This looks like it will be a really awesome conference. Graham Harman, one of the most exciting contemporary metaphysicians in continental or analytic philosophy, is going to be the Keynote Speaker. I'm hoping I can get something in in time for the Feb 1st deadline. It would be really cool if some of the other bloggers here submitted too.
It's kind of fashionable to pick in various ways at "theory" in non-philosophy departments. One of the really cool things about Harman's "Object Oriented Philosophy" is the way it is attracting really first rate interdisciplinary work that doesn't even hint at instantiating any of the standard negative stereotypes. For me, not only is Harman a tremendously exciting philosopher, but he's (along with John Protevi and more recently Lee Braver and Levi Bryant, who incidentally both deserve spiels for underappreciated philosophers of the week) a fantastic conduit for allowing an analytical philosopher such as myself to learn from the continental tradition.
Anyhow, it would be fantastically cool if a non-trivial subset of New APPSers showed up at this conference.
The Return of Metaphysics: 16th Annual Villanova Philosophy Conference
Villanova University
16th Annual Conference in Philosophy
“The Return of Metaphysics”
April 8-9, 2011
Keynote Speaker: Graham Harman
Department of Philosophy, American University in Cairo
The “end of metaphysics” is a perennial theme in contemporary Continental philosophy, which has taken many forms, including the critiques of onto-theology, the metaphysics of presence, and (phallo)logocentrism, with consequent emphases on philosophical practices such as textual interpretation, cultural criticism, and socio-political interventionism. Recently, however, a “return to metaphysics” has been initiated by movements such as speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, actor-network theory, non-philosophy, and others who re-affirm the possibility and even necessity of (speculative) metaphysical thought.
We invite critical papers on the status of metaphysics in contemporary philosophy (for example, concerning the possibility of its “end” or “return”), including its relationship to its precursors in the philosophical tradition, mathematics, the contemporary natural sciences, ecological thought, and literature.
Submission Guidelines:
We encourage submissions from faculty and graduate students of abstracts (300-500 words) or papers (3,000 to 4,000 words). Please format these for blind review—personal information, such as name, institutional affiliation, and contact information, should be either in the body of your email or on a page separate from the rest of your paper, and not in the paper itself.
Please email your submissions (and any questions you may have) to [email protected] by February 1, 2011.
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