Philosophy and its Others
2009 Conference Schedule
The conference schedule can be downloaded as a Microsoft Word document.
Sunday June 28th
2:30–3:15pm, JHB Foyer, Registration
3:00–3:15, Open Remarks
- Robert Gibbs (Jackman Institute Director) and Sol Neely (NALS President)
3:15–4:45pm Plenary Session: Second Annual Raissa and Emmanuel Levinas Lecture (sponsored by Societe Internationale de ReCherche Emmanuel Levinas)
- James D. Hatley (Salisbury Univ.): Discursus without Silence: Skeptical Poetics and Noisy Legacies in Celan’s ‘Psalm’ and Levinas’ Otherwise than Being
Moderator: Jeffrey Dudiak (King’s Univ. Coll.)
5:00–6:30pm Concurrent Sessions 1A–C
- Session 1A, JHB 100A: Levinas, Zionism, and Israel/Palestine
- Moderator: Mitchell Verter (New School Univ.)
- Hugh Cummins (Univ. Coll.-Dublin): Diasporas and Zionisms: Levinas’s “Unhappy Consciousness”
- Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona Coll.): Levinas’s Two Israels
- Sol Neely (Purdue Univ.): “Wherever We Stand”: Levinas, Utopia, and Genocide
- Session 1B, JHB 418 Il y a / Nature
- Moderator: David Blades (Univ. of Victoria)
- Clarence Joldersma (Calvin Coll.): An Ethical Sinnegebung Respectful of the Non-Human: il y a and the Return to Nature
- Lyman Mower (Syracuse Univ.): Levinas’s American Other: Philosophy, Religion, and Ethics in Henry David Thoreau
- Kelly Presutti (SUNY-Stony Brook): The Landscape of the il y a
- Session 1C, JHB 1040 Searching for Seeds: Rethinking the Trace
- Moderator: Petra Eperjesi (Univ. of Toronto)
- Daniel Goudge (SUNY-Stony Brook): At Least We’re Warm: Re-thinking the Caress in Levinas
- Monica Bravo (SUNY-Stony Brook): Time, Rhythm, Body: Trio A (The Mind is a Muscle Part 1)
- Thaddeus Taylor-O’Neil (SUNY-Stony Brook): Emmanuel Levinas and the World Forgotten: The Art of Surfing and the Sea as Ethical Other
6:45–8:15pm Plenary Session: Pedagogy Symposium: Teaching Levinas
- Katherine E. Kirby (St. Michael’s College)
- Moderator: Daniel T. Kline (Univ. of Alaska-Anchorage)
- Respondent: Sandor Goodhart (Purdue Univ.)
Monday, June 29th
8:00–9:00, JHB Foyer, Registration
9:00–10:30 Concurrent Sessions 2A–C
- Session 2A, JHB 100A, Utopia and Nihilism
- Moderator: Victoria Tahmasebi (Univ. of Toronto-Mississauga)
- Richard A. Cohen (SUNY-Buffalo): Art, Sacred Space, and Utopia
- Ryan Fritsch (McGill Univ.): The Art of Responsibility and The Ethics of Imagination in uTOpia
- Jill Stauffer (CUNY-John Jay): Heroes, Nihilists and Good Samaritans: Levinas and Taylor on the Ethical Self
- Session 2B, JHB 418, Post-Colonialism, Latin American Philosophy, and Human Rights<
- Moderator: Leah Kalmanson (Univ. of Hawaii-Manoa)
- Simone Drichel (Univ. of Otago): The Other Other: Levinas and Postcolonial Critique
- Jorge Rodriguez (Univ. of San Carlos of Guatemala): Concrete Moral Conscience in the Latin American Tradition of Human Rights: A Levinasian Interpretation
- Lutz Alexander Keferstein (UNAM-Mexico City): Levinas beyond Europe and Judaism: Levinasian Responsibility within the Latin American Context
- Session 2C, JHB 1040, Levinasian Variations on Plato
- Moderator: Rebecca Rose (Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
- Sarah Allen (Concordia Univ.): The Demotion of Erotic Love: Levinas’s Ambiguous Relationship to Plato
- Deborah Achtenberg (Univ. of Nevada, Reno): Levinas and Plato on Violence
- Catherine Ludlum Foos (Indiana Univ.-East): Philosophy and its Others: Justice and Friendship
10:45–12:15pm, Concurrent Sessions 3A–C
- Session 3A, JHB 100A, Current Research: Two Authors Face-to-Face
- Michael L. Morgan (Indiana. Univ.): Discovering Levinas (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007)
- Diane Perpich (Clemson Univ.): The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford Univ. Press, 2008)
- Discussant: John Drabinski (Amherst Coll.): “Levinas After ‘Levinas’”
- Session 3B, JHB 418, Ethical and Political Phenomenology (1)
- Moderator: Desirée Ramacus-Bushnell (Univ. of Memphis)
- Boris Pantev (York/Ryerson Univ.): Substitution, Communicability, Temporality: Levinas’ Phenomenology of Politics
- Session 3C, JHB 1040, Inquiring Others, Aberrant Ethics: Thoughts at Levinas’s Impasse
- Moderator: Maita Sayo (York Univ.)
