The Third Annual Duke-Stanford Philosophy & Literature Graduate Conference: In & Out of Context

Stanford’s Philosophy and Literature Initiative and Duke’s Center for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature (PAL) is delighted to invite you to the 3rd Duke-Stanford Philosophy+Literature Graduate Student Conference. The conference will take place on September 25-26 at Stanford University’s Margaret Jacks Hall. Caroline Levine (Cornell University, English) and Jan Zwicky (University of Victoria, Philosophy) will be the keynote speakers.

This year’s conference topic, “In & Out of Context” brings together doctoral students and scholars that work at the intersection of philosophy and literature, the arts, and media studies to reflect on how their disciplines rely on an interpretative use of context. The parsing out of texts and objects, of verbal and non-verbal meaning, of place and history is informed, if not dictated, by interpretive decisions from beginning to end. Through a series of panel discussions, lectures, and a text workshop, we hope to encourage the dialogue between disciplines across the humanities to interrogate art forms and discursive modes in and out of context. Exploring the relationship of wholes and forms to their contexts can generate new possibilities for what we do and what ought we to do with contexts in our disciplines, in art, and in life.