Ancient Philosophy Society

Arch in Città di Castello by Anguskirk via Flickr

The Collegium Phaenomenologicum will convene for its thirty-seventh annual session in the Umbrian town of Città di Castello, from July 9–27, 2012. The Collegium is intended for faculty members and advanced graduate and postdoctoral students in philosophy and related disciplines. The theme for this year’s Collegium is Ζωή: On the Question of Life in Ancient Greek Philosophy.

Here is the 2012 Collegium Poster.

The program for the Collegium is comprised of three interrelated weeks of inquiry; each week includes (1) a lecture course given on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, (2) intensive text seminars held in conjunction with the lecture course, and (3) individual lectures on related themes on Tuesday and Thursday.

This year, the program will feature a lecture course in the first week by Claudia Baracchi, University of Milan, on generation in Plato’s Timaeus, in the second week by Michael Naas, DePaul University, on animality and politics in Plato’s Statesman, and in the third week by Walter Brogan, Villanova University, on Aristotle’s Politics. Additionally, invited papers will be given by John Sallis, Drew Hyland, Melissa Lane, Andre Laks, Miriam Leonard, Andrew Benjamin, Francisco Gonzalez, Christopher Long and Laurence Hatab.

Applications are due on February 15th; for the application form and a complete list of participating faculty as well as other information, please consult their website:
www.collegiumphaenomenologicum.org

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact Sara Brill directly at sbrill@fairfield.edu.

via CC licence by Scott Baldwin

Here is a friendly reminder that the APS will be meeting at SPEP in Philadelphia on Wednesday from 3pm to 6pm, October 19th at the Sheraton Society Hill.

Because our ability to continue hosting a satellite program at SPEP every year depends upon the number of people who come to the APS at SPEP session, it is critical that as many of our members and friends of the APS attend the Wednesday session.

This year SPEP celebrates its 50th anniversary in Philadelphia and the conference will begin on Wednesday, October 19th rather than on its usual Thursday in order to accommodate an extended program.

Speakers this year will be:

Jill Gordon
Charles Dana Professor of Philosophy at Colby College
“Eros and Nostos in the Phaedo”

Walter Brogan
Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University
“Pathos and Logos: The Place of Virtue and Affect in Aristotle’s Ontology of Human Being”

Associate or Advanced Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Tenure-track position, beginning Fall 2012. AOS: Greek or Ethics; AOC: Open. Five courses per year and Honors Thesis supervision, all undergraduate. Person hired will take primary responsibility for teaching Ancient Greek Philosophy, though primary area of research can be in another area. PhD expected at time of appointment. The Department emphasizes original scholarship, the history of philosophy, and the lively teaching of primary texts. Also highly valued are a commitment to the goals of liberal arts education and an enthusiasm for interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research.

Applications due November 11th, 2011 with prearranged interviews held at the Eastern Division meeting December 27-30, 2011.

Review of applications begins immediately and will continue until the position is filled.

We encourage applications from under-represented groups as well as individuals who have experience with diverse student populations; women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply.

To learn more about and apply for this position please visit us online at:
https://careers.skidmore.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=53385

Long time APS member, Emma Bianchi, who will be joining the Comparative Literature Department at NYU, called our attention to this conference on Lucretius and Modernity to be held there this October.

Here is the description:

The long shadow cast by Lucretius’s poem falls across the disciplines of philosophy, literary history and criticism, religious studies, classics, political philosophy… Over the past two decades, interest in De rerum natura in each of these fields has grown dramatically, in some cases as hidden Epicurean influences on well-known writers have come to light, in others when the decline of a school or of a particular orthodoxy has left room for a return to Lucretius, and to the Epicurean tradition more broadly—as with the eclipse of normative materialisms in philosophy and politics. Contemporary physics has found in the ancient atomist tradition a strange and evocative mirror; the place of Lucretius’s poetics in the development of modern poetic genres, techniques, and themes has come into sharp focus; political philosophers have identified what Althusser called a “subterranean current” in the materialist tradition, flowing from Epicurus through Spinoza and Marx and to Deleuze, propelled by Lucretius’s great poem.

“Lucretius and Modernity” is the first conference to bring together classicists, philosophers and literary critics from Europe and the United States interested centrally in the work of Lucretius and in the long history of his reception. Clustered about four topics—1. What is modern about Lucretius? 2. What is Lucretian about modernity? 3. How to do things with Lucretius: Physics, Politics, Poetics; and 4. Following Lucretius—the papers presented at “Lucretius and Modernity” will provide the occasion for a reflection across disciplinary borders on the poem’s continuing, growing importance.

For more information, visit the Lucretius and Modernity conference site on the Comp Lit website at NYU.

Given Stephen Greenblatt’s recent essay on Lucretius’s “On The Nature Of Things” in the New Yorker, it seems that Lucretius is in the air.

2012 APS CFP Poster

The twelfth annual meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society will be held April 19-22, 2012 at the University of San Francisco.

Papers in English on any topic in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy are welcome. In light of the vibrant political scene of the city of San Francisco, papers on the theme of the polis are particularly welcome.

There is a 3,000 word maximum for submissions, which should be prepared for blind review.  Before submitting your paper by email, please see the full guidelines for submissions to the 12th annual conference in April 2012.

