CPA Summer School 2016
More Information
Important Dates
Deadline to Apply: January 31, 2016 by midnight EST
Deadline for Summer School Deposit: March 15, 2016
Deadline for Remaining Summer School Fees:April 1, 2016
To Apply
Please complete the Application Form here before midnight EST on January 31st, 2016.
Who Should Apply
While our target audience for the CPA Summer School at UCONN is graduate students at all stages, advanced undergraduates, faculty, and independent scholars are also very welcome to participate.
For members of the CPA, philosophy is conceived, not as an isolated academic discipline, but as rigorous theoretical reflection about fundamental problems faced by humanity. Understood in this way, Caribbean philosophy is a transdisciplinary form of interrogation informed by scholarly knowledges as well as by practices and artistic expressions that elucidate fundamental questions that emerge in contexts of discovery, conquest, racial, gender, and sexual domination, genocide, dependency, and exploitation as well as freedom, emancipation, and decolonization. Reflection about these areas often appears in philosophical texts, but also in a plethora of other genres such as literature, music, and historical writings. The CPA invites theoretical engagements with all such questions, thematic areas, and genres with emphasis on any given discipline or field, but with a common interest in shifting the geography of reason, by which we mean approaching the Caribbean and the Global South in general as zones of sustainable practices and knowledges.
Logistics and Fees
The total price for the CPA Summer School includes the cost of meals and housing for June 12-19, 2016, conference registration and CPA membership dues, and Summer School fees.
For graduate and advanced undergraduates from the United States and Canada, the total price is $1500.
For non-UCONN faculty based in the United States and Canada, the total price is $1700.
For graduate and advanced graduate students coming from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa, the total price is $1000.
For faculty based in the Caribbean, Latin America, and in Africa, the total price is $1200.
For UCONN graduate and advanced undergraduates, participation in the Summer School and conference is free.
For UCONN faculty presenting at the conference, they must register, however participation in the Summer School is free of charge.
If you will be flying to UCONN, you should arrive into Hartford’s Bradley Airport on June 12th by mid-day and depart from there on June 19th. You can also take the bus or train into Hartford’s Union Station. In either case we will arrange to pick you up if you send us your travel itinerary by June 1st and if you are scheduled to arrive by 2:00 PM on the 12th.
The Week’s Main Activities:
Sunday, June 12th:
Arrive to UCONN
Check in to Dorms
Early Dinner at El Instituto
Introductions
CPA Summer School Opening Lecture by Lewis Gordon,
“Shifting the Geography of Reason”
Monday, June 13th:
Breakfast
Seminar on Creolizing Theory, Part I with Michael Monahan, Neil Roberts, and Jane Anna Gordon
Lunch
Seminar on Creolizing Theory, Part II with Michael Monahan, Neil Roberts, and Jane Anna Gordon
Dinner
An Evening Discussion on Teaching Caribbean Philosophy with
Neil Roberts and Michael Monahan
Tuesday, June 14th:
Breakfast
An Exchange between Drucilla Cornell and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Part I
Lunch
An Exchange between Drucilla Cornell and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Part II
Dinner with Drucilla Cornell and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
Wednesday, June 15th:
Breakfast
A.M. Seminar with Paget Henry,
“Wilson Harris and Africana Transcendental Philosophy”
Lunch
P.M. Seminar with Mabogo More,
“The Philosophy of Steve Biko”
Dinner
An Evening Discussion about the Profession with
Paget Henry, Lewis Gordon, and Jane Anna Gordon
Thursday, June 16th to Saturday, June 18th:
CPA Annual Conference, “Theorizing from Small Places”
A more detailed conference program will be posted by the end of February
The Certificate of Completion
Everyone who participates in the full week of the CPA Summer School at UCONN will receive a certificate of completion at the end of the summer school.
