Feminists in Scottish Academia Networking Event

Feminists in Scottish Academia: Dialogues and alliances across boundaries
25th June, 2 to 5pm
BEC Lecture Theatre (Esmee Fairburn Building)

A feminist networking event at Heriot Watt University’s Edinburgh Campus. This free event will include talks and opportunities for round table discussions and networking.

Speakers include:

Dr Kate Sang (HWU), Standing at the intersection: Feminist academic women in UK Higher Education.

Dr Rebecca Finkel (QMU), Scottish feminists in academia: Representation, identity, and new narratives

Places are limited – to book please contact Kate Sang (k.sang@hw.ac.uk)

Engendering Dialogue III – Provisional Programme

Engendering Dialogue III

Pedagogical Encounters: Feminist Philosophy and Education

University of Dundee, 22-23 June 2012

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME

To register for this event, please complete the registration form here

Friday 22nd June

12.00-1.30 Arrival and Registration

1.30-2.45 Welcome & Keynote 1: Educational Relations in the Long Shadow of Rousseau
Morwenna Griffiths (University of Edinburgh)

2.50-3.50 Feminist Philosophy Workshop
Rachel Jones Luce Irigaray (University of Dundee) & Aislinn O’Donnell Moira Gatens (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick) [Short texts to be distributed in advance]

3.50-4.10 Coffee

4.10-5.00 Crossing Cultures in Fleshy Metaphysics: A Dialogue
Ranjana Thapalyal (Glasgow School of Art)
Christine Battersby (Reader Emerita, University of Warwick)

5.00-5.15 Short Break

5.15-7.00 Philosophy, Pedagogy and Practice 1: Education, Gender & Community
‘Feminist Philosophy and Women’s Community Education’
Ann Louise Gilligan (Director, Centre for Progressive Change, Dublin)
Introduction and Screening: ‘Behind the Vale’
Jim King (Head of Offender Learning & Skills Services, Scottish Prison Service)

7.30pm Conference Dinner (optional): Encore, Bar & Brasserie, Dundee REP

Saturday 23rd June

9.00-9.15 Registration

9.15-10.15 Keynote 2: Friendship
Amy Shuffelton (Department of Educational Foundations, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater)

10.15-10.30 Coffee

10.30-11.30 Philosophy, Pedagogy and Practice 3: Philosophy for Children
Kath Jones (‘Blooming Minds’ & University of Greenwich)

11.30-11.45 Short Break

11.45-1.00 Pedagogical Interventions: Fostering Love, Learning and Silence
‘Love, Pedagogy and Browne’
Alison Assiter (University of the West of England)
‘The Undoing of Gender Concerns in Education through Silence as Experience’
Helen Lees (University of Stirling)

1.00-2.30 ‘Ladies who Lunch’ – hosted by Merlyn Riggs

2.30-3.45 Philosophy, Pedagogy and Practice 4: Philosophy and the Prison
Jim King (Head of Offender Learning & Skills Services, Scottish Prison Service)
Jonathan Cummins (University of Ulster)
Aislinn O’Donnell (Philosophy of Education at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick)

3.45-4.00 Coffee

4.00-5.00 Keynote 3: Mindfulness
Graeme Nixon (University of Aberdeen)

5.00 Closing Remarks

Engendering Dialogue: this conference is the last of three events being organised as part of a Royal Society of Edinburgh funded Network in the Arts and Humanities hosted by the Philosophy Programme at the University of Dundee. The Network’s aim is to engender dialogue between feminist philosophers and other key areas of contemporary philosophical debate. The first event focussed on feminist philosophy and philosophy of cognitive science, and the second on art, gender, and the futures of feminism.

Engendering Dialogue III: Call for Participants

Pedagogical Encounters: Feminist Philosophy and Education

Dundee, 22-23 June 2012.

Keynote Speakers:

Morwenna Griffiths (Chair of Classroom Learning, Moray House School of Education, Edinburgh University)

Graeme Nixon (Programme Director, Studies in Mindfulness, School of Education, University of Aberdeen)

Amy Shuffelton (Department of Educational Foundations, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater)

With sessions on:

Philosophy for Children (led by Kath Jones, ‘Blooming Minds’ & University of Greenwich)

Philosophy in Prisons (led by Aislinn O’Donnell, Philosophy of Education at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick)

Feminist Philosophy and Education (led by Rachel Jones, University of Dundee and Aislinn O’Donnell).

