Stanley Cavell at 100 (Boston): Philosophy and Literature, Tragedy, Music, and the Idea of America
For detailed information, please visit the conference website
FRIDAY OCTOBER 23
BOSTON UNIVERSITY, 610 COMMONWEALTH AVENUE, KCILSE 1-10
(Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
8:30 am: Coffee
9:00-9:10 am: Welcome and Introduction: Juliet Floyd, Sandra Laugier, Piergiorgio Donatelli
9:15–9:45 am: Opening Words: Cornel West
Keynote Lecture 1
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Allen Speight
9:45–10:40 am: Richard Eldridge (Swarthmore), Ordinary Language Philosophy and Democratic Authority
10:45-11 am: Break
Roundtable | 11:00 am–12:30 pm, The Concept of America
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Piergiorgio Donatelli
James Conant (University of Chicago), Kelly Jolley (Auburn), Susan Neiman (Einstein Forum), Darien Pollock (Boston University)
12:30–1:15 pm: Lunch Break
Parallel Sessions 1 | 1:20–2:50 pm
KCILSE – ROOMS 1-101, 1-106A, 1-106B, 1-106C, 1-106D
Room 1-101, Chair: David Macarthur
1:20-1:40 pm: Eric Bayless-Hall (New School for Social Research): Cavell on Logical Necessity and Life
1:45–2:05 pm: Ellie Wong (Johns Hopkins University): Misunderstanding Metaphors and the Role of Paraphrase
2:10–2:30 pm: Valerii Latyshev (Indiana University Bloomington): Criteria, Cavell, and Austin
2:30–2:50 pm: Discussion
Room 1-106A, Chair: Allen Speight
1:20-1:40 pm: Zach Weinstein (Auburn University): Cavell on Artistic Intention
1:45–2:05 pm: Robert Engelman (University of the Incarnate Word): “At Once of Madness and of Plainness”: Cavell and Adorno on Beckett’s Endgame
2:10–2:30 pm: Sarah V. Schweig (New School for Social Research): ‘Everyone Stands in Need of the Power of Poetry, So Long as Anyone Does’: Justifying Cavell’s Strong Parallel Claim about Poetry
2:30–2:50 pm: Discussion
Room 1-106B, Chair: Ed Witherspoon
1:20-1:40 pm: Matthew A. Hoffman (Indiana University Bloomington): Much Ado About Nothing
1:45–2:05 pm: Ben Jeffrey (University of Chicago): Stanley Cavell’s Shakespeare and the Imaginative A Priori
2:10–2:30 pm: Samuel Milch (University of Sydney): “I will have my bond”: The Pound of Flesh as a Denial of the Ordinary in The Merchant of Venice
2:30–2:50 pm: Discussion
Room 1-106C, Chair: Ed Minar
1:20-1:40 pm: Chris Haufe and Walter Hunter (Case Western Reserve University): Cavell, “Thinking of Emerson”
1:45–2:05 pm: Pete Heath (University of South Florida): Aversion – Revolution – Convers(at)ion: a Literary Reading of Cavell’s Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome
2:10–2:30 pm: Russell C. Powell (Harvard Divinity School): The Philosopher as the Hobo of Thought: Heidegger’s Emerson and Hegel’s America in Cavell’s Reading of “Experience”
2:30–2:50 pm: Discussion
Room 1-106D, Chair: Naoko Saito
1:20-1:40 pm: Alexander Altonji (NYU and Fordham University): “I am worried about this country”: The Politics of Friendship in Cavell’s Idea of America
1:45–2:05 pm: David Le Thien (Emory University): Recognition, Reconciliation, or Acknowledgment? Hegel and Cavell on the Politics of Tragedy
2:10–2:30 pm: Chun-Tak Suen (Brown University): A Constitutionalist of “immigrancy”? Stanley Cavell and the Idea of America
2:30–2:50 pm: Discussion
2:50-3 pm: Break
Parallel Sessions 2 | 3:05-4:25 pm
KCILSE – ROOMS 1-101, 1-106A, 1-106B, 1-106C, 1-106D
Room 1-101, Chair: Eyal Peretz
3:05-3:25 pm: Paolo Babbiotti (University of Turin): “Bumping into Each Other”: Cavell and Lacan, Tragedy and Desire
3:30-3:50 pm: Amy Levine (Harvard University): Skepticism, Anxiety and the Ordinary
3:55-4:15 pm: Konstantinos Konstantinou (Stanford University): Dangers of Fraudulence and the Onward Rush of Mankind
4:15-4:25 pm: Discussion
Room 1-106A, Chair: Robert Chodat
3:05-3:25pm: Talia Morag (Australian Catholic University, North Sydney, Australia): Art as Action or Art as a Symptom? A Psychoanalytic Challenge to Cavell
3:30–3:50 pm: Samuel Beausejour (Independent Writer): Stanley Cavell, Anti-Representationalism, and Tragedy
3:55-4:15 pm: Amie Doan (University of Sydney): “But then face to face”: Stanley Cavell and James Baldwin’s Scenes of Instruction
4:15-4:25 pm: Discussion
Room 1-106B, Chair: Brett Bourbon
3:05-3:25 pm: Shuning Yan (Kyoto University of Graduate Education),Toward a perfectionist educationーRethinking aspiration through Emerson’s self-reliance and Cavell‘s aversive thinking
3:30–3:50 pm: Martin Maira Sotomayor (Boston College): Becoming a Human Being: Cavell on the Concept of Judgment
3:55-4:15 pm: Lucas Thompson (University of Sydney): Treasure Island, Stanley Cavell, and the Adventure of the Human Voice
4:15-4:25 pm: Discussion
Room 1-106D, Chair: Brendan Hogan
3:05-3:25 pm: Katsuki Koh (Kyoto University Graduate School of Education): Pragmatism of Entrepreneurship Education as a Way of Life – Focusing on the Contemporary Significance of H.D. Thoreau’s “Economy”
