Past Programs
July 23-29, 2023
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Vanessa Wills
"The Materiality of Race- Consciousness"
MODULES AND SEMINARS
Marx and Critical Race Theory
Stephen Ferguson (North Carolina State) and Vanessa Wills (George Washington University)
Scholarly interest in “whiteness,” white privilege, white racial identity, and the social construction of race in general has grown dramatically over the last few decades. Although David R. Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991), a study about antebellum Irish workers, class, and blackface in the United States, popularized these notions among historians. It is Charles Mills’ The Racial Contract (1997) that has popularized these ideas in philosophical circles. We will focus on whether white privilege is a valid and useful explanatory concept for theorizing and combating class exploitation, racism and white supremacy.
Words Working in the World: Language as Tool and as Weapon
Kate Stanton (Pitt) and Sally McConnell-Ginet (Cornell)
We often say things like “We need action, not words” and children have chanted “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Both online and off we encounter people using words to hurt, to comfort, to put down, to compliment, to threaten, to get a laugh, and much more. People tell one another what they should and should not say, and new ways of saying things, including new words, continue to emerge. Drawing on their own experiences with words and on some ideas in recent philosophy of language and linguistics, participants will explore how language does things beyond neutrally conveying information.
Questioning the Canon
Donald Ainslie (University of Toronto) and Lisa Shapiro (McGill University)
Philosophy as it is currently practiced and taught tends to revolve around topics and positions exemplified in a small number of historical figures – almost exclusively men of European heritage, from Socrates to David Lewis. What gets overlooked by these blinkers on our historical perspective on the field? Whose voices have not been heard? How can we address this problem? Moreover, some of the canonical philosophers espouse repugnant views on such topics as race, gender, sexuality, disability, and slavery. What is the best way to confront the blindspots of the canonical philosophers in our teaching and research?
The Nature of Rights
Japa Pallikkathayil (Pitt)
A session devoted to the nature of rights. We will consider how competing views of rights have different implications regarding who may have rights and what rights they may have. We will discuss well-established debates about the rights of children and animals as well as emerging debates about natural phenomena like rivers and ecosystems.
Human Rights, Freedom of Expression, and Social Polarization
Lynne Tirrell (University of Connecticut)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that “the recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” In this session let’s talk about dignity, its recognition, and what its recognition requires. Let’s think together about how protecting the freedoms outlined in the UDHR supports freedom of speech and belief, and about what adopting a human rights framework accomplish in our increasingly polarized world.
The Philosophical Thought of Malcolm X
Michael Sawyer (Pitt) and Jennifer Whiting (Pitt)
The philosophical thought of Malcolm X serves as a bridge between that of W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon while at the same time serving as the dominant framework for thinking modern radical political thought. We will examine two of Malcolm's canonical speeches: "Message to the Grassroots" and "The Ballot or the Bullet" to begin to elaborate the meanings of terms like violence and non-violence, revolt, revolution, and ultimately freedom. We will approach Malcom X and these questions through and with Spike Lee's film "Do the Right Thing".
July 17-23, 2022
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Tommie Shelby "Prison Abolition"
Caldwell Titcombe Professor of African and African American Studies
and of Philosophy at Harvard
MODULES AND SEMINARS
Cosmopolitanism and “classics”
Sara Magrin (Pitt) and Jennifer Whiting (Pitt)
Cosmopolitans — from the Stoics through Kant to contemporary thinkers — think that human beings, simply as such, have enough in common that they can in principle and should ideally view themselves as citizens not of any particular state, but of the cosmos. Most privilege reason over other things we have in common and view reason as grounding the sort of common understanding that allows human beings to form a single community. But this is problematic if the conceptions of reason with which cosmopolitans work are to some extent constructions of the societies in which they have been raised. Is cosmopolitanism a culturally biased, perhaps even elitist, ideal? Are there non-elitist forms of cosmopolitanism available to us, as some suggest hip-hop may be? Questions along these lines interact with hotly debated questions about the value of reading so-called “classic” texts and about what makes something a “classic” in the first place.
Prison Abolition
Brandon Hogan (Howard) and Tommie Shelby (Harvard)
We start with an overview of traditional justifications of punishment (primarily retribution and deterrence) and then turn to the restorative justice model for responding to crime. There will be extended consideration of the arguments for abolishing the practice of imprisonment, with a focus on the work of Angela Davis.
Language and Power: Comfortable and Uncomfortable Speech
Kate Stanton (Pitt) and Lynne Tirrell (U Conn)
Students will be encouraged to think first about how they see language enacting power in their own lives, for better or for worse. Themes include labeling, manipulation, marginalization, etc., as well as appreciation, praise, and so on. The phenomena will be analyzed using tools from philosophy of language and linguistics, with theories generated through discussion.
Merit and Justice
Ann Cudd (Pitt, Provost) and Japa Pallikathayil (Pitt, Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy)
We will examine whether positions and goods in higher education should be distributed in accordance with individual merit. We will examine what merit might mean in this context, problems with traditional measures of merit, and more fundamental criticisms of the use of merit as a component of a just distributive scheme.
Imagination and Identity
Paul Harper (Pitt, Katz School of Business Administration) and Jennifer Whiting (Pitt Philosophy)
Any theory of rationality implies some notion of irrationality. In some cases, like Plato’s, what constitutes irrationality is explicitly addressed. But in many cases, the corresponding conceptions of irrationality are either underdeveloped or unaddressed. Our first goal is to seek bases for critical perspectives on theories of rationality in their implied (and sometimes acknowledged) conceptions of irrationality. Our second goal is to highlight the roles played by conceptions of irrationality in prominent theories of culture and political philosophy: we shall explore how these theories locate irrationality within minoritized social identities, such as those of women and enslaved people. Our third goal is to cultivate appreciation of the emancipatory power of irrationality in (for our purposes) the racialized imagination. Short readings from a range of sources: philosophy, ethnology, political theory, liberation theology, and literature.