2024 Meeting of the MPA: Conference Schedule and Updated Information

[Steven C Skultety]

Please Check Updated Information about Registration, Meals, and Lodging Below!

 

 

 

Conference Schedule

 

All sessions are hosted on the Mississippi University for Women campus, 1100 College Street,

Columbus, MS 39701. Here’s a campus map: https://www.muw.edu/campusmap/

 

 

Friday, March 1st (Cochran Hall, MUW Campus)

 

9:00am—9:15am Coffee/Pastries and Welcome Remarks

 

9:15am—10:05am Panel: Nietzschean Philosophies of the Future

 

“The Struggle for Integrity: Nietzsche on the Philosophy of the Future,” Bridget Berdit,

Georgia State University

 

“Are Nietzsche’s ‘Philosophers of the Future’ Eudaimonists?” Ian Dunkle, University of

Southern Mississippi

 

10:10am—10:40am

 

“Futures as Collective Organization,” Ryan Adams, University of Memphis

 

10:45am—11:35am Panel: Democratic Dissent and Totalitarian Policies

 

“Reviving Paul Churchland’s ‘glorious’ human future guided by science—and reconsidering it

in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic,” John Bickle, Mississippi State University

 

“The Fragility-Necessity Paradox of Democratic Systems,” Cameron Farvin, University of

Southern Mississippi

 

11:35am—1:00pm LUNCH

 

1:05pm—1:35pm

 

“Cat’s Search for Meaning,” Julia Kraus, University of Mississippi

 

1:40pm—2:30pm Panel: Justifications for Our Existence…Or Not

 

“Human Existence and the Universe’s Justification,” Austin McGrath, Mississippi State

University

 

“Against the Value of the Future as a Counter to the Rationality of Suicide,” Christian

Sandoval, Georgia State University

 

2:35pm— 3:25pm Panel: Facing the Future: Epistemic and Historical Responsibility

 

“Resisting the Funnel of Misbelief,” Layla Williams, University of Oklahoma

 

“Facing the Future as Part of Historical Responsibility,” Steven Smith, Millsaps College

 

3:45pm—5:00pm Keynote Address: Travis Holloway, Pratt Institute

 

5:00pm—7:00pm Wine Reception in Summer Hall Galleries, MUW Campus

 

Featuring Philosopher/Artist Robert Leib Gallery Talk @ 5:45pm

 

7:30pm Dinner at J. Broussard’s, 210 5th St. S., Columbus, MS 39701

 

 

Saturday, March 2nd (Cochran Hall, MUW Campus)

 

9:00am – 9:15am Coffee/Pastries

 

9:15am—9:50am

 

“From Emerson to Arendt: Towards a Feminist Account of Self-Reliance,” Sasha Simon,

University of Western Ontario

 

9:55am—10:30am

 

“’White Fraternities’: Smothering Near and Far,” William Moix, University of Arkansas

 

10:35am—11:10am

 

“Call Me Bettcher’s Bulldog: How Sincere Self-Identity Can Ground Trans Rights,” Payden

Alder, Georgia State University

 

11:15am— 11:50am

 

“What is Especially Concerning about AI: Evolving Biases and Alleviation of Concern,”

Yunqing Han, Claremont McKenna College

 

11:50am—1:15pm LUNCH

 

1:20pm—1:55pm Graduate Student Prize Winner

 

“Fluid Futurities: Nietzschean Forgetting in Genealogy of Morality and Marquis Bey's Black

Feminist Abolition,” Sarah Lee, University of Memphis

 

2:00pm—2:40pm Undergraduate Panel: Oppression and Otherness

 

“Commonplace Sexism in Society,” Emily Perkins, Mississippi University for Women

 

“The Other—Woman,” Haylei Wilson, Mississippi University for Women

 

2:45pm— 3:20pm

 

“Fanon and Colorblindness: A Guiding of the Future,” Kristin Brown Golden, Millsaps

College

 

3:25pm— 4:00pm

 

“Queer Futures and the effects of structural-heteropatriarchy, religion, and coloniality in

Zimbabwe,” Kudzai Munyavi, Mississippi University for Women

 

4:30pm Pizza & Beer @ Munson & Brothers, 301 2nd Ave. N., Columbus, MS 39701

 

Registration

 

All conference participants (outside of the W community) must pay a $30 registration fee to attend

the conference. But the wine and cheese reception in the art gallery is included with this fee!

 

Please pay the $30 registration fee using the Cash App QR code below. Or send the payment

directly to Cash App user $MissPhilAssoc.

 

We are also having a conference dinner at J. Broussard’s restaurant (see details below) on Friday

March 1st. There is a $20 fee for a three-course dinner (drink included). You can pay the $20 fee

via cash app, or you can bring $20 cash to dinner. If you are not paying via cash app, please send an

email to jmdrou...@muw.edu to confirm your attendance at dinner.

 

As you’ll see under the “Conference Dinner Info,” given that it’s a local family-owned business, we

need an exact head count prior to the event.