Submit papers by email to:

submissions@ancientphilosophysociety.org.

The deadline for submissions is:

Tuesday, November 15, 2011.

We are proud to announce that the two keynote speakers for the 2012 conference will be:

Christof Rapp
Chair for Ancient Philosophy and Rhetoric
Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität Munich

Andrea Nightingale
Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature
Stanford University

via CC licence by Scott Baldwin

This year SPEP celebrates its 50th anniversary in Philadelphia.  The conference will begin on Wednesday, October 19th rather than on its usual Thursday in order to accommodate an extended program.

As a result, the Ancient Philosophy Society meeting at SPEP this year will be held from 3pm to 6pm on Wednesday, October 19th at the Sheraton Society Hill.

Speakers this year will be:

Jill Gordon
Charles Dana Professor of Philosophy at Colby College
“Eros and Nostos in the Phaedo”

Walter Brogan
Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University
“Pathos and Logos: The Place of Virtue and Affect in Aristotle’s Ontology of Human Being”

Job opening: Academic Coordinator

Deadline: July 1, 2011

The Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy at the Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin invites applications for the position of an academic coordinator. As of this writing, the appointment is temporary and ends on June 30, 2013. But we hope to secure funds to extend the position.

The Graduate School offers a structured doctoral program in ancient philosophy. Students in the program write dissertations in German or English. The international faculty consists of several full professors (Professors Jonathan, Beere, Christoph Helmig, Stephen Menn, Philip van der Eijk) as well as many additional faculty. The Graduate School is part of an excellent research environment and fosters an exciting exchange of people and ideas in its Ancient Philosophy & Science Network.

Assignment: The academic coordinator will be a member of the Department of Philosophy as well as of the Graduate School s faculty. Her main task is to work intensively with doctoral students on all aspects of their dissertations, both giving feedback on written work and helping to guide the project as a whole. The normal teaching load is 4 Semesterwochenstunden (i.e., 2 classes, each meeting 1.5 hours per week); of this, some is devoted to a dissertation seminar for graduate students.

Requirements: The ideal candidate will have a doctorate in philosophy or classics. We seek someone with a strong, broad background, especially in Plato, Aristotle and Neoplatonism, including both practical and theoretical philosophy; advanced knowledge of other areas is also welcome. The candidate should have excellent Greek, Latin, English, and German. Experience in teaching is an advantage, as is experience in supervising academic work. The position requires the capacity for close cooperation and a good deal of empathy.

In their applications candidates should say something about why they want to work at the Graduate School. A complete application includes

• a CV,
• academic transcripts,
• a list of publications (if any),
• a writing sample (a chapter from the thesis or an article),
• a letter explaining your background in ancient philosophy and related fields,
• at least two letters of recommendation.

Candidates who have to yet a doctoral degree should add a short description of their dissertation project and indicate when they will finish their thesis.

The Humboldt-Universitaet aims at increasing the proportion of women in research and teaching, and specifically encourages qualified female researchers to apply. Applications from abroad are most welcome.

Applicants from minority groups are also most welcome. Preference will be given to disabled persons with equal qualifications.

Applications should be sent by referring to code number AN/079/11 to Professors Jonathan Beere and Christoph Helmig, Directors of the Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin:

mailto:admission@anicent-philosophy.de

www.ancient-philosophy.de

www.hu-berlin.de

Mt. Timpanogos during the APS11 Conference by cplong11 via Flickr

The 11th annual meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society at Sundance, Utah was a great success.  Thanks to the generous hosting institution, Utah Valley University, and to Michael Shaw and the UVU Honors program, the Ancient Philosophy Society gathered together for a full and philosophically rich five days in Utah’s Wasatch mountain range.

The APS Facebook page as a number of links to blog posts, images and other resources related to the conference, but I thought I would gather a few resources here as well.  I invite others who have written about or posted artifacts surrounding our 11th annual conference to link to those resources here in the comments section.

• William Koch has been posting his notes about the #APS11 event on William Koch’s Philosophy Blog.
  • Ancient Philosophy Society 2011 Meeting, Part I
  • Ancient Philosophy Society 2001 Meeting, Part II
• Allen Hill has posted a large number of pictures of the conference on his Facebook page.
• I have posted a series of recordings of the panel on my book, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth:
  • Christopher Long’s Introduction to the book panel
  • Will McNeill’s response
  • Drew Hyland’s response
  • John Lysaker’s response
  • Christopher Long’s response and Question and Answers

I have also embedded a slideshow with some of the pictures posted to Flickr of the event:

Following the Twitter stream #tltsym11, a photo by cplong11 on Flickr.

This year we would like to encourage those attending the 11th Annual gathering of the Ancient Philosophy Society to use our various social media resources to enhance the quality of our academic experience at the conference.

The idea will be to enrich our time together, expose our work to a wider community and crowd source artefacts that will serve as a lasting record of what is sure to be an excellent conference.

So, here is how you can prepare:

• Bring your gadgetry: smart phones, laptops, iPads, cameras, video cameras, etc.
• Like our Facebook page.
• Follow the APS on twitter.
• Establish a Twitter account.
• Establish a Flickr account.
• Check out the pictures from the APS10 conference.