Featured Guests and Conveners
Drucilla Cornell is Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature and Women’s & Gender Studies at Rutgers University the State University of New Jersey; Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; and a visiting professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. She received her Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Philosophy and Mathematics from Antioch College in 1978, and her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from University of California Los Angeles Law School in 1981. All of Cornell’s diverse work is dedicated to thinking the possibility of a more just future through political and legal philosophy, feminism, and critical theory. Cornell is perhaps best known for her numerous interventions into feminist legal philosophy: Beyond Accommodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction and the Law (1991); Transformations: Recollective Imagination and Sexual Difference (1993); The Imaginary Domain: Abortion, Pornography and Sexual Harassment (1995); and At The Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex, and Equality (1998). In these texts, Cornell moves beyond feminist debates over formal equality to develop the original concept of “the imaginary domain” which positions feminism as a fundamentally ethical project oriented toward the re-imagination of sexual difference through law, politics and aesthetics. Cornell is also widely known for her highly influential work in deconstruction, most notably The Philosophy of the Limit (1992), in which she argues for the political and ethical significance of Jacques Derrida’s work. These attempts to rethink law and jurisprudence as the opening of the possibility of justice led Cornell to her later works: Just Cause: Freedom, Identity and Rights (2000); Defending Ideals: War, Democracy, and Political Struggles (2004); Moral Images of Freedom: A Future for Critical Theory (2008); and Symbolic Forms for a New Humanity: Cultural and Racial Reconfigurations of Critical Theory (co-authored with Kenneth Michael Panfilio, 2010). These texts draw upon feminist, Africana, and critical theory to argue for the importance of symbolic forms in the project of freedom, the preservation of dignity, and creating a new future for humanity. Cornell’s interest in the aesthetic is further brought out in Between Women and Generations: Legacies of Dignity (2004) and Clint Eastwood and Issues of American Masculinity (2009). In these texts she explores film and women’s personal narrative as crucial sites for the aesthetic reconfiguration of what it means to be human, both individually and collectively. Finally, Cornell’s work in South Africa from 2008 to the end of 2009, as the National Research Foundation Chair in Customary Law, Indigenous Values, and the Dignity Jurisprudence at the University of Cape Town and as co-founder and co-director of the uBuntu Project led to her most recent works uBuntu and the Law: African Ideals and Postapartheid Jurisprudence (co-edited with Nyoko Muvangua, 2011) and Law and Revolution in South Africa: uBuntu, Dignity and the Struggle for Constitutional Transformation (2014). Here, Cornell continues to build on her career-long project of reimagining law as a force of revolutionary ethical transformation by looking beyond the Euro-American intellectual tradition. The depth and range of Cornell’s visionary work has led to her being called “one of the last grand critical theorists of our time.” Prior to beginning her life as an academic, Cornell was a union organizer for a number of years. She worked for the UAW, the UE, and the IUE in California, New Jersey, and New York. She played a key role in organizing the conferences on deconstruction and justice at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1989, 1990, and 1993 and has worked to coordinate Law and Humanities Speakers Series with the Jacob Burns Institute for Advanced Legal Studies and the Committee on Liberal Studies at the New School for Social Research. She is also a playwright and producer of the documentary film, uBuntu Hokae. Cornell received the Frantz Fanon Outstanding Book Award from the CPA in 2008 for Moral Images of Freedom: A Future for Critical Theory, published by Fordham University Press.
Paget Henry is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University. Founder and editor of The C. L. R. James Journal, Henry is also an external examiner for the University of the West Indies and the University of Guyana. Henry has presented papers in North America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa and organized several major international conferences on such topics as C.L.R. James’s Years in the U.S. and on Democracy and Development in the Caribbean. In 2003, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education recognized him as 26th of the 30 most quoted black scholars in the humanities. Henry is the co-editor (with Paul Buhle) of C. L. R. James’s Caribbean (Duke University Press, 1992) and author of Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua (Transaction Books, 1985), Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy (Routledge, 2000) which received the 2003 Frantz Fanon Award of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, and Shouldering Antigua and Barbuda: The Life of V.C. Bird (Hansib, 2010). He is currently completing a book tentatively entitled, Further Studies in Caliban’s Reason: Africana Phenomenology and Political Economy.
