Events

The Department of Philosophy and World Religions is pleased to announce the return of our 

Our first event will be Wednesday October 13, at 5 pm.  Christopher Breu  (English, Illinois State University), will present a talk entitled “Gender’s Ascent and the Decline of Sex.”  

Prof. Breu has provided the following abstract for his presentation: “Drawing on recent work in intersex, trans, and queer theory, this talk will chart the ascendance of gender and the decline of sex as concepts by which we articulate sexual and embodied difference. The paper will argue that we lose something crucial--an understanding embodied difference that doesn't correspond to binary models--as potentially distinct from gender identification-when we jettison the notion of sex. Instead this talk will propose an updating of the concept of sex for a trans-affirmative and intersex-affirmative twenty-first century.”

This event is co-sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

 is a series of public, work in progress lectures covering a range of topics of relevance to scholars in philosophy, religion studies, and other related disciplines. The goal of the series is to promote scholarly exchange involving the Department of Philosophy and World Religions, the university, and interested scholars throughout the region. Speakers will include members of the department as well as faculty from other departments at Rowan and from other institutions.

Theorizing at Rowan: Christopher Breu, "Gender's Ascent and the Decline of Sex"

The Department of Philosophy and World Religions is pleased to announce the next event in our 

On Wednesday November 3, at 5 pm., Jennie Ikuta (Political Science, University of Missouri), will present a talk entitled “Between Present and Future: On Du Bois' Radical Pessimism and Radical Hope.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Engineering 319 and online via Zoom.

Prof. Ikuta has provided the following abstract for her presentation: 

"In the summer of 2020, uprisings spread like wildfire across the nation as multiracial crowds took to the streets to protest police killings of Black Americans. Media and scholarly commentators framed these protests in terms of a ‘racial reckoning,’ interpreting them as a sign that this time, things were different, and that a racially egalitarian society was closer now than ever before. Hope abounded. However, given the developments over the last 18 months—rapidly plummeting support for Black Lives Matter, the January 6th insurrection, and the slew of voter suppression bills introduced by Republicans—numerous commentators have recently argued that in fact, no ‘racial reckoning’ has taken place at all. Over the span of a single year, then, the tenor of racial justice politics has swerved from incredible hope to incredible pessimism.  

 “How should we make sense of such hope and pessimism? And what does it suggest about the prospects—and specifically, about the prospective timeline—for a racially egalitarian society in the United States? In this paper, I turn to the writings of Du Bois between 1920 and 1940 as a resource for thinking through these questions. I argue that during this period, Du Bois’ thought articulates a dual pessimism and hope that corresponds to dual temporal horizons—the present and the future—which shapes the prescriptions for Black political action; that is, voluntary self-segregation and propaganda.”

This event is co-sponsored by the Africana Studies Program, the Department of Political Science and Economics, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Theorizing at Rowan: Jennie Ikuta, "Between Present and Future: On Du Bois' Radical Pessimism and Radical Hope"

A meeting for Lecturer members of the AFT Local 2373, Rowan University. 

Register to have meeting info sent to you.

Only dues-paying members from the lecturer group will be approved to join this meeting. 

Rowan AFT Lecturer Meeting

Our first event will be Wednesday March 2, at 5 pm.  Philip Osborne (Philosophy, Rowan University), will present a a talk entitled “Neo-Aristotelianism and Histories of Wrongdoing.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall, Room 121 and online via Zoom.

Prof. Osborne has provided the following abstract for his presentation: “In her 2000 book 

, Philippa Foot develops a naturalistic approach to ethics based on notions of natural goodness and defect: Just as the free riding wolf who refuses to hunt with the pack displays a behavioral defect, so the human being who engages in vicious behavior displays a defect in the exercise of their rational will. The present paper aims to develop a novel criticism of this approach rooted in the idea that whereas judgments of moral character track one's history of doing right or wrong (regardless of how that history affects the likelihood of good or bad behavior in the future), naturalistic judgments of goodness or defect do not have this feature, suggesting an important disanalogy between ethical evaluation of human conduct and the evaluation of other living things.”

