Upcoming Conferences and More

Here are various news items that I’ve gathered. This will probably be my last post until the end of the summer.

• This coming week, there’s an impressive conference in Poland on Mind and Body: Aspects of Medieval Natural Philosophy (Lodz, June 13-14, 2019).
• The 5th Rio Colloquium on Logic and Metaphysics in the Later Middle Ages is coming later this month, on Distinctions and Priorities in the Later Middle Ages (Rio de Janeiro, June 24-26, 2019). (Apparently there’s no information on the internet, but anyone interested should contact the organizer, Professor Rodrigo Guerizoli.)
• A conference on Naturaleza y Teoría Política en el Pensar Medieval y Renacentista will take place this summer at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina (Buenos Aires, August 26-28, 2019)
• There’s an International Graduate Conference on the History of Philosophy scheduled for September on Platonism and Aristotelianism in the History of Philosophy (Pavia, Sept. 16-17, 2019). The cfp deadline is July 15.
• The University of Notre Dame is hosting a conference in September on Cusanus Today: Prospects for Philosophy, Theology, and Mysticism (Sept. 19-21, 2019)
• A conference with a focus on translation will take place next spring: Traduction… trahison? Textes, représentations, archéologie, autorité et mémoire de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, March 11-13, 2020)
• Another conference on the later medieval emergence of vernacular thought will take place later in the spring: El diálogo de las lenguas: la emergencia del pensamiento en vernáculo (siglos XIII-XVI) (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, May 11-13, 2020)
• I’ve stumbled upon an interesting attempt to collect information about medieval texts in translation, at HMAOT: Haut Moyen Age Occidental en Traduction. The focus is on the earlier Middle Ages, and runs well beyond philosophy.
• The Averroes Edition Project in Cologne is looking to fill a three-year PhD position in Arabic philosophy. Details here.
• There’s an interesting interview with Thomas Williams at 3:16. He talks there, among many other things, about his new translation of the Confessions.

Advertisements

• There’s a special issue of Theoria in the works, devoted to medieval skepticism. The deadline for submissions is September 1, 2019.
• The 24th Annual Colloquium of the SIEPM will take place in Varna (Bulgaria) this coming fall, on the subject of the Dionysian Traditions (September 9-11, 2019).
• The Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’ International Working Group is sponsoring a meeting in Pisa, June 18-21, 2019, on “Intellect, Experience and More.” Details here.
• There’s an interview with Peter Adamson (LMU Munich) at the What Is It Like … series.
• The Albert the Great Center is holding a week-long summer theology program on St. Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, drawing on Aquinas’s commentary. Details here (Wausau, Wisconsin, Aug. 12-16, 2019).
• The University of Pennsylvania libraries are advertising one-month visiting research fellowships for 2019-2020, aimed at their large collection of premodern manuscripts. The application deadline is May 15, 2019. Information here.
• The Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy is taking submissions for its annual Founders’ Prize, for the best paper in the field by an emerging scholar. The deadline is May 1, 2019. Details here.
• I’m sorry to report that Loome Theological Books, in Stillwater, Minnesota, formerly the world’s greatest bookstore for medieval philosophy, has gone out of business.

Various News Items

• The University of Bonn is hosting a two-day conference on Duns Scotus’s Interlocutors at Paris (April 4-5, 2019)
• There’s a one-day Midwestern Medieval Philosophy Colloquium at the University of Notre Dame this spring (April 5, 2019)
• St. Andrews is hosting a workshop on the history of Arabic logic this spring (May 7-8, 2019)
• A one-day conference on Contingency and Necessity in Medieval and Post-Medieval Scholasticism is being held this June at the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague, June 6, 2019). The deadline for submitting an abstract is April 1.
• Neoplatonism & Aristotelianism in Early Arabic Philosophy is the topic of the Twelfth Annual Summer International Live Video Workshop at Marquette (Milwaukee, June 18-21, 2019)
• The Thomistic Symposium in Rome this fall concerns the topic “Thomas Aquinas on Creation and Nature” (October 3-5, 2019)
• There’s a one-year research fellowship being advertised at King’s College London on Franciscan thought in Paris circa 1220-45. Information here. The application deadline is March 24, 2019.
• The Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (Hamburg) is advertising two doctoral fellowships and two postdoctoral fellowships, focused on the nature and scope of skepticism in the Jewish context. The application deadline is April 1, 2019.
• The Nijmegen Center for the History of Philosophy and Science is encouraging applicants to a two-year postdoctoral fellowship through the Radboud Excellence Initiative. Interested parties should contact Paul Bakker.
• Martin Lenz has written the perfect clickbait post for the readers of this blog: Should contemporary philosophers read Ockham? Or: what did history ever do for us?
• The Journal of the History of Philosophy is looking for a new editor to succeed our own Jack Zupko, whose five-year term concludes in July 2020. Interested parties should contact Tad Schmaltz.
• Finally, congratulations to Thomas Hibbs, longtime professor at Boston College and more recently at Baylor, who has just been named president of the University of Dallas, his alma mater.

