CFP: Conference on Philosophy and Non-Monogamies

The last few years have witnessed a burgeoning interest in monogamy and non-monogamy within academic philosophy.

While practices of non-monogamy are certainly not new, and philosophical discussion thereof has been ongoing in many contexts, this conference aims to bring together those currently engaged in philosophical work in this area, and help shape the agenda for future discussions.  

Questions to be discussed may include:

• What kinds of relationships are considered monogamous or non-monogamous? What are the roles of sex and love in characterizing such relationships?
• How have figures in the history of philosophy engaged with non-monogamy and/or developed views that could be useful in discussing it?
• How does non-monogamy intersect with questions of social position and identity (such as race, gender, age, class and disability)?
• How does non-monogamy work to dismantle or uphold oppressive systems such as mononormativity, patriarchy, settler colonialism, and/or heteronormativity?
• What is at stake when qualifying non-monogamies with terms like “Ethical Non-monogamy” or “Consensual Non-monogamy”?
• How can work in other disciplines inform philosophical work on non-monogamy?
• How might the centralization of sex or romance among non-monogamies inform or detract from its radical or transformative potential?
• How might meta-ethical views (i.e. utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, ethics of care, or other meta-ethical frameworks, etc. ) be applied to questions of non-monogamy?

We invite submissions of abstracts from faculty and graduate students working in these areas who are interested in presenting work at the conference. The organizers wish to publish a volume which features the work presented at the conference. Presenters will be invited to submit article-length versions of their papers for inclusion in an edited volume.  

Abstracts should be 750-1000 words long, prepared for anonymous review, and submitted in pdf format as an email attachment to: [email protected].  

The deadline for submissions is March 31st, 2022.  

Authors will be notified of the organizers' decisions by May 31st, 2022.