This event is co-sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Registration is required to attend the online event. 

Theorizing at Rowan: Philip Osborne, "Neo-Aristotelianism and Histories of Wrongdoing"

Philosophy and World Religions Research Colloquium, Ariella Greenfield, "Prayer in the Pavillion: Phish Concerts and the Performance of Contemporary Jewish Identity"

Cultural pluralism, the intellectual precursor to multiculturalism, emerged from the friendship of two American philosophers, Jewish immigrant Horace Kallen (1882-1974) and African-American Alain Locke (1885-1954). This simple idea—that ethnic groups can and should coexist in the United States, perpetuating their cultures for the betterment of the country as whole. For both men, friendship served as a metaphor for cultural pluralism, exemplified by people who found common ground while appreciating each other's differences. Kallen and Locke distinguished culture from religion: the latter was universal and individualistic, whereas the former was secular, particular, and communal. This division distinguishes their vision of cultural pluralism from modern multiculturalism, which is more amenable to religious diversity. This talk shows how their unique understanding of friendship, culture, and religion offers a new vision for diverse societies across the globe

and provides critical background for understanding conflicts over identity politics that polarize US society today.

Philosophy and World Religions Research Colloquium, David Weinfeld, "From Cultural Pluralism to Multiculturalism: Race, Religion, and American Jews"

This talk will examine the question of race within the context of ritual circumcision and a series of exclusionary Portuguese Jewish communal religious bylaws formulated in the early modern Dutch Atlantic World. Scholars have tended to interpret these bylaws as expressions of growing Jewish racism forged by the racial realities of the Americas. However, I will argue that this elementary racial hypothesis is deficient as it does not offer an adequate account of the language of the bylaws, particularly that these bylaws also excluded “white” but non-Sephardic Jews from aspects of communal Jewish life. Instead, I propose that alongside emerging categories of race in the Americas, the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish exclusion of Black slaves, Eurafricans, and Ashkenazi Jews is best understood through the prism of ethnoreligious identity and a shift that occurred in the Spanish conception of 

 (“nativeness”) in the ‘New World’ colonies.​

Philosophy and World Religions Research Colloquium, Hilit Surowitz-Israel, “‘Son de Estraña Naturaleza’: Race, Nation, and Circumcision”

Our next event will be Wednesday March 30, at 5 pm.  Bradley Elicker (Philosophy, Rowan University), will present a a talk entitled “Avoiding Artists Who Cause Harm: Support as Enabling Harm.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall, Room 121 and online via Zoom (registration required, see below).

Prof. Elicker has provided the following abstract for his presentation: “he last several years have seen a reckoning for certain artists engaged in harmful and morally troubling behaviors. When confronted with the harmful actions of artists such as Kevin Spacy, R. Kelly, Ryan Adams, and Louis CK, many have withdrawn their support, refusing to engage with artworks associated with these individuals. However, the current debate typically focuses on an aesthetic question: 

we still enjoy the works of these artists? Is aesthetic engagement with their works still possible given their actions? I focus on the often-overlooked moral question: 

we continue to engage with these artists and their works? Is such engagement morally permissible? I answer that, in certain circumstances, it is not. Utilizing current literature on our relationship to harm and our responsibility for contributions to collective actions, I argue that engaging with these artists in ways that provides them public and/or financial support constitutes morally prohibited harm enabling. Insofar as our public and financial support provides an artist who causes harm with the ability to avoid punishment or exert professional pressure on their victims, we each have a moral obligation to withdraw our support.”

This event is co-sponsored by the and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

To register to attend this event online, go to:  

Theorizing at Rowan: Bradley Elicker, "Avoiding Artists Who Cause Harm: Support As Enabling Harm."

