Chair:Geoffrey Pfeifer, Worcester Polytechnic Institute -- gpfeifer@wpi.edu

SPCW @ 2017 Central APA -- Call for Papers:

Panel Title: Philosophy of Liberation after Ferguson, Baltimore, Isla Vista, Orlando

The Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World Panel at the 2017 Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association  March 1-4 2017 Kansas City, Mo.

As a result of the recent publicity around police killings of unarmed persons of color we are seeing a renewed interest and activism around issues of oppression, social justice, and state violence. At the same time we have seen right-wing, corporate, nationalist, and evangelical organizations coordinate a backlash not only against this movement, but also other groups who have been traditionally excluded and oppressed in the US (examples include women and the LGTBQ community). Not only have we seen state violence in these contexts, but we have also seen other forms of violence. The most prominent examples of this are the 2014 Isla Vista Mass shooting in which the shooter targeted women and the more recent mass shooting in an Orlando gay nightclub on the club’s Latin night. How do recent events reveal questions of liberation -- both as a challenge to ancient, classical, and contemporary moral and political philosophy, as well as a vanguard of ethical and political change? We seek panelists who wish to think through the question of what such philosophies of liberation look like in these complex contemporary contexts.

If interested, please send and abstract and title of no more than 500 words to Geoff Pfeifer (gpfeifer@wpi.edu) no later than Sept. 1 2016.