 

Please confirm attendance to dinner by Feb. 10th

 

 

Conference Dinner March 1 @ 7:30pm, J. Broussard’s

 

We’ll be having our conference dinner at a local family-owned New Orleans Style Cuisine restaurant

in downtown Columbus. In the fall of 2000, J. Broussard’s opened in a former Elk’s Lodge building

on Main Street with Chef Joseph Broussard in the kitchen, and his wife Mary hosting guests in the

dining room. Following the death of Joseph in 2006, his daughter, Beth Broussard Rogers assumed

responsibilities in the kitchen. Now, a second-generation family establishment, Mary still hosts

guests in the dining room. Black Creek Farms of Columbus provides free range eggs from hens

raised on home grown produce. Our local economy is important to the Broussard family. The

restaurant is entirely run by the family, so there is a fixed menu for large parties (meaning no

substitutions). I’ve worked with the chef to design a menu that accommodates most, so the main

dish will be vegetarian.

 

Here’s the menu:

 

Course 1 (appetizer)

 

House salad with choice of ranch or balsamic

Pan seared crab cake with lemon butter

 

Course 2 (entrée)

 

Vegetable Risotto

 

Course 3 (dessert)

 

Caramel pecan blondie with cinnamon ice cream

 

 

Lodging

 

We’ve reserved a block of rooms at the Marriot Courtyard, 1995 6th St N, Columbus, MS 39701.

Must be booked by Feb. 9th to receive this rate.

 

$109 per room/night (Double Queens & Single Kings)

*onsite restaurant that serves made to order breakfast (breakfast not included in room rate)

 

Other Lodging options in the area include:

 

Shadowlawn Bed & Breakfast, 1024 College St, Columbus, MS 39701

 

Hyatt Place, 101 Hospital Drive Ext., Columbus, MS 39701

 

Fairfield Inn & Suites, 2011 6th St N, Columbus, MS 39701

 

 

Keynote Travis Holloway Bio:

 

Travis Holloway, M.F.A., Ph.D., is Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, a poet, and a

former Goldwater Fellow in Creative Writing at NYU. He is the 2023-2024 recipient of Pratt’s

Research Recognition Award, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Institute.

Prof. Holloway is the author of How to Live at the End of the World: Theory, Art, and Politics for the

Anthropocene (Stanford, 2022); co-translator of three books and several articles by the French political

philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, including Corpus III (Fordham, 2023), The Possibility of a

World (Fordham, 2017), and What’s These Worlds Coming To? (Fordham, 2014); and co-author

of Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action that Changed America (OR Books, 2011). He is

currently working on two subsequent monographs: How to Perform a Democracy; and How to Assemble

with All the Living. He is also editing a special issue of Philosophy Today on philosophy in a new era of

climate change.

 

Holloway grew up queer and working-class in a rural factory town affected by free trade and

globalization. A first-generation college student, he completed his graduate studies in philosophy on

a Fulbright dissertation fellowship and a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Fellowship at

the Universität Freiburg in Germany, and as a visiting researcher at the Sorbonne and the École des

hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Separately and during this time, Holloway earned an

MFA in creative writing (poetry) at NYU, where he studied with the poets Anne Carson, Yusef

Komunyakaa, John Ashbery, Charles Simic, and Marie Howe. His unpublished poetry manuscript, It

Was Up to Us, was a finalist for two national poetry awards.

 

Holloway has held positions or taught at Vassar College, NYU, the Pratt Institute, SUNY

Farmingdale, and SUNY Stony Brook. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright Commission,

the DAAD, the Andrew Mellon foundation, and the Max Kade Institute. His most recent work has

been published in Italy, Turkey, the UK, Columbia, Canada, the Czech Republic, and the U.S. His

primary interests include contemporary Continental philosophy, social and political philosophy,

environmental philosophy, aesthetics, and queer theory. Some of his recent articles include “The

Meaning of Climate Change: Dipesh Chakrabarty with Travis Holloway” (Philosophy Today,

Forthcoming 2024), “Weather” (The Philosopher, Special Issue on the Planet, 2022), “Philosophy at

the End of the World: For a Counterhistory of Human Beings in the Anthropocene” (The

Philosopher, 2020), “A Strategy for a Democratic Future” (Tropos, 2019), “Neoliberalism and the

Future of Democracy” (Philosophy Today, 2018), and “How to Perform a Democracy” (Epoché, 2017).

 

 

Philosopher/Artist Robert Leib Bio:

 

Robert Leib is an artist and philosopher from Gettysburg, PA. He received his PhD in Philosophy

from Villanova University in 2016 and an MA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in 2007. He is

the author of more than a dozen peer reviewed philosophy articles, most recently "Beginning AI

Phenomenology" (2023). He is the author of Exoanthropology: Dialogues with AI (Punctum 2023), a

series of sixty-six dialogues on human-AI interaction, generated with an AI persona named Sophie

Kermit. For more, see: exoanthropology.com. As an artist, Leib often publishes under the moniker

Kidsetstar at kidsetmedia.com. His earliest work was collage, then photography and photo transfer.

His most recent work is best described as Human-Algorithm collaboration. He is author of the

Human-AI image text, Phobias (2023) and other image text works, including -Muse- (2022), Atlantis:

The Lost Continent (2018), and The Doctrine of Signatures (2016). The works in Dash explore the ways AI

algorithms can translate, interpret, respond to, or enhance human artistic and creative practices, and

it further asks about their implications.

 

*Conference made possible with the financial support of the Mississippi Humanities Council, the

Dept. of Languages, Literature, & Philosophy, The Dept. of Art and Design, the MUW Foundation,

and the Mississippi Philosophical Association

 

 

MPA Executive Committee

 

President: Manuel Rodeiro

Vice President and Conference Host: Jill Drouillard

Secretary: Steven Skultety

Treasurer: Neil Manson

 

Program Committee: Jill Drouillard & Josh Dohmen