The Face and the Interface: Levinas, Teaching, and Technology

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NALS will reschedule its 2020 and 2021 summer conferences. Previous conference plans for the “Solidarity and Community” conference, hosted in Vermont, have been postponed until summer 2021. In the interim, members of the NALS Board of Directors are organizing a 2020 conference to be broadcast and shared by remote video – synchronous and asynchronous.

“The Face and the Interface:Levinas, Teaching, and Technology”

The COVID-19 pandemic has engendered a great deal of economic and political turmoil around the world, not the least of which involves necessary campus closures across the globe. As communities and institutions struggle to adapt to the critical exigencies of this moment, the pandemic reveals a number of longstanding inequities and injustices that exacerbate the global crisis. From its beginning, nearly 15 years ago, the North American Levinas Society has postured itself as an organization concerned, first, with opening ecumenical pedagogical spaces wherein we take up the meaning of Levinas’ “ethics as first philosophy” across generations. A critical mission for NALS is to bring young Levinas scholars together with established scholars in efforts to effectuate the ethical across political, economic, and cultural horizons. In this moment of pandemic, we draw from this mission to organize a virtual conference on the theme, “The Face and the Interface: Levinas, Teaching, and Technology.”