3:30–3:50 pm: Kari Martin (University of Chicago, Divinity School): Being in the (New) World: Stanley Cavell and Martin Heidegger on the American Thinker
3:55-4:15 pm: David Sollenberger (Pennsylvania State University, Rock Ethics Institute): “The Universe Contains All the Colors It Wears”: Cavell and the Attention to Attention in American Philosophy
4:15-4:25 pm: Discussion
Panel 1 | 4:10-6:10 pm
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Peter Levine
4:10-4:40 pm: Avner Baz (Tufts University): Cavell and the Significance of Intellectual Tragedy
4:40-5:10 pm: Edward Minar (University of Arkansas): Skepticism and the Denial of the Human: On Part Two of The Claim of Reason
5:10-5:40 pm: Ed Witherspoon (Colgate University): The Difference Acknowledgment Makes
5:40-6:10 pm: Naomi Scheman (University of Minnesota): When Fragility Fractures: Philosophy after Failures of Attunement
SATURDAY OCTOBER 24
BOSTON UNIVERSITY, 610 COMMONWEALTH AVENUE, KCILSE 1-101
(Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
8:45 am: Coffee and Welcome
Keynote Lecture 2
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Sandra Laugler
9-9:55am: Martin Shuster (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), America Then and Now
Panel 2 | 10:00 am–11 pm
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Paola Marrati
10-10:30 am: Megan Laverty (Columbia Teachers College), May Bartram's Education: A Cavellian Re-reading of Henry James's The Beast in the Jungle
10:30-11 am: Rob Chodat (Boston University): Out of Practice: Craft, Experts, and the First Person
Keynote Lecture 3
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Piergiorgio Donatelli
11:10am -12:05 pm: Toril Moi (Duke), Paradigm Shift? Cavell, Judgment, and Literary Criticism in the Age of AI
12:10pm - 1:30 pm:Lunch Break
Parallel Sessions 3 | 1:35-2:35pm
KCILSE – ROOMS 1-101, 106A, 106B, 106C, 106D
Room 1-101, Chair: Kelly Jolley
1:35-1:55 pm: Timothy M. Kwiatek(Penn State University), Cavell, Praise and Skepticism
2-2:20 pm: Loriane Lafont-Grave (University of Chicago; École Pratique des Hautes Études): Montaigne's Augustinian Unspoken: Echoes to Cavell and Wittgenstein's Approaches about Philosophy as a Confession
2:25-2:35 pm:Discussion
Room 1-106B, Chair: Steven Affeldt
1:35-1:55 pm: David Heckerl (St. Mary’s University, Halifax), A Jar in Sacramento
2-2:20 pm: Auriane Simalla-Bartoli (University of Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne,Institut des sciences juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne): The Conversation of Justice Beyond Public Reason
2:25-2:35 pm:Discussion
Room 1-106C, Chair: Jeroen Gerrits
1:35-1:55 pm: Lan Tang (Fudan University): From Aura to Acknowledgment: Benjamin, Bazin, and Cavell on the Ontology of Film
2-2:20 pm: Casey Doyle (SUNY Binghamton): Fear of the “Aboriginal Self”: Emerson, Cavell, and Tarkovsky’s Stalker
2:25-2:35 pm:Discussion
Room 1-106D, Chair: Meghan Laverty
1:35-1:55 pm: Michael Quinn (University of Glasgow): “Honest Iago, My Desdemona I leave to thee”: Reflecting on Testimonial Injustice in Othello with Stanley Cavell
2-2:20 pm: Joseph Reigle (Duke Divinity School): Saying “Nothing” and Meaning Something: King Lear’s Scenes of Instruction for American Democracy
2:25-2:35 pm:Discussion
2:30-2:45 pm: Break
Keynote Lecture 4
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Avner Baz
2:50-3:45 pm: Sofia Miguens (University of Porto), How We Stand Before Things to Come - Cavell on ‘declining decline’ and ‘finding as founding’
3:50-4:00 pm: Break
Panel 3 | 4-5:30 pm
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Andrew Brandel
4-4:30 pm: Brett Bourbon (University of Dallas): The Theological Dimension of Stanley Cavell’s Philosophical Thinking
4:30-5 pm: David Macarthur (University of Sydney): The Claim of Imagination: Challenging Cavell’s Intentionalist Vision of Art
5-5:30 pm: Brendan Hogan andLawrence Marcelle (NYU; Parsons School of Design, The New School): Achievable yet unapproachable? Philosophy, democracy, and America
6-7:30 pm: Reception (open to all)
SUNDAY OCTOBER 25
BOSTON UNIVERSITY, 610 COMMONWEALTH AVENUE
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
8:45 am: Coffee and Welcome
Keynote Lecture 5
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Paul Guyer
9:00–9:55 am: Russell Goodman (University of New Mexico), Emerson’s Philosophical Style
Keynote Lecture 6
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101 (Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
Chair: Nancy Yousef
10:30 am–12:00 pm: Sarah Beckwith (Duke), Stanley, John, and Jane: Commitments of Speech
12:05–12:15 pm: Break
Conclusions
KCILSE – ROOM 1-101
(Howard Eichenbaum Colloquium Room)
12:15 pm: Juliet Floyd, Sandra Laugier, Piergiorgio Donatelli.