Events: 2008 – present

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, April 17-20, 2019, Vancouver, British Columbia

Topic:  “Engaging with Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny.” 

• Dianna Taylor, (John Carroll University, Ohio):  “Misogyny in the Era of #MeToo”
• Ann J. Cahill (Elon University, North Carolina): “The Impossibility and Necessity of Resistance Against Misogyny: Filling the Jails”
• Angelique Szymanek, (Hobart & William Smith Colleges, New York):  “’My Cunt is Wet with Fear’”: Misogyny and Desire in the Art of Tracy Emin”
• Qrescent Mali Mason, (Haverford College, Pennsylvania): “I Wanna be Down, Girl: Misogyny is an Intersectional Key”

SPSL Session at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, January 7-20, 2019, New York, New York

• Andrea Dionne Warmack (Emory): Home: A Phenomenological Account of Homing as a Practice of Self-Love
• Shaun Miller (Marquette): A Three-Tiered View of Sexual Consent
• Caleb Ward (SUNY Stonybrook): Responsibility and Responding to Sexual Consent
• Doug Ficek (University of New Haven): Laughing at the Toxic Male: Two Readings of How Philosophers Pick Up, a Thing that Exists

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 1, 2016, San Diego, CA

• Luke Brunning (Oxford University), “‘The One’ and the Many: Phantasy and a Critique of Non-monogamy”
• Shaun Miller (Marquette University), “BDSM, Consent, and Human Flourishing: A Sketch for the Possibility of Ethical Degradation”
• Gary Foster (Wilfrid Laurier University), “What Matters in Love: Reflections on the Relationship Between Love and Persons in Parfit”
• Arina Pismenny (The Graduate Center, CUNY), “Why Love Is Not a Moral Emotion”
• Chair: Patricia Marino (University of Waterloo)

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, March 30, 2016, San Diego, CA

• Jason van Niekerk (University of Pretoria),  “African Communitarianism and a Novel Account of the Harm of Homosexuality (in Heterosexist Societies)”
  
• Chair: Helga Varden (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 4, 2015, San Diego, CA

• Cressida Heyes (University of Alberta), “A Phenomenology of the Harms of Rape While Unconscious”
• Hildur Kalman (Umeå Universitet), “Faking—Feat or Self-deceit?”
• Justin Leonard Clardy (University of Arkansas), “On Tenderness”
  Ann J. Cahill (Elon University), “Unjust Sex Versus Rape”
• Chair: Helga Varden (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 1, 2015, San Diego, CA

• Topic: Sex and Disability
• Jami Anderson (University of Michigan-Flint), “Consent, Sexual Desire, and Impairment”
• Ruth Sample (University of New Hampshire), “I See SPED People: Male Traits as Disability”
• Raymond Aldred (McGill University), “Thinking about Sex, Body, and Pleasure with Disability in Mind”
• Chair: Andria Bianchi (University of Waterloo)

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 19, 2014, San Diego, CA

• Robin Zheng (University of Michigan), “A Case Against Racialized Sexual Preferences: Why Yellow Fever Isn’t Flattering”
• Lowell Herr (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona), “Pornography and Liberal Justice”
• Shari Collins (Arizona State University), “Sex with Strangers: Benefits of Online Sex Site Hook-Ups”

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 17, 2014, San Diego, CA

• Justin Leonard Clardy (University of Arkansas), “Exclusivity and Romantic Relationships”
• Loren Cannon (Humboldt State University), “Firestonian Futures and Trans Affirming Presents”
• Jessica Brophy (Lynchburg College), “Playing with Kant’s ‘Schema of the Supersensible’: The Poet and Poetry Reader in Sharon Olds’s Sexy, Gender-Sharing Sublime”

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, March 29, 2013, San Fransisco, CA