Prizes and Other Announcements

It seems I’ve been negligent in posting material — judging from just how much information I have to post.

• Congratulations, first and foremost, to Jon McGinnis and Billy Dunaway, of the Univ. Missouri-Saint Louis, who have won $1.1M from the Templeton Foundation for a project on The Christian West and Islamic East: Theology, Science, and Knowledge. The goal of the project is “linking Medieval Islamic philosophy to contemporary questions about the epistemology of religion in the analytic tradition.” Scholars working in the vicinity, or who might like to be working in the vicinity, should keep an eye on funding opportunities coming out of this project.
• Congratulations as well to Han Thomas Adriaenssen (Groningen), whose 2017 book, Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to Descartes (Cambridge UP), has won the annual book prize from the Journal of the History of Philosophy.
• The Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame is advertising a one-year Mellon postdoc for junior faculty in North America. Application deadline February 1, 2019.
• The 9th Annual Veritas et Amor Contest is being advertised again, for dissertations or books by younger authors (under 35) on Thomas Aquinas. With a prize of €2000, this is well worth competing for! Deadline of February 15, 2019.
• The Institute for Anselm Studies is accepting applications for the John and Judy Paul Summer Research Grant, for PhD students and recent graduates working on Anselm. The grant provides a week of funding at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Details can be found here.

Now, some conferences:

• Nicolas Faucher (CNRS/Helsinki) and Sami Pihlström (Helsinki) have organized a workshop at the start of February on Faith and the Will to Believe – A Comparative Workshop in Pragmatism and Medieval Philosophy (Helsinki, February 1-2, 2019).
• Ave Maria University (Florida) is hosting a conference on Aquinas the Biblical Theologian (February 7-9, 2019).
• There’s a conference at Durham in April on Britain’s Early Philosophers, by which they mean philosophers in Britain before 1000 (Durham, UK, April 1-2, 2019). Cfp deadline January 31, 2019.
• KU Leuven is sponsoring a conference on Mental Being in Late Medieval Thought: From Concepts to Chimeras (Leuven, May 31 – June 1, 2019). Cfp deadline March 1, 2019.
• The Annual Marquette Summer Seminar on Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition meets again this summer, on the topic Plato and Platonism in Aristotle and the Aristotelian Tradition (Marquette, June 24-26, 2019). Cfp deadline March 1, 2019.
• The fourth Symposium Thomisticum, with quite an impressive cast of speakers, will take place this summer on the theme Aquinas Philosopher Theologian (Rome, July 4-6, 2019).
• The International Anselm Conference (theme: Nature, Order and the Divine) will take place at Durham University on July 9th-11th, 2019. Cfp deadline is May 1, 2019.
• The Franciscan Institute is sponsoring a conference this coming summer: “Quidam enim dicunt: Mendicant Theologies before Aquinas and Bonaventure” (Saint Bonaventure, NY, July 15-18, 2019).
• A summer school and workshop at the Max Planck Institute next summer will focus on Baroque Scholasticism and Early Modern Thought (Frankfurt, Aug. 26-28 [summer school]; Aug. 29-30 [workshop], 2019). Some funding is available for participants. So far as I can tell, there is currently no information about this event on the web, but contact Sonja Weber. The submission deadline, at least for the workshop, was January 15, but interested scholars might see whether it’s still possible to apply. You can blame me for being late.

Mostly Conferences

First, news about a funding opportunity:

• Laurent Cesalli has received a major grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation for a four-year project on forms of realism in the medieval tradition as compared to the Austrian-German tradition. He has funds for two postdocs and a doctoral student. The project requires scholarly background in both the medieval and later German tradition, and so language skills in both Latin and German. The project starts in April 2019, and interested parties should contact Laurent directly.

Next, a graduate seminar this spring:

• The Newberry Library (Chicago) is offering a 10-week graduate seminar this spring on Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and its reception, taught by Ian Cornelius (Loyola Chicago). For students at a great many American universities, there looks to be some funding to support attendance. The application deadline is TOMORROW (November 12, 2018). Seminar dates are January 11 – March 15, 2019.

