CFP: Graduate Philosophy Conference on Personhood

Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood

15th Annual "Building Bridges"

Graduate Student Philosophy Conference

Southern Illinois University Carbondale

November 16 -17, 2012

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Fanny Söderbäck
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Siena College, Loudonville, New
York

Deadline for submissions: September 14, 2012

This fifteenth annual Building Bridges conference will be held at
Southern Illinois University Carbondale November 16 -17, 2012.

This year’s topic is the concept of the “person,” its formation, and
meaning. What does it mean to possess “personhood,” to be considered
“less than a person” by virtue of attributes or attitudes? What
attributes, biologically, socially, and culturally enable someone to
be a person? Can non-humans be persons? Is “personhood” a valuable
concept? The topic is to be construed broadly and we invite papers and
presentations from all areas of philosophy, as well as philosophically
interesting papers from other disciplines.

Submission Guidelines:Papers should not exceed 3000 words and should be prepared for blind
review. Please do not include any personal information in the paper.
On a separate cover page include the following items:
The paper's title
The author's name
Institutional affiliation
E-mail address
Word count (3000 words maximum)
An abstract (150 words maximum)

E-mail a copy of your paper and your personal information, as
attachments, in MS Word format (.doc), (.docx) or in Adobe Portable
Document Format (PDF) to j.charlesflowers@gmail.com. Please name the
file of your paper with an abbreviated paper title and title the file
of your contact information with your last name and first initial.

Conference Statement:The purpose of “Building Bridges” is to bring into dialogue diverse
elements not commonly associated. We seek interdisciplinary as well as
intra-disciplinary themes that address problems from multiple
philosophical standpoints, from different traditions, or in which two
or more thinkers not customarily brought into conversation are
compared. Our goal is to provide a pluralistic forum for constructive
and critical communication across boundaries. For more information
visit our website: http://philosophy.siuc.edu/Graduate/bridges.html