feminism, Capitalism and Ecology (2023), Johanna Oksala replies that “feminist philosophy… has an indispensable role to play in expanding the political imagination that must necessarily accompany the profound economic and societal transition that lies ahead” (134). Feminist philosophers have often centered the role of feminist imagination in breaking with realities of gender oppression, defining problems for feminist response, identifying epistemological lacunae, developing feminist methods and worldviews, positing alternatives, practicing resistance, and organizing new feminist worlds. Prompted by this motif in feminist philosophy, the 2027 Michigan State University Graduate Philosophy Conference invites papers on any topic relating to feminism and philosophy, especially at thematic intersections with alternatives and imagination.

Possible topics include:

• Pathways for 21st Century feminist politics

• Feminist pedagogy & subjectivity 

• Relationships between capitalism, patriarchy, & imperialism 

• Issues of periodization, temporality, & historical disjuncture 

• Feminist epistemologies, agnotologies, & hermeneutics 

• Feminist method & critique

• Feminist ecology & ecofeminist futures

• Feminist bioethics & philosophy of science

• Experiences of Otherness, alterity, & subalternity

• Black, Indigenous, decolonial, & postcolonial feminist theory & practice 

• Feminist ethics of care 

• Antifeminist ideologies

• Rupture in radical, revolutionary, & Marxist feminisms 

• Queer theory & transfeminism 

Notice of acceptance or rejection will be communicated in late January by email.

Additional inquiries may be directed to [email protected].

Conference Organizers: Rebecca Pincus, So Yoon Kim, Reese Haller, Hannah Scotch, Scott Peyton, and Erik Lynch