Finally, various conferences:

• This coming week, there’s a conference in Bonn on Peter Thomae’s De ente (Universität Bonn, November 16-17, 2018).
• Journées thomistes 2018 takes place in a few weeks, on the topic Le corps humain selon Thomas d’Aquin : nature et destinée (Paris, Nov. 30-Dec. 1, 2018).
• Marleen Rozemond and Brian Embry are organizing a conference this spring on Varieties of Unity in Early Modern Philosophy. This is relevant on this blog because the call expressly invites contributions on late-scholastic authors (Groningen, April 12-13, 2019). Cfp deadline is January 10, 2019.
• Jamal Rachak (Univ. Cadi Ayyad, Marrakesh) is organizing a symposium this coming April on Philosophy in the Islamic West (Marrakesh, April 25-26, 2019). The call for papers deadline is November 30, 2018. Details here.
• Peter Hartman and Kristen Irwin are organizing a conference, Francisco Suárez: Predecessors and Successors, for the spring (Loyola Univ. Chicago, April 26-27, 2019). Note that some funding is available for would-be participants. Application deadline December 31, 2018.
• The International Medieval Society Paris is holding an interdisciplinary conference on Time next summer (Paris, July 8-10, 2019). Cfp deadline is November 30, 2018.

Coming Events

A lot of events have been announced since I last posted about this:

• Vegetative Powers: Endowing Bodily LIfe from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (University of Padua, September 12-13, 2018)
• Metaphysical Foundations of Ethics (Middle Ages, Early Modern Times) (Paris, September 13-14, 2018)
• Ockhamism and Philosophy of Time (University of L’Aquila, September 13-14, 2018)
• Arabic and Latin Science of Vision and the Theory of Perspective in Early Renaissance Florence (SISMEL, Florence, September 27-29, 2018)
• Immortality of the Soul in Islam and Christianity (Qom [Iran], March 5-7, 2019)
• Contemporary and Medieval Social Ontologies (Bonn University, March 14-16, 2019)
• Powers: A History (Ohio State University, March 22-24, 2019)
• Thomas Aquinas and Church Fathers (Nicolaus Copernicus University [Torun, Poland], April 4-6, 2019). Cfp deadline November 15, 2018.
• Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Saint Louis University, June 17-19, 2019). (Note that the organizers are Susan Brower-Toland and Jenny Pelletier, who are trying to make sure there’s a good turnout from philosophers by organizing two sessions, one on medieval metaphysics and one on medieval ethics. Cfp deadline November 30, 2018. Contact the organizers for details.)
• Quidam enim dicunt: Mendicant Theologies before Aquinas and Bonaventure (Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure, NY July 15-17, 2019). Cfp deadline October 15, 2018.

Also, Doctor virtualis: Rivista online di storia della filosofia medievale has put out a call for papers for its fifteenth(!) volume. The topic of this volume is mysticism. Submission of a brief abstract is due very soon: September 15th, 2018.

Also, as it happens, September 15th is also the deadline for submissions to (at least) two philosophy sessions at the big Kalamazoo conference (May 9-12, 2019):

• Byzantine and Medieval Slavic Theological Aesthetics
• Classical Philosophy in the Lands of Islam and its Influence (contact nicholas.oschman@marquette.edu).

News of Various Sorts

• Among the latest news in the field, first and always foremost, is that a new job in medieval philosophy has been posted at Dominican University College in Ottawa. It’s listed as a tenure-track assistant professor position, though in the very next sentence the job description seems to say that it’s at most a three-year position. A query to the dean about this seeming contradiction produced no reply. Adding to the mystery is that the job is not advertised on PhilJobs.org, which rather undermines the claim of the ad that “Applications are encourage [sic] from all qualified women and men.” Notice that the position requires “teaching competence in both English and French.”
• There’s a major conference on the history of logic sponsored by Alain de Libera at the Collège de France next week, mostly focused on medieval material (Paris, May 14-15, 2018). Details here.
• The Aquinas and “the Arabs” International Working Group is meeting in August in Mexico City (August 23-25, 2018, Universidad Panamericana). I’m afraid the call for papers expired May 1, but folk who are interested might contact the organizers about whether there’s still room on the program.
• The heroic efforts of Alexis Bugnolo to print an English translation of the entirety of Bonaventure’s Sentences commentary have run into some difficulty. It seems the publisher is unwilling to continue stocking the 2300 remaining copies of volume 1, and is threatening to destroy them. If you’d like to do your part to save an endangered book, you can purchase a copy here. (Thanks to John Inglis for this information.)
  • Unfortunately, perhaps as a kind of collateral damage from these efforts at publication, it seems that the freely available electronic translations of this work are no longer available at the Franciscan Archive.