Tuesday, January 24, 2012

CFP: Feminist Interpretations of William James

* Feminist Interpretations of William James *

[For a conference panel and edited volume]

“The world experienced…comes at all times with our body as its center,
center of vision, center of action, center of interest…”
–William James, Principles of Psychology

“Out of whose subjectivity has this ideal [of objectivity] grown?”
–Lorraine Code, What Can She Know?

The American Pragmatist philosopher William James was in many respects
ahead of his time, emphasizing attention to the situated and bodily
character of knowledge and value before the advent of standpoint theory, as
well as the concrete consequences of philosophizing in a way that
pre-figures recent feminist efforts to investigate the troubling collective
habits that academic philosophy has helped to perpetuate. Although James’
own status as a feminist is dubious, his work, many have argued, is ripe
with resources for contemporary feminist epistemology, ethics,
phenomenology and philosophy of psychology.

We seek scholars interested in contributing to a panel discussion on
feminist readings of James to be held at the Society for the Advancement of
American Philosophy meeting in the spring of 2013, and ultimately, to the
anticipated edited volume, Feminist Interpretations of William James (to be
submitted to Penn State Press’ “Re-Reading the Canon” series, ed. Nancy
Tuana). Any and all feminist approaches to and/or criticisms of James are
welcome.

* Please respond to Shannon Sullivan (sws10@psu.edu) or Erin C. Tarver (
erin_tarver@georgetowncollege.edu) to express your interest in
participating in the panel and/or the volume by February 17, 2012. *

For now, we hope to hear from people who are interested, possibly
interested, gently persuadable, and/or have questions -- no firm
commitments are needed at this time, in other words. Abstracts (of no less
than 600 words) or full papers (of no more than 3500 words) for the SAAP
panel will be due to Shannon and Erin by August 1, 2012. We hope that the
discussion generated by the SAAP panel will help spark new ideas for
feminist engagements with James, but you need not participate on the SAAP
panel to contribute to the Re-reading the Canon volume later on. Detailed
information on submitting to the Re-reading the Canon volume will be
forthcoming in 2013, after the annual SAAP meeting in March.

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