North American Levinas Society

Levinas and Community:

The Second annual meeting of the North American Levinas Society

Please remember to complete our online registration form if you have not done so already. More information on lodging, parking, and the Purdue area can be found on our NALS 2007 conference information page.

Conference Schedule

The NALS 2007 conference schedule is also available as a Microsoft Word.doc.

Sunday, June 10

8:30-10:00am, Registration, West Faculty Lounge

9:00-9:30am, Introductory Remarks West Faculty Lounge

• Dean Barbara Dixon (Assistant Dean, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue Univ.)
• Sandor Goodhart (English and Jewish Studies, Purdue Univ.)
• Joseph Haberer (Emeritus, Political Science and Jewish Studies, Purdue Univ.)

9:30-9:45am, Break

9:45-10:45am, Sessions 1-3

• Session 1, Ethics of Colonization and Decolonization, ADR
  Moderator: Erik Garret (Duquesne Univ.)
  • Caitlin Malone (Ohio State Univ.): "Defacing the Colonial Subject: J.M. Coetzee as a Reconciliation of Levinas and Colonialism"
  • Victoria Tahmasebi (Univ. of Toronto-Scarborough): "The Ethical Community of Non-Violent Resisters: Levinas and Gandhi on Collective Struggle"
• Session 2, Subjectivity and Alterity, Lafayette Room
  Moderator: Brian T. Prosser (UC-Santa Cruz)
  • Jeremy Galen (Univ. of Chicago): "Free to be You and Me: Freedom within Alterity in Rosenzweig and Levinas"
  • Jae-Seong Lee (Pusan National Univ.): "The Wisdom of Love and the Rhythm of Sensibility: Uniting and Separating Self and Other"
• Session 3, Dramatic and Poetic Literature, PMU 256
  Moderator: Dharmini Patel (Purdue Univ.)
  • Gabriella Giorno (Purdue Univ.): "'See What I See': Ophelia's Obituary for Levinas's Ethics"
  • Alexander L. Kaufman (Auburn Univ. Montgomery): "Levinas and the Gender of the Gift: Feminine Reciprocity in Book III of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde"

10:45-11:00am, Break

11:00am-12:30pm, Plenary Session #1, West Faculty Lounge
Moderator: Alan Wood (Purdue Univ.)

• Joelle Hansel: "'Being Otherwise' and 'Being Jewish' in Emmanuel Levinas's Early Work"

12:30-2:00pm, Lunch

2:00-3:30pm, Sessions 4-6

• Session 4, Levinas Prior to Convention: The Ethical Primacy of Community, ADR
  Moderator: N. Eric Dickman (Univ. of Iowa)
  • Ronald C. Arnett (Duquesne Univ.): "Communicative Praxis and the Ethical Echo: Levinas's A Priori Community"
  • Erik Garrett (Duquesne Univ.): "Towards a Genetic Phenomenology of Language: Levinas and Kierkegaard and the Originary Responsibility of Indirection"
  • James McLachlan (Western Carolina Univ.): "Beyond the Self, Beyond Ontology: Levinas' Reading of Shestov's Reading of Kierkegaard"
• Session 5, Post/Modern Literature and Ethics, PMU 256
  Moderator: Daniel T. Kline (Univ. of Alaska-Anchorage)
  • Allen Wood (Purdue Univ.): "Zola's Response to Dreyfus' Useless Suffering"
  • Rebecca Nicholson-Weir (Purdue Univ.): "'There are things that can't be said': Levinas and the Ethics of Representation in Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room"
  • Monica Osborne (Purdue Univ.): "Murderous Ethics: A Levinasian Critique of Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film about Killing"
• Session 6, Ethical Community , Lafayette Room
  Moderator: Steve Sandbank (Independent scholar)
  • James D. Hatley (Salisbury Univ.): "The Bread from my Mouth and the Bread from the Other's Mountain: Entangled Histories on Mount Gulaga and the Search for Communal Ancestors"
  • Rebecca Rose (Univ. of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign): "Levinas and Friendship"

