MSU Grad Conference: Speakers

9TH ANNUAL
GRADUATE PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCE
February 15-16, 2008 / Keynote Alice Dreger / Featured Faculty Stephen Esquith

CALL FOR PAPERS

PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Michigan State University
Department of Philosophy
503 South Kedzie Hall
East Lansing, MI
48824-1032

517/355-4490
email: philconf@msu.edu

KEYNOTE
Alice Dreger

I'm a medical humanist, writer, speaker, patient advocate, and an Associate Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics in the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University in Chicago. (That’s way too many prepositions, I know.) I hold a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University. Until recently, most of my professional energies have gone to improving the medical and social treatment of people born with socially-challenging bodies, including people with intersex, conjoinment, dwarfism, and cleft lip. I frequently work with affected adults, parents, and clinicians to make things better in the social and medical worlds. The question that motivates me in those projects is this: Why not change minds instead of bodies? I also think, write, and speak about the politics of science, medicine, and anatomy, and sometimes I consciously try to change those politics. I’m constitutionally inclined to use history to help create a more just future.
FROM alicedreger.com

For an abstract of Dreger's presentation, "Why Phallometers Worked, and Evidence Didn't: Philosophical Aspects of the Intersex Rights Movement," please visit abstracts.

FEATURED FACULTY
Stephen Esquith

Steve Esquith has been working on ethical problems in developing countries since 1990 when he was a senior Fulbright scholar in Poland. His primary scholarly work is Intimacy and Spectacle (Cornell, 1994), a critique of classical and modern liberal political philosophy. While in Poland he collaborated on two collections of essays written by Polish and U.S. scholars on the changes in Eastern Europe since 1989. His research and teaching since that time has focused on democratic transitions in post-authoritarian countries. He has written on the rule of law, the problem of democratic political education, mass violence and reconciliation, and moral and political responsibility. He has also been involved in numerous civic engagement projects in the public schools, including an exchange program between local elementary school children in the U.S. and schoolchildren in a community school in Kati, Mali. He has led a study abroad program focusing on ethical issues in development in Mali in summer 2004 and 2006, and he spent the academic year 2005-06 teaching and working with colleagues at the University of Bamako as a senior Fulbright scholar. There he taught two seminars on ethics and development at the Institut Polytechnic Rural and the Institut Supérieure de Formation et de Recherche Appliquée. He is currently finishing a book on mass violence and democratic political education entitled The Political Responsibilities of Everyday Bystanders and he is co-editing a volume of critical essays on the capabilities approach to development. FROM Esquith