Previous Colloquia
October 13-14, 2023: Embodiment and the Body
Theo Davis (English, Northeastern): “Cybernetic Somatics: An Attachment Perspective”
Respondent: Ben Roth (Philosophy, Emerson College)
Licia Carlson (Philosophy, Providence College): “Embodied Music and Musical Bodies: An Ode to the Violin”
Respondent: Erik Broess (Musicology, BU)
Aderemi Artis (Philosophy, University of Michigan-Flint): “Harmony, Boredom, and Resolved Retreat: The Aesthetics of Bodily Movement in Open-World Videogames”
Respondent: Takeo Rivera (English, BU)
Carter Mathes (English, Rutgers): “Resonant Bodies”
Respondent: Darien Pollock (Philosophy, BU)
Maia Gil’Adi (English, BU), “Solid, viscous, dissipated: Her Body, Our Horror”
A.W. Eaton (Philosophy, University of Illinois-Chicago): “Naked, Fat, and Fabulous: Life Models in the Visual Arts”
Respondent: Jodi Cranston (History of Art & Architecture, BU)
Laurie Shannon (English, Northwestern): “Frailty’s Name: Shakespeare, Natural History, and Human Being”
Respondent: Paul Katsafanis (Philosophy, BU)
November 4-5, 2022: Autonomy
Kristin Gjesdal (Philosophy, Temple), “Nature, Poetry, and Politics: Three Women Philosophers”
Respondent: Michael Prince (English, BU)
Hannah Kim (Philosophy, Macalester College), “North Korean Aesthetics and National Autonomy”
Respondent: Yoon Sun Yang (World Languages and Literatures, BU)
Anna Kornbluh (English, University of Illinois-Chicago), “Collapsing Autonomy: Antifictionality and Antitheory as Contemporary Literary Style”
Respondent: Samantha Matherne (Philosophy, Harvard)
Adriana Clavel-Vazquez (Philosophy, Oxford), “Situated Artworks and Aesthetic Autonomy”
Respondent: Rodrigo Lopes de Barro (Romance Studies, BU)
Héctor Hoyos (Comparative Literature, Stanford), ““Borges and the Crucible of Aesthetic Autonomy in Latin America”
Respondent: Juliet Floyd (Philosophy, BU)
Thi Nguyen (Philosophy, Univ. of Utah), “Art as a Shelter from Science”
Respondent: Theo Davis (English, Northeastern)
Sanjay Krishnan (English, BU), “The Idea of Resistance in the Postcolonial Novel”
Respondent: Daniel Star (Philosophy, BU)
October 23, 2021: Art, Democracy, and Public Life
Jonathan Neufeld (Philosophy, College of Charleston), “Aesthetic Civil Disobedience and Aesthetic Public Reasons”
Respondent: Carrie Preston (English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; BU)
Mark Christian Thompson (English; Johns Hopkins), “Critical Blackness: Angela Y. Davis and the Frankfurt School”
Respondent: James Haile III (Philosophy; University of Rhode Island)
Lisa Siraganian (Comparative Thought and Literature; Johns Hopkins), “Institutionalizing Form: From Yves Klein’s Neo-Avant-Garde to Contemporary Literary Studies”
Respondent: Invild Torsen (Philosophy; University of Oslo)
Emilio Sauri (English; UMass-Boston), “Materialism, Postcritique, and the Art of the Novel”
Respondent: Ben Roth (Writing Program; Harvard)
Paul C. Taylor (Philosophy; Vanderbilt), “Against the Aesthetics of Racial Innocence: Assembly, Groundwork, and Other Stories”
Respondent: Ianna Hawkins Owen (English and African American Studies; BU)
November 1-2, 2019: Wittgenstein and Literature
Michael LeMahieu (English; Clemson), “Writing After Wittgenstein”
Respondent: Espen Hammer (Philosophy, Temple)
Toril Moi (Literature, Romance Studies, English; Duke), “Wittgenstein and Literary Criticism”
Respondent: Richard Eldridge (Philosophy; Swarthmore)
Henry Pickford (German; Duke), “Wittgenstein’s Styles”
Respondent: John Gibson (Philosophy, Louisville)
Hannah Eldridge (German; University of Wisconsin), “Wittgenstein and Lyric”
Respondent: Kristin Boyce (Philosophy; Mississippi State)
Magdalena Ostas (English; Rhode Island College), “Storied Thoughts: Wittgenstein and the Reaches of Fiction”
Respondent: Nancy Bauer (Philosophy; Tufts)
Robert Chodat (English; BU), “Appreciating Materials: Criticism, Science, and the Very Idea of Method”
Respondent: Avner Baz (Philosophy; Tufts)
Sarah Beckwith (English; Duke), “Forms of Life”
Respondent: Naomi Scheman (Philosophy; University of Minnesota)
Ben Ware (Philosophy; King’s College London), “Wittgenstein’s Modernist Subjectivity: Apocalypse and Ethics”
Respondent: Garry Hagberg (Philosophy; Bard)
October 26-27, 2018: New Directions in Literature & Philosophy
James Haile III (Philosophy; U Rhode Island), “‘American Theatricality’: The Intellectual Content and Philosophical Context for Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man”
Respondent: Rob Chodat (English; BU)
Yi-Ping Ong (Comparative Thought and Literature; Johns Hopkins), “Anna Karenina Reads on the Train: Readerly Subjectivity and the Poetics of the Novel”
Respondent: Nancy Bauer (Philosophy; Tufts)
Corina Stan (English; Duke), “Decadence, the ‘End of the West,’ and the Refugee Crisis”
Respondent: Helena de Bres (Philosophy; Wellesley)
John Gibson (Philosophy; Louisville), “An Aesthetics of Insight”
Respondent: Magda Ostas (English; Rhode Island College)
Kristin Gjesdal (Philosophy; Temple), “Modern Times: Reading Ibsen With Hegel”
Respondent: Martin Puchner (English, Comparative Literature; Harvard)
Oren Izenberg (English; UC-Irvine), “Dear Friend: Staying Oneself in the Presence of Another”
Respondent: Ben Roth (Writing Program; Harvard)