2022-23 Department Activities and Events
Chicago-Area Consortium in German Philosophy
The Consortium resumed in-person events this year, sponsoring several events here and elsewhere. Its annual workshop was held in April at DePaul on “Themes in Hegel.” This included talks from W. Clark Wolf (Marquette), Kevin Thompson (DePaul) and Ardis Collins (Loyola).
“Critical Theory in Critical Times” Annual Workshop: The Epistemology of Protest. A Conversation with José Medina
The department of philosophy together with the Center for Global Culture and Communication, the Critical Theory Cluster and other sponsors, hosted the seventh Critical Theory in Critical Times Annual Workshop: A Conversation with José Medina on The Epistemology of Protest, on May 19th, 2023. This workshop series aims to bring to Northwestern the most distinguished critical theorists who have recently published a major work in the area for an in-depth discussion with experts in the field, interested faculty, and students. In preparation for the workshop a reading group with faculty and students from several departments (Philosophy, Political Science, Spanish & Portuguese, Communication Studies, German, etc.) met to discuss José Medina’s book The Epistemology of Protest, in which he offers an account of communicative and epistemic resistance against injustice in street activism and protest movements and examines the communicative power of protest to break social silences, to disrupt complicity and insensitivity, and to create new forms of social sensibility. At the workshop, four commentators were invited to discuss his work: Luvell Anderson (Syracuse University), Nancy Tuana (Penn State University), Miguel Caballero (Spanish & Portuguese, NU) and Marcela Fuentes (Performance Studies, NU).
NUSTEP conference
The 15th annual NUSTEP conference was held on campus June 1-3, 2023. As so often happens at this conference a real philosophical community formed over the three days we were together, and we’re confident that lasting philosophical collaborations were established. Keynote speakers Michelle Moody-Adams (Columbia) and Arthur Ripstein (Toronto) anchored an outstanding program, bringing talks on the nature of democracy and the prospects for American political community.
The conference was organized by faculty members Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Richard Kraut, Corey Barnes, Chad Horne, and Laura Martin, along with the invaluable help of many graduate students and the department staff. To see the full schedule for this and past years’ conferences visit our NUSTEP page.