Ancient Philosophy Society

I thought I would give everyone a few updates on things related to our digital community at the Ancient Philosophy Society as we begin to turn our attention to the upcoming conference at Michigan State.

First, I am very pleased to see that we have, as of this writing, 292 fans on the Ancient Philosophy Society Facebook page. I encourage all readers of this blog to join us on Facebook where not only posts from this blog appear, but also comments and posts from others writing on our wall can be found.  I would love to see a more dynamic conversation both here and there on the Facebook page.

In order to facilitate that, I would like to propose that we use the following twitter hash tag for the 2010 conference: #APS10.  You can follow my tweets about the conference at: http://www.twitter.com/cplong and I invite other members who use twitter to comment below with your twitter name and to use the #APS10 hash tag when you tweet something related to this year’s conference.

Also, I hope people will take pictures of the activities around the APS conference this year and post them on the Facebook page as well.  Those of you with Flickr accounts can also use the APS10 tag for your pictures if you post them so we can begin creating a collection of photos for the Society.

Finally, if there are members of the APS who would be interested in co-authoring this blog with me, please contact me at admin@ancientphilosophysociety.org.  I would love to see if we can generate some more content for this blog from members interested in posting things related to our work together on the ancient texts.

The 2010 meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society will take place at Michigan State University, April 22-25.

Advance Registration

Registration—at rates for APS members and non-members—includes the option of reserving copies of the advance proceedings ($25) and places at the annual banquet ($60).  The Local Arrangements Committee urges all potential attendees to register in advance so amounts will be accurate for food and beverages, receptions, etc.  Click here to register through the Philosophy Documentation Center.

The early registration deadline is March 25th, 2010.

Late/On-site Registration

Increased rates (+ $10 for individuals, + $5 for students) apply for late and on-site registrations.  The conference venue will be available from 12:00 noon for on-site registration on the first day of the conference, Thursday 22 April.  After 14 April, however, copies of the proceedings ($30) and reservations for the banquet ($75) cannot be guaranteed.  For information about late availability, contact the Local Arrangements Committee.

Program Information

The 2010 APS program is set and now available!

• For easy viewing on the web, here is the official 2010 APS program.
• For a printer friendly version of the 2010 APS program, click here.

Conference Hotel & Meeting Venue

All conference sessions will take place in the Riverside Room of the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center on the banks of the scenic Red Cedar River on the MSU campus.  For the conference rate of $90/night, single or double occupancy (+13% tax), mention the “Ancient Philosophy Society” when you phone Kellogg Center toll-free 1-800-875-5090. Rates guaranteed through March 22, 2010.

The Kellogg Center offers free wi-fi throughout, including guest rooms, free parking, and a free shuttle service by reservation (make arrangements when reserving your room).  The shuttle picks up/drops off at Lansing’s Capitol City Airport (LAN), the campus Amtrak station, and the East Lansing bus stop of the MichiganFlyer, which serves Detroit Metro Airport (DTW).

Because of a carrot and a stick, the Local Arrangements Committee urges you to make your reservations as early as possible.  The carrot: what we pay for use of the Riverside Room, $0-$500, is proportionate to the number of room-nights booked, and the more we save on the meeting room, the more we’ll have available for complementary food and beverages.  The stick: When the block of APS rooms is used up or the deadline passes, rooms revert to the undiscounted rate of $119-$189 per night.

Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center
Michigan State University
55 South Harrison Avenue
East Lansing, MI 48824-1022
phone:  (800) 875-5090 or (517) 432-4000

Travel to East Lansing and the Kellogg Hotel

By air: East Lansing is served by Lansing’s Capitol City Airport (LAN), to/from which the Kellogg Center operates a free shuttle for hotel guests; and by the Detroit Metro Airport (DTW), from which one can take the MichiganFlyer (by reservation) to its East Lansing stop, where the free Kellogg Center shuttle picks up/drops off.  Reserve the shuttle when making your hotel reservation.

By train: The East Lansing Amtrak station is located on the southwest corner of the Michigan State University campus and is served by the free Kellogg Center shuttle.  Reserve the shuttle when making your hotel reservation.

Driving directions: The Kellogg Center, 55 South Harrison Avenue, where all the sessions of the conference will be held, is located on the northwest corner of Michigan State University.  Complete directions for reaching the conference venue from all points, including links to a number of maps and more distant airports (from which one would rent a car), are available here.  Covered parking adjacent to the hotel is free for Kellogg Center guests.

Local Taxi: Green Cab, (517) 643-1905.  On the web: www.greencabcompany.net.