- Jay Rajiva (Univ. of Toronto): The Unbearable Burden of Levinasian Ethics
- Cathy Hsiao (SUNY-Stony Brook): Why Philosophy? Levinas Between Faces
- Ricky Varghese (Univ. of Toronto): When Levinas’s Face Met Fanon’s Gaze: Notes toward (Reading) Otherness
12:15–1:30, Lunch
1:30–3:00pm, JHB 100A Plenary Session: Talmudic Reading
- Georges Hansel (Univ. de Rouen): Talmud and Capitalism
- Moderator: Sol Neely (Purdue Univ.)
3:15–4:15pm Concurrent Sessions 4A–C
- Session 4A, JHB 100A,Readings of Levinas’s “Reality and Its Shadow”
- Moderator: David Cockley (Univ. of California-Los Angeles)
- Monica Osborne (Univ. of California-Los Angeles): When Art Becomes Criticism: A Levinasian Reading of Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces
- Menachem Feuer (Ryerson Univ.): Not a One Way Street: Walter Benjamin’s Challenge to Emmanuel Levinas’s Reading of Literature as Myth and Mimesis Without End
- Session 4B, JHB 418, Suffering and Medical Ethics
- Moderator: Jill Stauffer (CUNY-John Jay)
- Kevin Houser (Indiana Univ.): “Impalement” and Obligation: Cavell and Levinas on the Unusual Epistemology of Suffering
- Lawrence Burns (Univ. of Western Ontario): What Does the Patient Say? Levinas and Biomedical Ethics
- Session 4C, JHB 1040, Levinas and the Comedic
- Moderator: Julie Salverson (Queen’s Univ.)
- Brian Bergen-Aurand (NTU-Singapore): Chaplin’s Shame
- Tim Stock (Salisbury Univ.): …in Other Words, Amphibology is a Funny Thing to Say
4:30–5:30pm, Concurrent Sessions 5A–C
- Session 5A, JHB 100A, Interiority in Literature and Autoethnography
- Moderator: Kelly Ladd (Univ. of Toronto)
- Rebecca Nicholson-Weir (Purdue Univ.): Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Modernist Interiority
- Nicole Wilkes (Brigham Young Univ.): Inhabiting History: Exploring Jonathan Rosen’s Autoethnography, The Talmud and the Internet
- Session 5B, JHB 418, Levinas in Therapeutic and Educational Contexts
- Moderator: Laura Thrasher (Univ. of Toronto)
- Angela Robinson (Univ. of Toronto): Hateful Education? Levinas, Psychoanalysis, and the Question of Learning from Ethical Failure
- Norbert Wetzel (Center for Family, Community, and Social Justice.): Welcoming Others: Relational Justice in Clinical Practice with Inner City Youth and their Families
- Session 5C, JHB 1040, Fatigue, Darkness, Revelation
- Moderator: Katherine Kirby (St. Michael’s Coll.)
- Katie Brennan (SUNY-Stony Brook): Rupture Reveals: The Unveiling of the I in James and Levinas
- Thomas Sparrow (Duquesne Univ.): Lights Out: Night as a Counter-Philosophical Concept in Levinas
6:30–9:00pm, L'Espresso, Banquet
Tuesday, June 30th
8:00–9:00am, JHB Foyer, Registration
9:00–10:30am Concurrent Sessions 6A–C
- Session 6A, JHB 100A, Levinas and His Interlocutors
- Moderator: Rebecca Nicholson-Weir (Purdue Univ.)