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

This event will stage a series of encounters between contemporary feminist philosophers, philosophers of education, and those involved in teaching philosophy and in teaching teachers.

We are particularly interested in thinking about relationality, a concept which has been central to much recent feminist thought. This is reflected in notions of a relational self and relational autonomy, as well as in debates around intersubjectivity, embodiment and power relations. How might feminist attempts to shift the focus from the modern ideal of self-contained autonomy to the relations that constitute and sustain embodied individuals translate into a specifically pedagogical context? How might a feminist attentiveness to intersubjectivity, embodied relations, and dependency inform pedagogical practice in the classroom?

Equally, we are interested in how a focus on pedagogical relations might put pressure upon or otherwise transform feminist thinking around relationality. How do processes of learning, transformation and growth inflect our understanding of the role of relations in shaping individuals, as well as our models of responsibility, ethical encounter, and autonomy? How might a ‘mindful pedagogy’ and an attentiveness to the complexities of student/teacher relationships inform feminist thinking about selves and their relations to others?

To further this encounter, the workshop will feature sessions exploring pedagogical relations across a variety of contexts, including the teaching of teachers, teaching philosophy to children, student-teacher friendships, and teaching philosophy in prisons.

We are seeking proposals for further contributions to this event. These could take the form of 20 minute talks or papers, or the introduction of material for group discussion.

Possible topics include but are not restricted to the following:

• reflections on relational pedagogy and/or the ethics of the pedagogical encounter, across a range of educational contexts/environments
• aspects of contemporary feminist philosophy relevant to philosophy of education, pedagogical relations, and/or pedagogical practice
• the role of difference and/or embodiment in the educational context (including but not restricted to gender difference and sexed embodiment)
• the pedagogical relations involved in the teaching of philosophy
• the dynamics of the pedagogical encounter: mindfulness, vulnerability, attentiveness, shame, love, dependence, compassion, power, violence, friendship, responsibility
• creative methodologies and pedagogical practices attentive to relationality
• exploration of the relationship between the pedagogical turn and/or socially engaged practice, and contemporary work in art, feminist thought, and philosophy

Proposals of c.500 words should be emailed to Rachel Jones by Monday April 30th 2012, at the following email address: engenderingdialogue@dundee.ac.uk

Bursaries: a limited number of travel/accommodation bursaries are available to enable teachers, postgraduates or early career practitioners/researchers to participate in this event. Please indicate when submitting your abstract if you wish to be considered for a bursary, indicating your academic status (e.g. PhD student, early career practitioner).

Save the Women’s Library!

Women’s Library Under Threat – Campaign and Petition

Many of you will have heard that The Women’s Library in London is facing
closure and transfer of its collections, or being reduced to operating a
skeleton service. London Metropolitan University have decided to attempt to
find a new home, owner or sponsor for its holdings, and will reduce the
service to one day per week if such a sponsor cannot be found by the end of
2012.

At the time of writing, nearly 5,000 people have signed a petition – set up
by a concerned member of staff at the University – to save The Women’s
Library in its present form (thanks go to everyone who have already
signed). Its current home, opened in 2002, is purpose-built on the site of
an old wash-house in East London, and received a RIBA-award for its design.
It was opened due to the huge efforts and commitment of the Library’s
Friends and supporters both inside and outside the University, and a £4m
grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. As well as housing the collections
and operating a Reading Room service, the building is a cultural centre
hosting exhibitions, talks, education projects and community events.

The Library was originally founded in 1926. The collections, now officially
Designated as ‘collections of outstanding national and international
importance’, were saved from dispersal by London Met’s forerunner City
of London Polytechnic 35 years ago, and this February it should have been
celebrating ten years in its new home. In the lead-up to a major suffrage
anniversary in 2018, now is the time to be building on the Library’s
successes, fundraising for, and celebrating this important asset – not
shutting it down or restricting public access.