3:30-3:45pm, Break

3:45-5:15pm, Sessions 7-9,

• Session 7, Precarious Community ADR
  Moderator: Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona Coll.)
  • Hugh Cummins (Univ. Coll.-Dublin): "'We are All Israeli Jews': Levinas and the Besieged Community"
  • Drew Dalton (Catholic Univ.-Leuven): "Identity and Community in Levinas"
  • N. Eric Dickman (Univ. of Iowa): "The Question as the Locus of Community: A Critique of Levinas's Construal of the Other's Question"
• Session 8, Time, Image, and the Other: Levinas and Cinema , ADR
  Moderator: Monica Osborne (Purdue Univ.)
  • J. Aaron Simmons (Vanderbilt Univ.): "Vision Without Image: Levinas's Challenge to Philosophical Sight"
  • Sam B. Girgus (Vanderbilt Univ.): "Levinas and Cinema: Time, Redemption, and Transcendence"
  • Sarah Childress (Vanderbilt Univ.): "The Anarchy of the Spectacle: Deleuze and Levinas on the Cinema"
  • Alice Chuang (Vanderbilt Univ.): "In Search of Lost Time: La Notte and the Time-Image"
• Session 9, Phenomenology, Ethics, Onto-Theology, Lafayette Room
  Moderator: Donald L. Turner (Nashville State Comm. Coll.)
  • Sarah Allen (Catholic Univ.-Leuven): "Being and Beyond: Heidegger, Levinas, and the God of Metaphysics"
  • Keith Bickley (Waubonsee Comm. Coll.): "Combating the Alienation of Culture: Phenomenology and the Return to the Figure of the Human"
  • Ron Mercer (Univ. of Evansville): "Substitution as Originative Condition of Community"

5:15-5:30pm, Break

5:30-7:00pm, Highlighted Session , East Faculty Lounge
Featured Panel: Ethical, Political, and Legal Theory
Moderator: Michael Paradiso-Michau (Purdue Univ. and Univ. of Dayton)

• Oona Eisenstadt (Pomona Coll.): "Anti-Utopianism Revisited"
• William Paul Simmons (Arizona State Univ.): "Levinas and Heteronomic Human Rights Law"

7:00-Whenever you feel the need to sleep, Dinner

Monday, June 11

8:30-10:00am, Registration, PMU - West Faculty Lounge

9:30-10:30am, Sessions 10-11

• Session 10, Levinas and Agamben in Community, ADR
  Moderator: Tony Russell (Purdue Univ.)
  • Cynthia Kraman (Coll. of New Rochelle): "Limbo Anyone? Levinas/Agamben"
  • Jonathan Short (York Univ.): "(Im)Personal Communities: Agamben Reading Levinas"
• Session 11, The Textuality of Identity , Lafayette Room
  Moderator: David Goodman (Fuller Grad. School of Psych.)
  • James Gunter (Brigham Young Univ.): "Violence Against the Self: Examining American Identity through Levinas in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian"
  • Ferdi Memeli (Purdue Univ.): "Between the Proper and the Common: Freud and Levinas in the Context of Oedipus Rex"

10:30-10:45am, Break

10:45-11:45am, Sessions 12-14

• Session 12, Kierkegaard and Levinas Face to Face,, ADR
  Moderator: R. Clifton Spargo (Marquette Univ.)
  • Michael R. Paradiso-Michau (Purdue Univ.): "Merold Westphal as a Reader of Kierkegaard and Levinas"
  • Jeffrey Dudiak (The King's Univ. Coll.): "'God' and 'Beyond:' Reading Kierkegaard and Levinas with Professor Westphal"
• Session 13, Hospitality and Heroism: The Ethical Community of Le Chambon, Lafayette Room
  Moderator: James D. Hatley (Salisbury Univ.)
  • Katherine Kirby (St. Michael's Coll.): "A Community of Care: Compassion and Vulnerability in Le Chambon"
  • Steven Sandbank (Independent Scholar): "Phillip Hallie and the Possibility of an Ethical Community"
• Session 14, Otherwise: The Persecuted and Inspired Schlemiel , PMU 256
  Moderator: Dara Hill (Purdue Univ.)
  • Menachem Feuer (D'Youville Coll.): "'I Would Never Join a Club Who Would Have Me as a Member': A Levinasian Reading of the Schlemiel in Literature, Film, and Poetry"
  • Andrew Schmitz (D'Youville Coll.): "Called, on the Brink of Laughter and Tears: The Schlemiel in Levinas"

11:45am-1:00pm, Lunch

1:00-2:30pm, Keynote Address, West Faculty Lounge
Moderator: Sol Neely (Purdue Univ.)