Thank you to everyone who submitted papers for the tenth annual independent meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society.  We were very happy to receive 79 submissions this year.  We hope to be able to accept about 20 of them for the final program.

The program committee is now hard at work reading the submissions and the Society would like to thank them for their hard work.  We take the blind review process seriously, so the members of the program committee will remain unnamed for now, but we will thank them publicly at the end of the process.

We hope to have the program set by the end of December so people have the chance make travel arrangements.

The Society would also like to thank Debra Nails and Corinne Painter in particular for the work they have done thus far to make our gathering at MSU a success.

2009 Banquet

Many thanks to all who attended, supported and participated in the 2009 Ancient Philosophy Society conference at Loyola College in Maryland.

Gary Scott and his wife Hilde were very generous hosts and we had a very productive and inspiring conference.

As we begin to turn our attention to our 10th Annual Conference to be held at Michigan State, April 22nd to the 25th, 2010, I thought it important to pause to reflect upon the wonderful community of scholars we have actively participating in the Society.

Once again this year, I found myself grateful for the spirit of dedicated philosophical dialogue and friendship that animated our gathering.

The Excutive Committee thanks all who participated this year and who continue to support the Society.  We look forward to our SPEP session on October 29th at the Marriot Key Bridge Hotel in Arlington, Virginia and then, of course, to our 10th Annual Independent Meeting at Michigan State.

For those of you attending this week’s 9th Annual Conference hosted by Loyola College in Maryland, I thought it would be nice to link to some of the resources we have posted here related to the logistics of the conference:

Click below for information concerning:

• Location of the Conference
• Conference Program
• Travel from the airport to the hotel
• Conference Poster
• Hotel information
• Registration (online available until April 22nd)

We look forward to another excellent gathering this year.

Burt Hopkins, APS member and chair of the Philosophy Department at Seattle University, has asked that we post a link to a conference on Plato’s Unwritten Teachings that will be of interest to many of you.

Please visit the link below to learn more about the conference:

http://www2.seattleu.edu/artsci/philosophy/Default.aspx?id=21904

For those of you traveling by air to Baltimore for the 2009 APS conference, we would like to encourage you to use the light rail service from BWI to the Timonium Business Park stop which is a block from the Crowne Plaza Baltimore North-Hunt Valley hotel.

We understand that the ride on the light rail does not require a transfer and will take about an hour to an hour and 20 minutes from BWI to the Timonium Business Park. To take a cab from BWI would not take significantly less time.

To encourage this, we want to link here to:

• The Maryland Transit Administration Light Rail site
• The transit map for the Light Rail service
• The fares page (it seems only to cost $1.60!! for a one-way trip)

As the program committee is in the process of accepting papers and establishing the final program for the 2009 APS conference to be held April 23-26, 2009 at Loyola College in Maryland, I would like to remind people to register for the conference online as soon as possible.  

Early registration online through our conference registration page with the Philosophy Documentation Center is available through March 28, 2009.  After that date, registration will cost an extra $20.

Don’t forget also to reserve your room at the Crowne Plaza Baltimore North-Hunt Valley, 2004 Greenspring Drive, Timonium, MD 21093, 1 (800) 261-9168; Front Desk: 1 (410) 252-7373.  A block of rooms is saved under the name of the Ancient Philosophy Society.  The group rate should be $119 per night with a maximum of two people per room.

For directions to the hotel, see http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/cp/1/en/hotel/BALLT/transportation

The conference will be held at:

Graduate Centers Loyola Campus
2034 Greenspring Drive
Timonium, MD 21093 

Driving directions to the Graduate Center Loyola Campus
I-695 to I-83 North (Harrisburg Expressway).
Exit 16A, Timonium Road East.
Greenspring Drive is the first right turn after leaving I-83.
The Graduate Center parking lot is the second right turn.

The Grad Center is right next to the hotel. There is free parking.

The Executive Committee wishes everyone associated with the Ancient Philosophy Society a very happy and productive new year.  This year we are looking forward to our ninth annual independent meeting hosted by Gary Scott and Loyola College in Maryland, April 23-26, 2009.

The program committee is hard at work reviewing all 78 submissions to this year’s conference and we look forward to having the program set by the middle of February.

To register for the conference online, click here.  The hotel for the conference will be the Crowne Plaza Baltimore North-Hunt Valley, 2004 Greenspring Drive, Timonium, MD 21093, 1 (800) 261-9168.  A block of rooms is saved under the name of the Ancient Philosophy Society.

Thanks to all who make this society the supportive and intellectually stimulating community it is.