London Met UNISON have initiated a campaign to save the Library, and are
seeking testimony from its users about the Library’s importance. You can
find out more on their blog, follow the campaign on Twitter, and add your
name to the petition on the Care 2 website. There is also a ‘Save The
Women’s Library’ group on Facebook.

The campaign has so far received coverage in The Guardian, Museums Journal,
and Islington Tribune.

You can find out more about The Women’s Library on its website, and
Wikipedia page. Its supporters scheme is The Friends of The Women’s
Library.

Please help spread the word about the threat to this key resource for our
subject.

Seeing Things Differently — Provisional Programme

Engendering Dialogue II

Seeing Things Differently: Art, Philosophy, and

the Futures of Feminism

 

Friday 30^th & Saturday 31^st March 2012

Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) & the University of Dundee

THERE ARE LIMITED PLACES AVAILABLE FOR THIS EVENT – FOR REGISTRATION AND FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE GO TO  THE ‘ED2: SEEING THINGS DIFFERENTLY’ CONFERENCE PAGE (follow the links on the right)

 

Provisional Programme

Friday 30^th March

1 – 2pm Registration: DCA

2 – 3.30pm Opening Remarks DCA Seminar Room

Keynote 1: Christine Battersby (Reader Emerita in Philosophy, University of Warwick)

By a Woman Wrought: Do We/Should We Still Care?

Coffee

3.45 – 5.15pm Panel 1: Feminist Materialities: Bodies, Spaces and Performances

Rosa Nogués (Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University)

The Female Body in Feminist Art Practice: New Approaches

Lynne Heller (Ontario College of Art and Design University & University College Dublin)

Mother/Daughter Twinning ; -) Cyborg Imagining

Katie Lloyd Thomas (Newcastle University)

Sandbags, Upholstery and Building Regulations: Feminist Materiality in Architecture

5.45 – 7.15pm Dalhousie Lecture Theatre 4

Keynote 2: Tina Chanter (Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University, Chicago)

The Sensibility of Art

7.15 Wine Reception (sponsored by the AHRI) Dalhousie Foyer

8.15 Conference Dinner  DCA (optional)

Saturday 31^st March

9am: Registration: DCA

9.15 – 10.30am DCA Seminar Room

Keynote 3: Kerstin Mey (Professor & Director of Research and Enterprise, University for the Creative Arts)

Women, Obscenity and the f-word

Coffee

10.45 – 12.20pm Artists’ Panel: Visual Research Centre

Artists: Beth Fisher, Ingrid Pollard, Gina Wall (Moray College)

Chair: Mary Modeen (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design)

12.30 – 1pm Janet McKenzie (Editor, Studio International)

 Drawing on Two Worlds

1 – 2pm Buffet Lunch (DCA)

2 – 3pm Panel 2 Relational Practices in Art and Curation

Marina Kassianidou (Chelsea College of Art & Design, University of the Arts)

In-between Marks and Surfaces: Relating to the Self and to the Other

Sibyl Fisher (University of Leeds)

The Articulation and Manifestation of Relationality in Curatorial Practice: Inside the Visible (1996)

3.05 – 4.05pm Panel 3 Re-appropriating the Space-Time of Portraiture

Kate Ince (University of Birmingham)

The Time(s) of Looking Back: Ciné-Portraiture in Cléo de 5 à 7 and the Films of Agnès Varda

Redi Koobak (Linköping University)

Elsewhere, Otherwise: Writing Feminist Imaginaries in Non-Western Europe

Coffee

4.20 – 5pm Mo Throp and Maria Walsh: The Subjectivity & Feminisms Research Group (Chelsea College of Art & Design, University of the Arts)

5pm Closing Remarks

 

Funding for this event has been generously provided by:

The Royal Society of Edinburgh; The Scots Philosophical Association;

The Arts & Humanities Research Institute, University of Dundee.

