Take note that the deadline (January 19th) for
Boston College's 11th Annual Graduate Student Conference is fast approaching. The conference dates will be March 19-20, 2010. Please recognize that
the January 19th deadline is for the submission of completed papers (4000 words maximum). For those not accustomed to this procedure, it's a pretty standard activity for academic philosophy conferences (e.g., it's the only way to get on the annual program at
SPEP). It is, quite literally, a call for papers. The theme for this year's conference is "Power." Here's the description the organizers offer:
The formation of states, violent revolutions, and peaceful elections all show power's influence on human events. Philosophers traditionally have examined the dynamics of power as part of understanding social and political affairs. Other thinkers have called our attention to power as a hidden force in human life. Beyond government and politics, they argue, power quietly determines social institutions and culture -- even knowledge itself.
What is the fundamental meaning of power? How is it structured and what is its mode of operation? What moral responsibility do we have with respect to the powerful and the powerless?
We invite papers that consider how these and other questions concerning power have been address in the history of philosophy as well as what contemporary philosophy can contribute to the discussion.
Among the conference's three keynote addresses will be BC's own
James Bernauer (a long-time scholar of Foucault and Arendt),
Francisco de Roux, a Columbian Jesuit economist, social activist, and human rights advocate.
Religious traditions live by translation, as religions are expressed not only in different languages but also in various social and cultural contexts. Artists, missionaries, public theologians, scholars, and teachers have always sought ways to communicate religious convictions and questions to new audiences. Those efforts at translation often bring controversy, as the recent history of Christianity, from Wyclif and Tyndale to the Roman Catholic Church’s new English translation of the Roman Missal, abundantly shows. Still, translation remains essential to religion, particularly in a globalized world that gives access to, and responsibilities toward, people whose voices would not have easily been encountered generations ago. This new access—through the proliferation media, greater ease of travel, and perhaps especially the extent of current migration—is changing daily lives throughout the world, challenging people to negotiate the differences that emerge. As people interact in new ways, dominant cultures find themselves not only translating, but translated into, new social realities. In these interactions, translation has served too often as a tool of colonization, including the destruction of languages and cultures. But it has served as well in the service of enculturation that enriches religious traditions, as in the artwork and vital community of San Antonio’s San Fernando Cathedral, and the transformative dialogues that can arise between religions. What new possibilities for our lives and our religious traditions are emerging through such translations? What valued wisdom of the past are we in danger of losing? Where might we need to acknowledge that different languages and worldviews are incommensurable, impossible to translate fully enough? And how, as teachers and scholars of religion, can we assist our students, our faith communities, and our world in the translations necessary to meet the challenges of our time?