Oscar Guardiola Rivera is a London-based Colombian writer and philosopher. He is the author of the critically acclaimed What If Latin America Ruled the World?, which won the Franz Fanon Outstanding Book Award, and more recently of the title Story of a Death Foretold (Bloomsbury, 2013). Both books have been included on the Books of the Year list in 2010 and 2013, respectively, published by such reputed newspapers as the Financial Times and The Observer. Story of a Death Foretold has been well received by critics and reviewers in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Observer and Booklist, among others. It has been shortlisted for the 2014 Bread & Roses Prize, which awards outstanding publishing of a critical nature. Together with top intellectuals Richard Dawkins, Marcus du Sautoy, and Simon Schama, Guardiola-Rivera has taken part in the Hay Levels Project. Developed in association with the reputed Hay Festivals, the project consists of a series of short films aimed at young adults that seeks to introduce them to some of the most central topics of our time in Philosophy, Economics, Mathematics, and the Sciences. Guardiola-Rivera is a regular in the literary festival circuit, with appearances at Southbank in London, the Hay, Bath and Jaipur Literary festivals, and the Edinburgh Book Festival. He has a widespread media presence, writing as a columnist for The Guardian and El Espectador, collaborating in various radio stations such as Monocle Radio and the BBC World Service, as well as on television. He is also a blogger for Kindle Magazine India and Telesur English. He teaches Law and Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Jane Anna Gordon, a specialist in Africana political, social, and educational thought, modern and contemporary European social and political theory, methodologies in the social sciences, and contemporary slavery, is Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science and Associate Professor in Political Science and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. Her first book, Why They Couldn’t Wait: A Critique of the Black-Jewish Conflict over Community Control in Ocean Hill-Brownsville (RoutledgeFalmer 2001), was listed by the Gotham Gazette as one of the four best recent books on civil rights. She is co-editor with Lewis R. Gordon of Not Only the Master’s Tools (Paradigm, 2006) and of The Companion to African American Studies, which was the NetLibrary Book of the Month in February 2007. She is also the co-author of Of Divine Warning: Reading Disaster in the Modern Age and author of Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon (Fordham, 2014). Her articles have appeared in Africa Development, Critical Philosophy of Race, The C.L.R. James Journal: A Review of Caribbean Ideas, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Journal of Contemporary Thought, The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Journal of Political Theology, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Performance Research, SOULS, and Philosophical Studies in Education. Her recent essay, “Theorizing Contemporary Practices of Enslavement: A Portrait of the Old and New,” won the American Political Science Association 2012 Foundations in Political Theory Best Paper Prize. She is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association.
Lewis Gordon is an Afro-Jewish philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician (drums and piano), who was born on the island of Jamaica and grew up in the Bronx, New York, where he attended Evander Child’s High School, played jazz in NY night clubs, and went to Lehman College under the Lehman Scholars Program (LSP) where he graduated with honors in political science and philosophy as a member of the Chi chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. His undergraduate mentor and lifetime friend, Gary Schwartz, with whom he also studied Greek and ancient literature, was Director of the LSP. Gordon then taught social studies at Lehman High School, where he founded The Second Chance Program for In-school Truants and then studied for his doctorate at Yale University, where he met his graduate mentor, the great Maurice Natanson, a phenomenologist and existentialist who was also a child of Yiddish theater in Brooklyn, New York, and whose mentor was Alfred Schutz, the great Austrian Jewish phenomenologist of the social sciences. Gordon’s research in philosophy is in Africana philosophy, philosophy of existence, phenomenology, social and political philosophy, and philosophy of science. His philosophy and social theory have been the subjects of many studies in a variety of disciplines. While he has written on problems of method and disciplinary formation in the human sciences, Gordon has more recently devoted attention to problems in philosophy of physics, especially through a series of ongoing discussions and research projects with Stephon Alexander, who teaches physics at Dartmouth College. In addition to theories of social transformation, decolonization, and liberation, Gordon’s research in social and political philosophy also addresses problems of justice and its normative scope. As a public intellectual, Gordon has written for a variety of political forums, newspapers, and magazines such as truthout (on which he now serves as a member of the Board of Directors), the Pambazuka News, the Johannesburg Salon, and The Mail & Guardian, and has lectured across the globe, founded and co-founded book series, journals and organizations, including, with Paget Henry, the past Routledge series Africana Thought and, with Jane Anna Gordon, the Rowman & Littlefield International series Global Critical Caribbean Thought, the journal Radical Philosophy Review and the Caribbean Philosophical Association, of which he was the first president (2003 to 2008). He also participates in several international research groups such as Thinking Africa at Rhodes University in South Africa, The Center for Caribbean Thought in Mona, Jamaica, The Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery in Amsterdam, The Factory of Ideas in Salvador, Brazil, The Forum on Contemporary Theory in Baroda India, The Humanities Institute at the Birkbeck College of Law, The Center for Global Studies and the Humanities (Decolonial Studies) at Duke University, The Erasmus Mundus Masters and the Critical Global Thought Doctoral Program at Toulouse, France, and The Käte Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in Bonn, Germany. He recently accepted the Visiting Chair in Europhilosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Toulouse University and the Nelson Mandela Visiting Professorship at Rhodes University.