Our final event this Spring will be Wednesday April 13, at 5 pm.  Naveed Mansoori (Political Science, Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, Princeton University), will present a a talk entitled “Organs without Parties: The Crowd and the Leader in the Iranian Revolution.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall, Room 121 and online via Zoom (registration required, see below).

 has provided the following abstract for his presentation: “This talk introduces the concept of the party organ without a party for research on the relation between crowds and leaders. Section I attends to the problem that crowds are fundamentally ambiguous; their relationship to media; and finally, how they become a people. Section II examines the lectures of Ahmad Fardid, the spokesmen of the 1980-1983 Cultural Revolution, when the Islamic Republic sought to ‘Islamicize’ media and schools. Fardid affirmed the fundamental ambiguity of a revolution embodied by crowds as a problem for leadership; second, Fardid conceived ‘mass media’ as a ‘technology of the people’. Media contended with the state as a guide. Section III examines the fate of the morning newspaper 

, which the Islamic Republic shut down in August 1979. It demonstrates that the paper transformed from a politically neutral media source after it received pushback for its coverage of the mass demonstrations on International Women’s Day in 1979. By May 1979, 

 declared that absent a mass political party, its role was to be the organ of a future party. The article suggests that when parties have lost appeal, media fills their absence as organs without parties.”

This event is co-sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Department of Political Science and Economics, the International Studies Program, and the College of Communications.

Registration is required to attend this event online.

Theorizing at Rowan: Naveed Mansoori, "Organs Without Parties: The Crowd and the Leader in the Iranian Revolution"

On Wednesday October 5, at 5 pm.  Professors Quill Kukla and Mark Lance (Philosophy, Georgetown University), will present a talk entitled “The Pragmatics and Ethics of Gender Ascription.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall 103 and online via Zoom.

Profs. Kukla and Lance have provided the following abstract for their presentation: “What are we doing when we ascribe gender—that is, when we announce, “I am a man”; tell someone, “You are not a woman,” or use gendered pronouns to describe someone, for instance? And why does such gendered language matter? Why should people care what pronouns are used to refer to them? In this paper, we give a pragmatic analysis of the structure of gender ascriptions. We argue that gender ascriptions do not function first and foremost as truth claims, but rather serve a different primary pragmatic function. We try to show why gender ascriptions, including pronoun uses, are ethically important, including why it is harmful to ascribe to someone a gender that they reject.”

 is a series of public, work in progress lectures covering topics of interest to scholars in philosophy, religion studies, and other related disciplines. The goal of the series is to promote scholarly exchange involving the Department of Philosophy and World Religions, the University, and beyond. Speakers will include members of the department as well as faculty from other departments at Rowan and from other institutions.

Theorizing At Rowan: Quill Kukla and Mark Lance, "The Pragmatics and Ethics of Gender Ascription"

The Department of Philosophy and World Religions is pleased to announce the next event in  our 

On Wednesday October 19, at 5 pm.  Professor Matthew Lund (Philosophy, Rowan University), will present a talk entitled “Precious Memories: Persisting Institutional Bias in the History of the Royal Observatory.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall 103 and online via Zoom.

Prof Lund has provided the following abstract for his presentation: “This paper details how historians of the Royal Observatory persist in rosy characterizations of Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne, despite the fact that the resurfaced letters of David Kinnebrook show that Maskelyne not only ignored evidence for observational relativity when it was presented to him but even presented the observations of his fired assistant (Kinnebrook) as his own. Bosses behaving badly are nothing new – not calling out such behavior over 200 years after the fact – that’s something else.”

Upcoming Talks (all events at 5 pm in Business 103)

November 2, Chris Jingchao Ma (Philosophy, Villanova), “The Habit of Sensing: The Social Context of Gendered Bodily Sensations”

November 16, Walter Gershon (Critical Foundations of Education, Rowan), Educational Sound Studies: Scales and Modes, Neoliberalism as Eugenics, and Critical Possibilities for the Sonic.”

Theorizing at Rowan: Matthew Lund, "Persisting Institutional Bias in the History of the Royal Observatory"

On Wednesday, November 2, at 5 pm.  Professor Chris Jingchao Ma (Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor, Villanova University), will present a talk entitled “The Habit of Sensing: The Social Context of Gendered Bodily Sensations.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall 103 and online via Zoom.