Symposium Saturday 3 December at Goldsmiths University

Symposium — Women Artists, Feminism in the 80s and Now

Saturday 3 December, Goldsmiths University

Ben Pimlott Building, 10am-5pm.  Free, no refreshment provided

For programme, contact Althea Greenan: a.greenan@gold.ac.uk

Access: campus map and additional info: http://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/

 

Engendering Dialogue II: CALL FOR PAPERS

Engendering Dialogue II: CALL FOR PAPERS

 

Seeing Things Differently: Art, Philosophy, and the Futures of Feminism

 

Friday 30^th and Saturday 31^st March 2012

University of Dundee & Dundee Contemporary Arts

Keynote Speakers:

• Dr Christine Battersby (Reader Emerita in Philosophy, University of Warwick)
• Professor Tina Chanter (Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University, Chicago)
• Professor Kerstin Mey (Director of Research and Enterprise, University for the Creative Arts)

 

The visual arts have a well-established history of engagement with feminism and gender issues. While artists have confronted such issues directly in their work, feminist theorists and philosophers have interrogated the gendering of vision as well as core aesthetic categories such as genius and the art/craft distinction. The ‘feminist’ label, however, can sometimes seem more of a trap than a call for liberatory practices.

This event takes as a starting point the idea that neither all artworks nor all theories informed by a gendered or feminist perspective will necessarily be focussed on what we might think of as ‘questions of gender’ or ‘women’s issues’. Where feminism succeeds is in making it harder to see women as simply determined by their sex or to reduce their work to a question of their gender. Many philosophers and practising artists who see their work as centrally informed by feminist or gendered concerns have moved beyond critique of masculinist traditions and paradigms to re-imagine bodies, identities, matter, space, time, ethics, power and freedom in radically new ways.

Nonetheless, many questions remain:

• How do contemporary women practitioners and philosophers think about their relation to feminism, as well as about their own position as women? How do male artists and theorists think about their relation to gender and/or feminist issues?
• To what extent are contemporary art practice and theory inflected by a gendered perspective? Where have feminist debates made a difference? What has been the impact of queer theory and other debates around sexuality?
• What relevance might recent developments in feminist philosophy and theory have for those working as art practitioners (both women and men)?
• To what extent will feminist concerns go on being relevant for the future of art theory and practice? What are the possible futures of feminism?
• To what extent do women still perceive themselves as trapped by gendered expectations? In what ways does the work of contemporary women thinkers and artists move beyond, around or outside such expectations to explore other terrains and possibilities of being?

This event will address these questions by creating a space for dialogue between contemporary artists and feminist philosophers and theorists.

We are seeking proposals for short (20 minute) presentations to contribute to this process of dialogue and debate. We welcome papers from:

• Artists reflecting on the relation of their own practice to gendered experience as well as to their own sex and/or gender
• Artists whose work draws on or is in tension with feminist ideas and theories
• Philosophers and theorists working on art and aesthetics from a perspective inflected by gender or feminist theory
• Philosophers, theorists, and artists who think of their work as springing from feminist insights, but which is not obviously focussed on ‘gender issues’
• Those working on aspects of contemporary feminist philosophy that move beyond critique of the masculine tradition to explore new ways of thinking about such issues as matter, space, time, ethics, identity, bodies, power, science, nature, difference, race, freedom…
• Men interested in questions of gender and practice, in both the theoretical and artistic domains.

Proposals of c.500 words should be emailed to Rachel Jones by Friday 6^th January 2012 using the following email address: engenderingdialogue@dundee.ac.uk

Please note: we have a small number of bursaries for postgraduates and early career researchers to participate in this event. Please indicate when submitting your abstract if you wish to be considered for such a bursary, and indicate your academic status (e.g. PhD student, early career researcher).

This conference is the second of three events being organised as part of an RSE funded Network in the Arts and Humanities hosted by the Philosophy Programme at the University of Dundee. The Network’s aim is to engender dialogue between feminist philosophers and other key areas of contemporary philosophical debate. The first event focussed on feminist philosophy and philo-sophy of cognitive science; the third will focus on feminist philosophy and philosophy of education.

• For  further information, see the Network website: https://engenderingdialogue.wordpress.com
• To be added to the Network mailing list, please email Project Assistant Carrie Giunta at: engenderingdialogue@dundee.ac.uk

Autumn School Heidelberg — deadline mid August!

Embodied and Embedded Approaches to the Self
in Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine
 
 
Autumn School: 24 – 28 October 2011

 
The aim of this autumn school is to explore the practical applications and the theoretical scope of an embedded, embodied approach to the self and its disorders within psychiatry and psychosocial medicine. The autumn school will bring together researchers who are already working within this new perspective, to facilitate mutual exchange on research data and philosophical discussion.