Michael Monahan joined Marquette University’s Philosophy faculty in 2003 after spending two years teaching at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois and earned his undergraduate degree at Purdue University. His teaching and research focuses on social and political philosophy, and issues of oppression and liberation (especially race and racism). He has published several articles on philosophy of race and political theory in journals including Philosophia Africana, Social Theory and Practice, Philosophy in the Contemporary World, and the Journal of Philosophy and Sport. His book, The Creolizing Subject: Race, Reason, and the Politics of Purity, published by Fordham University Press in 2011, offers a challenge to the contemporary discourse on the nature of race and racism, beginning with a re-reading of the history of 17th century Barbados and pointing ultimately toward a paradigm of liberation beyond “the politics of purity.” He is currently editing a book entitled Creolizing Hegel for the Creolizing the Canon series at Rowman and Littlefield International. Dr. Monahan attended the first meeting of the Caribbean Philosophical Association in 2004 in Barbados and has not missed a meeting since. He served as Vice-President of the organization from 2008-2013 and is now its Treasurer. He has also been studying martial arts for 16 years, and teaches them as well.
Mabogo More is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Political Thought at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Despite the many obstacles placed on him, he studied for his masters in philosophy at the University of Indiana and had the opportunity to pursue his doctorate in the states. In a story similar to Du Bois’s decision to return from Germany to take on the race struggle in the U.S., More returned to South Africa to work with generations of young black intellectuals in the Bantustans, in Soweto, and in Durban. He pursued doctoral study at the University of Cape Town but found the environment in the philosophy department racially untenable. He eventually completed his doctorate at the University of Johannesburg with a dissertation bringing together Africana existential phenomenology and European existentialism on the philosophical study of racism. His major contributions are in the study of Black Exstentialism, Black Consciousness, philosophies of race and racism, uBuntu, Biko, Fanon, Manganyi, and Sartre. He is a recipient of the Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award.
Neil Roberts received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago with a specialization in political theory. A high school teacher, debate coach, and NCAA Division 1 soccer player at Brown University prior to graduate school, Roberts is the recipient of fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation as well as a member of the Caribbean Philosophical Association Board of Directors. His present writings deal with the intersections of Caribbean, Continental, and North American political theory with respect to theorizing the concept of freedom. He is the author of published and forthcoming articles, reviews, and book chapters in The Cambridge Dictionary of Political Thought, Caribbean Studies, Clamor magazine, The C.L.R. James Journal, Encyclopedia of Political Theory, Journal of Haitian Studies, New Political Science, Patterns of Prejudice, Perspectives on Politics, Philosophia Africana, Philosophy in Review/Comptes Rendus Philosophiques, Political Theory, Sartre Studies International, Shibboleths, Small Axe, Souls, and an anthology devoted to the thought of Sylvia Wynter. Roberts is co-editor of both the CAS Working Papers in Africana Studies Series (with Ben Vinson) and a collection of essays (with Jane Anna Gordon) on the theme Creolizing Rousseau (2014), and he is the recent guest editor of a Theory & Event symposium on the Trayvon Martin case. In addition to being Chair of CPA Publishing Partnerships that includes The C.L.R. James Journal and books with Rowman and Littlefield International, he is author of Freedom as Marronage (The University of Chicago Press, 2015). Roberts is presently completing A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass for The University Press of Kentucky.
Summer School Reading
In preparation, Summer School participants should read Michael Monahan’s introduction to the forthcoming Creolizing Hegel, the introduction and chapter 5 of Neil Roberts’s Freedom as Marronage, the introduction and chapter 5 of Jane Gordon’s Creolizing Political Theory, and the introduction and chapter 1 of Paget Henry’s Caliban’s Reason. [The assignments for Professor Cornell, Professor Guardiola Rivera and Professor More’s sessions will be added shortly.]
PDFs of all of these readings will be emailed to everyone accepted to attend the Summer School.