UK Sartre Society

Early July is packed with Sartre goodness! Hot on the heels of the UK Sartre Society conference on 1 July (don’t forget our CFP deadline is fast approaching!) is the German Sartre Society’s meeting in Munich on 8 & 9 July 2016.

Details as follows:

“Title: Democracy and participation – today’s relevance of the political philosophy of existentialism

Subject: A conference will be held about today’s relevance of the political philosophy of existentialism. In contrast to most other political philosophies, emancipatory existentialism does not give primacy to the state, but to the individual. The term ‚existentialism’ is understood in its broadest sense. It includes not only Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus and Merleau-Ponty, but as well as theirs predecessors (e.g. Sade, Kierkegaard, Stirner, Nietzsche) and contemporaries (e.g. Marcel, Jaspers, Heidegger, Arendt, Bataille).

Organisers: Prof. H.-M. Schönherr-Mann, Univ. Munich, and Sartre Society, Berlin.
Place/date: GSI University Munich, Germany, July 8th / 9th, 2016
Duration: 30-45 minutes per presentation
Languages: German/English
Publication: The presentations will possibly be published as a book.
Abstracts: Abstracts of not more than one page to be sent to nl [at] sartregesellschaft.de by January 31st, 2016.
Contact: Alfred Betschart, nl [at] sartre-gesellschaft.de”

The North American Sartre Society (NASS) has just released this year’s call for papers!

21st Conference of the North American Sartre Society

East Stroudsburg University, Conference Center, Bethlehem, PA, November 13-15, 2015.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The North American Sartre Society is issuing a call for papers on the occasion of its twenty-first conference, hosted by Storm Heter, at East Stroudsburg University’s Conference Center in Bethlehem, PA, November 13-15, 2015. We welcome papers in any area of Sartrean scholarship (philosophy, literature, theater, psychology, politics, intellectual history, Sartre and other writers, etc.). Reading time for a paper should be 20-25 minutes maximum. In addition to individual papers, we welcome suggestions for panel topics. Graduate students are encouraged to submit suggestions for papers. We hope to provide a limited number of stipends for graduate students to help defray the cost of travel and lodging. Any graduate student whose paper has been accepted must however apply for these stipends.

While topics on any of Sartre’s many activities are welcome, one of the themes we are promoting this year are applications of Sartre’s philosopher to contemporary philosophical debates.

We invite anyone interested to submit proposals in either English or French. Nevertheless, we require those whose papers are accepted to become members of NASS (if they are not already) in order to present their paper.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: July 31, 2015.

Please E-MAIL an abstract (1-2 pages max) as an attachment to Matt Eshleman and Beth Butterfield. For panel submissions, please submit both an abstract for the whole panel and abstracts for each individual paper. These will be forwarded to the Program Committee for blind refereeing.

We have been very fortunate to secure Dr. Tom Flynn as our Keynote Speaker. Tom Flynn, known to every Sartre scholar, has generously agreed to talk to us about his new philosophical biography of Sartre just out on Cambridge University Press. His talk will be titled, “Sartre and the Imaginary: The Nonexistent Thread that Ties together a Life and Work.”

Further details on the conference and hotel arrangements will be communicated to you in due course. Any questions can be directed to:

Matt Eshleman (President)
Elizabeth Butterfield (Co-President)
Storm Heter (On-Site Conference Organizer)

Existentialism, Race, and Gender

London, UK
Provisional date: Friday 18th September 2015

Keynote speaker: Professor Lewis R. Gordon (Connecticut)

What can existentialist theories of authenticity, bad faith, embodiment, the look, being-for-others, interiorisation, and the social structure of the material world contribute to our understanding of what it is to be gendered and racialised? What other contributions might consideration of the literary and theoretical works of Beauvoir, Fanon, Sartre and other paradigmatically existentialist thinkers make to current debates about race or gender?

We invite abstracts of papers on these topics to be delivered at this year’s UK Sartre Society conference. Abstracts should be no more than 500 words. Please bear in mind that each selected paper will be scheduled 30 minutes presentation time plus some time for questions.

Our keynote speaker will be Professor Lewis R. Gordon, author of What Fanon Said (2015), Fanon and the Crisis of European Man, Existentia Africana, and Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism, editor of Existence in Black, and author of numerous articles on existentialism and the philosophy of race.

Abstracts should be fully prepared for anonymous review and sent as email attachments to our conference email address.

The closing date for submissions is Monday 20th April 2015.