Prof Ma has provided the following abstract for her presentation: “We often assume that there is nothing more private and natural than bodily sensations. I challenge the naturalness of bodily sensations and argue that bodily sensations are socially contextualized. We not only get habituated to certain bodily sensations, but also cultivate habits of sensing - habits of paying attention. The “naturalness” of (cisgender) bodies are not the natural result of bodily biology, but a privileged pattern of sensing, among many other possibilities of gendered bodies.”

Theorizing at Rowan: Chris Jingchao Ma, "The Habit of Sensing: The Social Context of Gendered Bodily Sensatons"

The Department of Philosophy and World Religions is pleased to announce the first event in our 

On Wednesday, March 8, at 5 pm.  Professor David Weinfled (World Religions, Rowan University), will present a talk entitled “Southern Jews and the Lost Cause: Between Confederate Memory and Jewish Identity.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall 303 and online via Zoom.

Prof. Weinfeld has provided the following abstract for his presentation: “Following the American Civil War, white Southerners elevated the Lost Cause, the idea that the Confederacy was a noble experiment, that slavery was benign and even beneficial, and that the men who fought to defend them were valiant heroes. In a land dominated by Protestant Christianity, the Lost Cause functioned as a civil religion inflected with Christian overtones. In his talk, David Weinfeld looks at how Jews in the American South engaged with the Lost Cause in an effort to forge a uniquely Southern Jewish identity.”

Upcoming Talks (all events at 5 pm in Business 303)

March 29, Ash Lierman (Library, Rowan University), “The Struggle You Can't See: Higher Education Experiences of Invisibly Disabled and Neurodivergent Students.”

April 12, Gabriel Mares (University Center for Human Values, Princeton University), "The Postcolonial State and Postcolonial Theory"

Theorizing at Rowan: David Weinfeld, "Southern Jews and the Lost Cause: Between Confederate Memory and Jewish Identity"

On Wednesday, March 29, at 5 pm.  Dr. Ash Lierman (Rowan University Library), will present a talk entitled “The Struggle You Can't See: Higher Education Experiences of Invisibly Disabled and Neurodivergent Students.”  The event will be held online via Zoom.

Prof. Lierman has provided the following abstract for their presentation: “A number of unique challenges face college students who are neurodivergent, have learning or psychiatric disabilities, and/or are chronically ill. An extensive body of qualitative research exists in which these students have described, in their own words, what they experience in attending college, but there have been few attempts to bring narratives together across these overlapping and intertwining categories of difference, and trace recurring patterns of inequity and need. This presentation will highlight findings from an extensive literature review on neurodivergent and invisibly disabled college students' experiences. It will be of value to faculty and staff interested in students' perspectives on what helps and hurts them in higher education, to neurotypical and nondisabled students who want to learn more about what their peers are going through, and to neurodivergent and disabled students who may not realize how common their challenges are, or how many of them are cases of school failing them, rather than them failing at school.”

This event is co-sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Catalyst Project 

Theorizing at Rowan: Ash Lierman, "The Struggle You Can't See: Higher Education Experiences of Invisibly Disabled and Neurodivergent Students"

The Department of Philosophy and World Religions is pleased to announce the first event in our 

On Wednesday, September 27, at 5 pm.  Prof. Gabriel Mares (Politics, Princeton University), will present a talk entitled “The Postcolonial State in Postcolonial Theory.”  The event will be held in a hybrid format, in person in Business Hall 301 and online via Zoom.

Prof. Mares has provided the following abstract for his presentation: "How can we re-think sovereignty after the nation-state? What role, if any, does the international community have in postcolonial conflict resolution and reconciliation? How does the history of colonialism still cloud our judgments about sovereignty and conflict after decolonization?”

This event is co-sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Department of Political Science and Economics, and the Africana Studies Program.

Edward Kazarian

Events