Philosophical Ecologies: Considerations of the Animal, the Vegetal and the Environmental, DePaul Grad Student Conference

Call for papers:

Philosophical Ecologies: Considerations of the Animal, the Vegetal and the Environmental
23rd annual DePaul University Graduate Student Conference
February 12-13, 2016
Keynote Speaker: Cynthia Willett, Emory University

Deadline for submissions: December 1, 2015

Recent research in interspecies ethics, the place of plant life, and conceptions of the environmental testifies to escalating concerns regarding the insufficiency of existing interrogations into the historical privileging of some forms of life over others. These concerns emerge from a long history of global injustices that have resulted in environmental degradation as well as marginalization of both human and nonhuman populations through such practices as speciation, colonization, feminization, criminalization and dehumanization. This conference highlights the particularly urgent need for more rigorously articulated philosophies of the animal, the vegetal, and the environmental and seeks to reconsider conceptual boundaries between natural and artificial spaces and concepts of life.

Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:

• conceptions of animal, plant, and human life
• environmental, animal, or food ethics
• eco-feminism
• theoretical, political, and/or historical distinctions between the human and the nonhuman
• environmental politics and policy
• rights discourse and its application to nonhuman others
• nature and the polis
• colonization and environmental exploitation
• eco-affectivity and interspecies attunements
• intergenerational environmentalism
• ethology and communication in animal and plant life
• environmental aesthetics
• dehumanization and oppression

Papers should be limited to 3,000 words and prepared for blind review. Please include name, university affiliation, and submission title in the body of your email, and send all submissions and inquires to: depaul.philosophy@gmail.com