Events

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Note room change:
November's Anzaldua talk will be in BUSA 111 (Business Administration building).
The others will continue to be in Education Complex 1.102.
 

The Philosophy Program at the University of Texas, Pan American sponsors this speakers series that is focused on the same issues with which Gloria E. Anzaldúa, one of UTPA’s most famous graduates, was focused: race, queer theory, and border politics. During the coming year, 2009-2010, we will be hosting five speakers. 

October 9, 2009: 3 pm
John Dewey, Latina Lesbians and the Quest for Purity
Dr. Gregory Fernando Pappas
Texas A&M, Philosophy

Dr. Pappas took his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Texas, Austin, his M.A. from the University of Wyoming and his B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico. He works within the American Pragmatist and Latin American traditions in ethics and social-political philosophy. He is the author of numerous articles on the philosophy of William James and John Dewey. His most recent publication is the book with Indiana University Press titled John Dewey's Ethics: Democracy as Experience. He has been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship as well as the William James and the Latin American Thought prizes by the American Philosophical Association. He is working on the philosophical connections between American Pragmatism and Latin American Philosophy.

Lecture: Dr. Pappas will present a lecture on Hispanic identity, more specifically, Hispanic-American culture (as a hybrid). Dr. Pappas takes up the work of Anzaldúa and others to argue that one of the obstacles to accepting "hybrid people" is a mistaken ontology about cultures, one that does not accept ambiguity.

November 19, 2009: 7 pm
Weak Humanism Against Racism
Dr. Leigh Johnson
Rhodes College, Philosophy Department

Dr. Johnson received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Pennsylvania State University, her M.A. from Villanova University, and her B.A. from the University of Memphis. Professor Johnson specializes in 19th and 20th century philosophy, largely in the European/Continental tradition, race theory and social/political philosophy.  Her previous research includes work on the French philosopher Jacques Derrida and deconstruction, as well as a sustained study of the roles truth-telling, forgiveness, reconciliation and memory play in the work of truth commissions (primarily in Latin America and Africa).  Recently, Professor Johnson has turned her scholarly attention to the phenomenon of human rights and their violation (including “crimes against humanity”), and has directed her research at questions concerning how these phenomena reinforce or disrupt our working understanding of what “democracy” means in the post-9/11 world.  She is currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled Weak Humanism.

February 4, 2010: Noon
Post Cold War Borders: Linking the Postcolonial and Postsocialist
Dr. Jennifer Suchland
Ohio State University, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures

Dr. Suchland took her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Texas, Austin and her B.A. from Southwestern University, Department of Political Science (with Honors). Her work focuses on issues of law, the state, gender and sexuality in the context of postsocialisms. Her work is grounded in feminist and political theory and often focuses on "the political" as cultural artifact. She is also interested in the interconnections of postsocialism and postcolonialism, particularly as they work as discourses of global critique and geopolitical subjectivity.

Lecture: Dr. Suchland’s talk will discuss the geographic and metaphorical borders between the former “3rd” and “2nd” worlds.  In the context of the post Cold War era, what are the connections between these places and what inhibits the “building of bridges” between them?  Do the social and economic struggles of postsocialism relate to 3rd world struggles?  Why have the borders of the 2nd and 3rd world persisted despite the supposed end of the Cold War?  

February 4, 2010: 7 pm
Queers Have No Passports: On the Floating Borders of Nationalism
Dr. Shannon Winnubst
Ohio State University, Women’s Studies

Dr. Winnubst received her M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from The Pennsylvania State University and her B.A. from The University of Notre Dame. Trained in the history of western philosophy, particularly 20th century French philosophy, she specializes in queer theory, race theory, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis. Her research interests focus on the intersections of race and sexuality, focusing particularly on normative frameworks of space, time, and pleasure. Her recent book, Queering Freedom (Indiana: 2006), approached these questions particularly through frameworks of excess, scarcity, pleasure, utility, and fear. Her current work excavates race and sexuality in the intersecting concepts of animality, fetishism, and nationalism. In addition to publishing in journals such as Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy and Philosophy and Social Criticism, she also edited a recent anthology, Reading Bataille Now (Indiana: 2006).

Lecture: Drawing on Anzaldua's insistence that "there is the queer of me in all races," her current project focuses on questions of nationalism, national borders, and sexuality; for example, a recent talk at Emory took both Hurricane Katrina and Kara Walker's exhibit at the MOMA, "After the Deluge," as the objects of analysis to develop a "queer" critique of nationalism. Recognizing that our notions of freedom are restrictive, Winnubst encourages a notion of queer freedom that attempts to break through the boundaries and borders, conceptually and in fact, to attempt a practice of true freedom and the liberation of pleasure.

March 25, 2010: 4:30 pm
Hermeneutic Dimensions of Recognition
Dr. Theodore George
Texas A&M, Philosophy Department

Dr. George received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Villanova University and his B.A. from Whitman College. Professor George specializes in the political thought of German Idealism, specifically in Hegel. In his work, George brings his insights in Hegel’s reading of tragedy to bear on contemporary political life, specifically on the problems of recognition, political forgiveness and freedom.

Lecture:  Although he conceives of the problem of recognition as a bequest of Hegelian thought, Dr. George is interested in the fact that it has taken up with emphasis by Axel Honneth in his current social and political thought.  George explores Honneth's approach to recognition, finding it insightful and generally very sensitive to hermeneutical concerns, yet concluding that Honneth’s debts to the furtherance of the project of the Enlightenment may nevertheless lead him to occlude some of the linguistic, cultural, and existential conditions of recognition.  In this paper, George focuses on Gadamer's appropriation of Aristotle's notion of friendship in counterpoint to Honneth's recent critique of Gadamer.