- Eddo Evink (Univ. of Groningen): Horizons of Knowledge and Responsibility: Levinas and Patočka
- Joëlle Hansel (Raissa and Emmanuel Levinas Center, Jerusalem): Emmanuel Levinas and Vladimir Jankélévitch: Metaphysics, Ethics, Judaism
- Eduard Jordaan (Singapore Management Univ.): Demanding Ethics: Comparing Levinas and Logstrup
- Session 6B, JHB 418, Face and Voice: Levinas’s Metaphors
- Moderator: Robert Ballard (Univ. of Waterloo)
- Karen Houle (Univ. of Guelph): Full-Frontal
- Lisbeth Lipari (Denison Univ.): The Voice of the Other: Ethics Beyond the Face
- Mitchell Verter (New School Univ.): Hand to Mouth: Levinas's Economic Transfiguration of the Political
- Session 6C, JHB 1040, Corporealities
- Moderator: Clarence Joldersma (Calvin Coll.)
- Sheldon Hanlon (McMaster Univ.): The Way of the Body in Levinas: Towards an Ethics of Embodiment
- Jon Short (Wilfrid Laurier Univ.): The Corporeal Beyond Relation
10:45–12:15 Concurrent Sessions 7A–C
- Session 7A, JHB 100A, Ethical and Political Phenomenology (2)
- Moderator: Stephen Minister (Augustana Coll.)
- Kathy Kiloh (York Univ.): ‘Not Duped by Morality’: Levinas and the Other of Political Theory
- Michael Paradiso-Michau (Penn State Univ.): On the Relation of Conscience and Consciousness in Levinas and Arendt
- Matthew Tomm (Queens Univ.): The Others’ Decision in Me: An Account of Political Judgment, Within a Levinasian Framework
- Session 7B, JHB 418, Responsibility
- Moderator: Andrew Robinson (Univ. of Guelph)
- Andrew Ball (Purdue Univ.): Zygmunt Bauman’s Levinas: Reason and Adiaphorization, or the Suspension of Responsibility for Modernity’s Outcasts
- Joseph Moser (Northwestern Univ.): The Remainder: Levinasian Responsibility Beyond Death
- Desirée Ramacus-Bushnell (Univ. of Memphis): The Saying of Responsibility Between Levinas, Heidegger, and Derrida
- Session 7C, JHB 1040, Truth, Skepticism, and Philosophy
- Moderator: Kevin Houser (Indiana Univ.)
- Leah Kalmanson (Univ. of Hawaii-Manoa): Levinas and Buddhism: The ‘Other’ Philosophy
- Robert Reed (Boston Coll.): Levinas on Science, Religion, and ‘Worldmaking’
- Rebecca Rose (Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign): Alterity as Response to Skepticism: Stanley Cavell and Emmanuel Levinas
1:30–3:00pm, JHB 100A, Business Meeting
All dues-paying Society members are invited to attend and participate
3:15–4:15, Concurrent Sessions 8A–B
- Session 8A, JHB 418, Levinas’s Judaism Through Benjamin and Schmitt
- Moderator: Daniel Goudge (SUNY-Stony Brook)
- Michael Gottsegen (Brown Univ.): Emmanuel Levinas’s Transformation of Jewish Eschatology
- Steve Sandbank (Independent scholar): Shetl as a State of Exception
- Session 8B, JHB 1040, Levinas and Literature
- Moderator: Ricky Varghese (Univ. of Toronto)
- James McLachlan (Western Carolina Univ.): “We are All Responsible for Everyone Else, But I Am More Responsible than All the Others:” Nicolas
4:30-6:00pm, JHB 100A, Plenary Session
- Dana Hollander (McMaster Univ.): “A Thought in Which Everything Has Been Thought”: On the Messianic Idea in Levinas
- Moderator: Roger I. Simon (Univ. of Toronto)
6:00-6:15pm, JHB 100A, Closing Remarks
2009 Conference Registration Form
The 2009 NALS conference registration form is available for download. Forms can be faxed or mailed once completed. Also, please make sure to renew your membership in addition to completing your registration; our Paypal links should be up and running soon--thanks for your support and your patience!
