Imagining Otherwise: Radical Alterity, Social Justice, and Philosophies of Difference

 Graduate Student Conference.

Deadline for Application: January 10th, 2019.

If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.

-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

The Philosophy Equity Collective is a group of graduate students in Philosophy at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Our mandate is to promote marginalized philosophical thought, equity in philosophy programs, and to build community and comradery in the process! In the spirit of this, we are planning our first conference Imagining Otherwise: Radical Alterity, Social Justice, and Philosophies of Difference. This conference will provide graduate students with creative approaches to philosophy, offer the opportunity to present relevant philosophical work, and to engage with like-minded individuals.

The philosophy of difference as broadly construed for the purposes of this conference includes political, epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical ideas that allow us to consider the position of the other and to think alterity in diverse ways. This may involve approaching philosophical concepts from artistic avenues or from non-Western perspectives; it may emphasize embodied social justice work, or the structures that re-inscribe oppression; it may follow Levinas’ assertion that “the whole of philosophy is only a meditation on Shakespeare” and utilize non-philosophical texts to explore these issues. Difference here simply implies the refusal to subsume other cultures into the Western perspective while noting the uniquely human experiences that we share.

We are interested in 300-500 word abstracts on topics that engage with unique perspectives in philosophical thought, or challenge norms about what constitutes a topic of philosophical interest. Areas of interest include but are not limited to philosophy, LGBTQ+ studies, philosophy of race, gender studies, indigenous studies, legal thought, political science, aesthetics, phenomenology, metaphysics, and epistemology.

Those interested in presenting a 20 minute paper should submit their title, abstract, and a short (max 150 word) bio by email to the Equity Collective ([email protected]) no later than January 10th, 2019.

Any questions may be directed to [email protected].

For more information on the Equity Collective and the conference, please see our blog: https://philosophyequitycollective.wordpress.com/