• Mark Migotti (University of Calgary) and Nicole Wyatt (University of Calgary), “On the Very Idea of Having Sex”
• Tracy de Boer (University of Victoria), “Sex, Rights, and Patriarchy: A Case for the Right to Sex and a Feminist Assessment”
• Rachel McKinnon (University of Waterloo), “Stereotype Threat for Trans Women”
• Chair: Helga Varden, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, March 28, 2013, San Fransisco, CA

• Topic: Thinking About Pornography
• Talia Bettcher (California State University, Los Angeles), “‘Chicks With Dicks’: A Plea for Persons”
• Mireille Miller-Young (University of California, Santa Barbara), “Make Your Booty Clap: Ho Theory and Corporeal Craftwork in Black Pornographies”
• Raja Halwani (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), “Pornography and Polysemicity”
• Chair: Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 4, 2012, Seattle, WA

• Topic: Discussion of Elizabeth Emens, “Monogamy’s Law: Compulsory Monogamy and Polyamorous Existence”
• Author: Elizabeth Emens, Columbia Law School
• Discussant: Laurie Shrage, Florida International University
• Discussant: Elizabeth Brake, University of Calgary
• Chair: Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo

SPSL Session at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, December 29, 2011, Washington, D. C.

• Topic: “As One Throws Away a Lemon After Sucking Out Its Juice”: Wollstonecraft and Kant on Sex and Marriage
• Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, University of Michigan, “Why Wollstonecraft Was Right to Divorce Sex from Marriage”
• Jordan Pascoe, Graduate Center-City University of New York, “Impermissible Use and Structural Transformations: Why Kant’s Account of Marriage Can’t Morally Transform Sex”
• Helga Varden (University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign), “Kant on Sex”
• Chair: Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo

SPSL Session at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, December 28, 2011, Washington, D. C.

• Topic: Sex, Love, and War
• Tom Digby, Springfield College, “Battle of the Sexes: How Cultural Militarism Shapes Heterosexual Eroticism”
• Ami Harbin, Dalhousie University-Nova Scotia, “Sexual Minorities in Contexts of War: New Norms and Collective Crises”
• Jen McWeeny, John Carroll University, “Intimate Violence: Hetero-Asymmetry, Intersectionality, and Performativity”
• Chair: Helga Varden, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

SPSL Session at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 23, 2011, San Diego

• Topic: Other Objects: Critical, Queer, and Trans Encounters with Sexual Objectification and Contracts
• Talia Bettcher, California State University at Los Angeles, “‘The Other Woman’: Transgender Women, Objectification, and Sexual Abuse.”
• Kory Shaff, Occidental College, “Political Liberalism and Other Sexual Contracts.”
• Ann J. Cahill, Elon University, “The Difference Sameness Makes: Objectification, Sex Work, and Queerness.”
• Chair: Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo

SPSL Session at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, December 29, 2010, Boston

• Gary Foster, Wilfred Laurier University, “Overcoming a Euthyphro Problem in Personal Love: Imagination and Personal Identity
• Comments by Joshua Shmikler, Boston Collegey
• Ingrid Albrecht, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign,”A Kantian Response to Love’s Appeal
• Comments by Kate Moran, Brandeis University
• Cori Wong, Pennsylvania State University, “Saving Irigaray? Heterosexist Love and Sexual Difference in Irigaray’s Later Work”
• Comments by Sarah Donovan, Wagner University
• Chair: Helga Varden, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

SPSL at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, April 2, 2010, San Francisco

• Topic: “Intersex: Bodies, Norms, and Identities”
• Hida Viloria, intersex activist and author, “Intersex Unplugged,” a reading from her Mighty Hermaphrodite: An Intersex Memoir
• Ellen Feder, American University, “Normalizing Medicine: Between ‘Intersexuals’ and Individuals with ‘Disorders of Sex Development'” (link to longer version of this paper is here)
• Sharon Sytsma, Northern Illinois University, “Being True to Oneself: Intersexuality and the Quest for Authenticity”
• David Ozar, Loyola University, Chicago, “Intersex and the Inadequacy of Stable Binary Norms”
• Chair: Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo

SPSL Session at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, December 29, 2009, New York City

• Yolanda Estes, Mississippi State University, J. G. Fichte’s Account of Feminine Sexual Desire” [Download here]
• Comments by Jane Dryden, Mount Allison University
• Yiftach Fehige, “The Sexual Body Paradox: On the Irreducibility of Human Sexuality”
• Comments by Lanei Rodemeyer, Duquesne University
• Chair: Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo

“Sexual Selves”: A Conference on Sexuality and Sexual Identity, The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, May 1-3, 2009

Friday May 1:

• Scott Anderson, University of British Columbia, “On Sexual Obligation and Sexual Autonomy”
• Chair: Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo
• Alice Maclachlan, York University, “The Good of ‘Out'”
• Chair: Richard Mohr, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Deirdre Golash, American University, “Polyamory and the Boundaries of the Self”
• Chair: Tom Digby, Springfield College
• Anita Superson, University of Kentucky, “Honky Tonk Woman”
• Chair: Krista Thomason, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Samantha Brennan, University of Western Ontario, and Jennifer Epp, University of Western Ontario, “A Child’s Right to Sexual Agency”
• Chair: Katherine Piatti, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Deen Chatterjee, University of Utah, “Misogyny and Homophobia: Two Dogmas, Same Logic”
• Chair: David Sussman, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago, Keynote Address: “Sexual Orientation and the Constitution”

Saturday May 2:

• Ami Harbin, Dalhousie University, “Sexual Authenticities”
• Chair: Sharon Sytsma, Northern Illinois University
• Ludger Viefhues-Bailey, Yale University, “Sexual Citizenship: Derridean Friendship or Cavellian Re-marriage?”
• Chair: Ginna Husting, Boise State University
• Johanna Oksala, University of Dundee, “Sexual Experience: Foucault, Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”
• Chair: Adam Bowen
• Richard Nunan, College of Charleston, “Transgendered Marriage and the Legal Coercion of Gender Identity”
• Chair: Dan Korman, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Melissa Orlie, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Amor fati: The Impersonal Matter of Being a Parent and a Lover”
• Chair: Shelley Weinberg, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Laura Werner, Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and CoE in Political Thought and Conceptual Change at the Academy of Finland, “Sex and the City-State: Political Participation as Virility and the ‘Right of Desire’ in 18th Century Philosophy”
• Chair: Joe Swenson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Laurie Shrage, Florida International University, Keynote Address: “The Idea of a Sexual Orientation: And its Relation to Sex Identity (with apologies to P.W….)”

Sunday May 3:

• Jacob Hale, California State University, Northridge, “Desire in the Dust of the Transsexual Archive”
• Chair: Lisa King, Edgewood College
• Ellen Feder, American University, “Sexual Selves and their Parents: Reflections on Shame, Envy, and Unconditional Love”
• Chair: Suzanne Senay, Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
• Speaker: Ann J. Cahill, Elon University, Feeling Bodies: Material Intersubjectivity and the Problem of Objectification”
• Chair: Ingrid Albrecht, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

SPSL Session at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, December 28, 2008, New York City

• Kathleen J. Wininger, University of Southern Maine, “The ‘Pinnacle of his Spirit;’ Nietzsche and the Erotic“
• Comments by Maudemarie Clark, Colgate University
• Ludger Viefhues-Bailey, Yale University, “Bearing the Beyond: Women and the Limits of Language in Stanley Cavell.” [Download here.] (Has since been published in Gender Forum: Gender and Langauge 20, 2008)
• Comments by William Day, Le Moyne College
• Chair: Helga Varden, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

From 2007-2018, Helga Varden, of The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Patricia Marino, of the University of Waterloo, co-directed the Society together. Since 2018, SPSL has been co-curated by Jordan Pascoe, of Manhattan College, and Andrea Warmack, of Emory.

Events from 1993-2007