The Fourth Annual Conference and Meeting of the North American Levinas Society
June 28-30, 2009
University of Toronto (Ontario, Canada)
Submission Deadline: April 13th, 2009
Conference Announcement and Call for Papers
Celebrating the fourth anniversary of our founding, the North American Levinas Society continues in our aim to build interest and promote dialogue around the important work of Emmanuel Levinas. Last year’s conference at Seattle University was a tremendous success, again bringing Levinas’ family from Paris and Jerusalem together with young scholars from across the world to forge important relationships and foster respectful discussion around the question of the sacred, the holy, and the ethical.
This year, the Society broadens its international scope, as we organize our first meeting and conference outside of the United States. We are pleased to announce our 2009 annual meeting and conference, to be hosted by the University of Toronto (Ontario, Canada). Confirmed plenary speakers include Dana Hollander (McMaster University) and James Hatley (Salisbury University).
The North American Levinas Society invites submissions of individual paper proposals and panel proposals for the fourth annual meeting and conference to be held June 28-30, 2009. While we will organize the conference around the broad theme of “Philosophy and Its Others,” we will consider proposals for paper and panels on any topic related to Levinas in an effort to draw the widest array of interests.
Especially in the Continental traditions, Levinas’ work is integral to a serious and sober examination of the history of philosophy and its priorities, blindnesses, insights, inner tensions, and possibilities. We pose this broad theme at a time when certain modes of rationality continue to prop up structures of economic inequality, perpetual war, and uncertainty. Given the current state of global economic and political relations, how must philosophy orient itself to help effect a healing and mending of the world? What is the relationship between philosophy and hope, activism, and reconciliation? We might begin by asking questions about Levinas’ difficult relationship with philosophy. How has the discipline and history of philosophy affected Levinas’ thought, and how has Levinas impacted the discipline and history of philosophy? How has Levinas’ philosophical critique of ‘the tradition’ been received and appropriated by other domains of inquiry, such as religious studies, Jewish studies, political science, women’s studies, gender studies, sociology, history, performance and media studies, race theory, legal studies and jurisprudence, literature, cultural studies, disability studies, environmental and ecology studies, medicine, and others? How has Levinas’ reception and application in these various fields in turn affected the discipline of philosophy?
Certainly, these are only a few questions regarding “Philosophy and Its Others” broadly posed, but it is clear that such questions open our own work to a more difficult, and perhaps edifying, scrutiny. We are also interested in receiving panels that address the relation between philosophy, the ethical, current political affairs, community, justice, and pedagogy.
Submissions
- Individual paper proposals: Individual abstracts, prepared for blind review, should be 500 words outlining a 20-minute presentation. Accepted papers will be organized into panels of two or three presentations.
- Panel proposal: Panel proposals, consisting of 2-3 speakers, should be 1000 words for a 75-minute session. Please include the session title, name of organizer, institutional affiliations, discipline or department, along with the chair’s name and participants’ names in addition to 250 word abstracts detailing the focus of each paper. Prepare panel proposals for blind review as well.
Please send materials via email attachment (preferably Microsoft Word) to: submissions@levinas-society.org.
If you have questions regarding the Society or the conference, please send inquiries to secretary@levinas-society.org.
Past Conference Information
Third Annual Conference and Meeting: "Levinas and the Sacred"
August 31-September 2, 2008 | Seattle University | Call for Papers
Electronic Conference Registration is now available for our 3rd annual meeting
Second Annual Levinas Society Conference
June 10-12, 2007
Purdue University
We are especially excited to announce the attendance of some members of Levinas’ family at the 2007 conference. David Hansel, George Hansel, Joelle Hansel, and Simone (Levinas) Hansel will all deliver plenary presentations. We are additionally very pleased to announce that George Kunz, fitting with the theme of Levinas and community, will give a plenary on Levinas's inspiration for understanding psychopathology and psychotherapy; Professor Kunz’s work is proving integral to developing new ways of concretely applying Levinas’ work toward issues of ethics and social justice.
If you have questions regarding the Society or the conference, please send inquiries to secretary at levinas-society.org.