Fall 2013 Newsletter

Call For Abstracts for 2014 Conference

The 31st International Social Philosophy Conference will be held at beautiful Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon July 17-19, 2014. The conference theme is “Power, Protest, and the Future of Democracy.”
Our keynote speakers will be:
Thomas Christiano
University of Arizona, http://www.u.arizona.edu/~thomasc/
Akeel Bilgrami
Columbia University, http://philosophy.columbia.edu/directories/faculty/akeel-bilgrami

Please note also an invitation from Zach Hoskins, the Chair of the Book Award Committee:
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS 2013 NASSP Book Award
Each year, the North American Society for Social Philosophy honors the best book published in social philosophy during that year with the NASSP Book Award. The book award committee invites you to nominate a book for the award for the year 2013.

The award is for the book published in 2013 that makes the most significant contribution to social philosophy. The field is to be construed broadly, to include social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, philosophy of social science, and social ethics. Excluded are anthologies, historical studies, works on ethics that lack a distinctly social component as well as works on a social topic that lack a substantial philosophical component. [Note: For the purposes of this competition, a book will normally be considered to have been published in the year of its copyright, rather than the year of its release, unless there are exceptional circumstances that warrant otherwise.]

The book award is presented each year at our annual conference, where the author receives a plaque and participates in a panel presentation concerning the book. The winning book and other nominated books are displayed at the conference and publicized in our newsletter and in our refereed journal, The Journal of Social Philosophy.

Please take a few moments and consider which book(s) published in 2013 you thought best, and then submit your nomination to this year’s book award committee at nassp2013bookaward@gmail.com. You may also contact the committee members at this e-mail address if you have questions. Please include the following information: your name, the book’s author(s) (if it isn’t you), title, and publisher (must be copyrighted in 2013). To keep the task manageable, the book award committee will need to receive your nominations by Dec. 31, 2013.

The 2013 book award committee: Zach Hoskins (chair), University of Minnesota, zhoskins@umn.edu Krista Thomason, Swarthmore College, kthomas2@swarthmore.edu David Leichter, Marian University, dleichter@gmail.com

Recent winners of the NASSP Book Award:

Jose Medina, The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Ben Berger, Attention Deficit Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2011)
Stephen Nathanson, Terrorism and the Ethics of War (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Harvard University Press, 2009)
G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality (Harvard University Press, 2008)

We look forward to seeing you in Ashland next summer!

II. NASSP at the APA

The following NASSP sessions will be held at the APA meetings in 2014.

At the Eastern Division Meeting:
SATURDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 28th
GII-7. North American Society for Social Philosophy
9:00-11:00 a.m.
Topic: Global Issues in Social Philosophy
Chair: Andrew Smith (Drexel University)
Speakers: Eduardo Mendieta (Stony Brook University), “Meta-Urbanization and Global Ethics: The Challenges of Global Cities”
Stephanie Rivera (SUNY, Buffalo), “The Quest for Recognition: The Case of Latin American Philosophy”
Shay Welch (Spelman College), “A Feminist Analysis of Native American Autonomy”

At the Central:
Group session 15
Sponsored by North American Society for Social Philosophy
tentative time Thursday, February 27, 7:40 PM-10:40 PM
Topic: Autonomy, Sex, and Objectification
Jennifer McKitrick (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), chair,
Eric M. Cave (Arkansas State University), speaker, “Autonomy, Objectification, and Unsavory Seduction”
Patricia A. Marino (University of Waterloo), speaker, “Patterns of Objectification: Autonomy, Options, and the Value of Non-conformity”
Joanna Zaslow (McMaster University), speaker, “The Feminist Female Submissive”

At the Pacific:
Author Meets Critics: Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law
Chair: Jeffrey Gauthier (University of Portland)
Critics: Lori Watson (University of San Diego)
Ralph Wedgwood (University of Southern California)
Response: Elizabeth Brake (Arizona State University)

Thanks to our divisional representatives for organizing these sessions!

III. News from our Members

Peter Higgins’ book, Immigration Justice, was published by Edinburgh University Press in August 2013 as part of the “Studies in Global Justice and Human Rights” book series, edited by Thom Brooks. Immigration Justice develops and defends a feminist principle of political morality for assessing the justice of nation-states’ immigrant admissions policies, a principle that challenges conventional views on immigration justice among philosophers, political theorists and the general public.

Michael Merry’s book, Equality, Citizenship, and Segregation: A Defense of Separation, will appear in July.

Have a great fall!