We hereby invite young researchers working with embodied and embedded approaches in their respective fields to apply for the autumn school. The number of participants will be limited to 30 so as to maximize interaction. All participants are invited to introduce their own research. Moreover, there will be ample time scheduled for discussion.

For more information, see  autumnschoolheidelberg.wordpress.com

“Bodies of Thought” Podcasts

Posted below is the audio from the recent ‘Bodies of Thought’ conference held at the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Christine Battersby  (University of Warwick), “A-Life, AI and B-Life: The Cognitive Sciences, Bare Life and Birthed Life”

Veronica Vasterling (Radbound University), “Nature-Nurture Revisited: The Dualist Underpinnings of Evolutionary Psychology and Social Constructionism”

Mirko Farina (MACCS, Sydney / University of Edinburgh), “Finding My Mind: A Case for Extended Cognition”

Mike Wheeler (University of Stirling), “Ways of Mattering: Embodied Thought and Thinking Bodies”

John Protevi  (Louisiana State University), “Populations of Subjects”

Saray Ayala (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) “Manipulating Bodies & Incorporating Technology: Re-inventing Sex”

Susan Oyama (John Jay College & CUNY), “Incidence, Essence, and Developmental Systems”

Chryssa Sdrolia (Goldsmiths, University of London), “For a Panexperientialist Metaphysics of Thought”

Lauren Freeman (Concordia University, Montreal), “Challenging A Panoptics of the Womb: Phenomenological Responses to the Problem of Diminished Epistemic Authority in Pregnancy”

Jess Cadwallader (University of Groningen), “Sedimentation, Wounded Attachments and Forgetting: Phenomenology and Psychopharmacology”

Eva De Clercq  (University of Pisa), “Toward an Ontology of Corporeal Uniqueness”

Call for Papers on “Extended Cognition and Epistemic Action”

CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue of *Philosophical Explorations* on
“Extended Cognition and Epistemic Action”

Guest Editors: Andy Clark (University of Edinburgh), Duncan Pritchard (University of Edinburgh), Krist Vaesen (Eindhoven University of Technology)

Submission Deadline: September 15, 2011

Invited Contributors: Fred Adams (University of Delaware) & Ken Aizawa (Centenary College of Louisiana), Ronald Giere (University of Minnesota), Sanford Goldberg (Northwestern University), Richard Menary (University of Wollongong) and Kim Sterelny (Australian National University and Victoria University).

Background and Aim According to the thesis of extended cognition, cognitive processes do not need to be located inside the skin of the cognizing agent. Humans routinely engage their wider artifactual environment to extend the capacities of their naked brain. They often rely so much on external aids (notebooks, watches, smartphones) that the latter become a proper part of a hybrid (human-artifact) cognitive system.

The thesis of extended cognition has been influential in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, linguistics, informatics, and ethics, but, surprisingly, not in epistemology. The discipline concerned with one of the most remarkable products of human cognition, viz. knowledge, has largely ignored the suggestion that her main object of study might be produced by processes outside the human skin.

In this special issue of *Philosophical Explorations* we therefore are looking for papers that explore the ramifications of the thesis of extended cognition for contemporary epistemology in general, and for conceptualizations of epistemic action in particular. The special issue will include five invited papers (by Fred Adams & Kenneth Aizawa, Ronald Giere, Sanford Goldberg, Richard Menary and Kim Sterelny), plus two contributions selected from the papers submitted in response to this open call for papers.

We expect contributions discussing the impact of extended cognition on issues as: epistemic agency and responsibility, cognitive ability, ownership of belief, the distribution of epistemic credit, the sources of belief, artifactual testimony, the growth of knowledge, non-propositional knowledge, the evolution and reliability of extended cognitive processes, the varieties of extended epistemic action.

Submission Details
Please send a pdf-version of your paper (max. 8000 words) to Krist Vaesen, k.vaesen@tue.nl. Contributions that do not make it to the special issue may be considered for publication in one of the regular issues of *Philosophical Explorations*.

Further Inquiries
Please direct any inquiries about this call for papers to Krist Vaesen, k.vaesen@tue.nl.