We’ve been asked to post this CFP:
We are pleased to announce a call for papers for Western Michigan
University’s 4nd Annual Graduate Philosophy Conference. Papers are
due October 22, and the conference takes place December 3-5.
Acceptances will be issued by October 29. All local expenses (inc.
housing and food) will be covered. Our keynote speakers this year are
Joshua Knobe (Yale) and Edouard Machery (Pitt HPS). While we are
especially interested in papers that engage their work, papers of any
topic will be considered. More details—including submission
guidelines—may be found here:http://files.allhoff.org/Phil_Grad_Conf_Poster_2010.pdf
Any questions may be addressed to the conference organizers at
wmich.philosophy@gmail.com.
(Go send some papers, and keep it from being all-male!)
And from looking at the department website, it appears that all 9 of the regular faculty in the Philosophy Department are male. I’d like to be able to recommend to my grad students that they submit something, but I worry about the tone set by an all-male department.
Importantly, the organisers specifically contacted this blog and asked us to post the CFP. I think that shows a genuine effort to change things, and we should support that.
Okay–that’s definitely a good sign! It just depresses me to see departments with this kind of gender imbalance. But at at least they’re to attract women, and feminists. That’s a step in the right direction.
Did they also have to have all male keynotes? No.
For all I know, they may have tried to do a better job, but I think the set-up is discouraging.
If they hadn’t contacted us, wouldn’t we be invoking the gendered conference campaign? An all male department has an all male list of keynotes, and then asks the feminist philosophers to help?
I wondered about that, JJ, but with only 2 speakers listed I personally wouldn’t have posted on it as a problem. I don’t actually think it’s reasonable to expect that where people have only chosen two speakers one should be a woman. But where this borderline is is precisely the sort of thing we can expect endless disagreement about!
Good point, Jender.
I’m squarely with helenesch and jj (or where jj was) on this one. An all-male (and all-white) department of more than a few members, with sufficient means to host a conference, ought to be making a special effort to bring in a diverse group of keynote and non-conference speakers. Maybe they have done so–but the list of “some of our previous speakers” on their website is hardly encouraging.
Of course, by this standard, the majority of philosophy departments and conferences could be singled out.