Philosophy Conferences and Calls for Papers

The Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies will hold its annual meeting
in Chicago early next year (2/22/07-2/25/07). We are looking for
contributions to the following panel:

From the e-mail describing the event:

LOCKE AND MATTER

Once the unquestioned author of modern ideas of the individual, knowledge,
and political society, John Locke has become an increasingly ambiguous
figure. This panel aims to rethink the implications of one especially
urgent question: what is Locke’s relationship to matter? By rethinking
Locke’s treatment of matter, the panel might pursue some of the following
lines of inquiry: To what extent does Locke inaugurate the “empiricism”
with which historians of philosophy like to credit him? How might we
reconsider the relationship between subject and object in Locke’s work?
Does rethinking Locke and matter change our understanding of Locke and
aesthetics, Locke and agency, Locke and sexual difference? Is the
possessive individual material or immaterial? What is Locke’s
contribution to ecological thought? The panel aims not only to reassess
Locke’s relation to early modern and modern culture but also to address
the rich question of Locke’s place in our recently reconstructed
genealogies of materialism, matter, and the self.

Please send 1-2 page proposals by September 15 in the body of an email to:

Helen Thompson
Dept. of English
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208
hthompson@northwestern.edu

and

Wolfram Schmidgen
Dept. of English
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130
wschmidg@wustl.edu