• George Kunz (Seattle Univ.): "Therapy: Promise without Certainty. Levinas Inspired Psychology for the Other"

2:30-2:45pm, Break

2:45-4:15pm, Sessions 15-17

• Session 15, Community in Transition, PMU 256
  Moderator: Brian Kanouse (Purdue Univ.)
  • Scott DeShong (Quinebaug Valley Comm. Coll.):"A Levinasian Approach to Ability and Disability"
  • Daniel T. Kline (Univ. of Alaska-Anchorage): "The Child in Kierkegaard and Levinas"
  • Mitchell Verter (York Univ.):"Levinas: For the Kids!"
• Session 16, Phenomenology and Alterity , PMU 256
  Moderator: Andrew Ball (Purdue Univ.)
  • Christopher Arroyo (Providence Coll.): "Wittgenstein, Levinas, Husserl, and Epistemic Privacy"
  • André Barata (Univ. of Beira Interior): "Lévinas, Husserl, and Damásio: Otherness as Experience and Experience as Otherness"
  • Dara Hill (Purdue Univ.): "The Presencea and Absense of the Feminine"
• Session 17, Psychology and Conversation , PMU 256
  Moderator: George Kunz (Seattle Univ.)
  • Helen Douglas (Philosophy in Practice, South Africa): "Levinas in Practice: Face to Face, Side by Side"
  • David Goodman and Alvin Dueck (Fuller Grad. School of Psych.): "The Self For-Itself: The 'Temptation of Temptation' in Modern Society"
  • Paul Marcus (Nat'l Psych. Association for Psychoanalysis): "'Guard Your Tongue': A Levinasian Perspective on the Psychological Meaning of Gossip"

4:15-4:30pm, Break

4:30-6:00pm, Sessions 18-20

• Session 18, Political Community, ADR
  Moderator: Victoria Tahmasebi (Univ. of Toronto-Scarborough)
  • Sol Neely (Purdue Univ.): "Love after Secularism: Sociality, Givenness, and Community"
  • Jules Simon (Univ. of Texas-El Paso): "Exile and Community: From the Desert to the Polis"
  • R. Clifton Spargo (Marquette Univ.): "Beyond the Community of Neighbors"
• Session 19, Inter-Species Community: Levinasian Ethics and the Animal Other , Lafayette Room
  Moderator: Scott DeShong (Quinebaug Valley Comm. Coll.)
  • Matthew Calarco (Sweet Briar Coll.): "Levinas's Equivocal Anthropocentrism"
  • David L. Clark (McMaster Univ.): "On the Last of the Just: Levinas's Animal Autobiography"
  • Donald L. Turner (Nashville State Comm. Coll.): "Emmanuel Levinas's 'Copernican Revolution' in Ethics and the Status of Non-human Animals"
• Session 20, Performance, Community, and Loss , PMU 256
  Moderator: Ricky Varghese (Univ. of Toronto)
  • Brian Bergen-Aurand (Univ. of Illinois-Chicago): "Performing Un-Common Community in Contemporary Cinema Collectives and Collaborations"
  • Julie Salverson (Queen's Univ.): "An Aesthetic of Injury: Performance, Testimony and the Foolish Witness"
  • Devorah Wainer (Univ. of Technology Sydney): "You Are, Therefore I Am: Multiplicity and the Ethics of Community"

6:30-9:00pm, Dinner and Conversation with Simone (Levinas) Hansel, East Faculty Lounge
Moderator: Sandor Goodhart (Purdue Univ.)

• Simone (Levinas) Hansel: "Reminiscences of My Father, Emmanuel Levinas"

Tuesday, June 12

8:30-10:00am, Registration, PMU, West Faculty Lounge

9:00-10:00am Sessions 21-22

• Session 21, Postmodern Literature and Culture , ADR
  Moderator: Jennifer Ziegler (Purdue Univ.)
  • Mark Pepper (Purdue Univ.): "Extraordinary Accidents, Marvel Mutant Madness, and Emmanuel Levinas: The Audience Appeals and Ethical Responsibilities of the Postmodern Superhero"
  • Tony Russell (Purdue Univ.): "'Till We Have Faces': 'Android Science' and Ethics in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the Humanoids of Hiroshi Ishiguro"
• Session 22,Embodiment and the Sensuous, ADR
  Moderator: Adryan Glasgow (Purdue Univ.)
  • Octavian Gabor (Purdue Univ.): "The Erotic and the Ethical in Plato and Levinas"
  • Mitchell Verter (York Univ.): "Levinas: Perverter"

10:00-10:15am, Break

10:15-11:45am, Sessions 23-25

• Session 23, In Community: Quakers Encountering Levinas , ADR
  Moderator: Clarence Joldersma (Calvin Coll.)
  • Corey Beals (George Fox Univ.): "Levinas, the Secret of Invisibility, and Quaker Practices of Visibility in Community"
  • Jeffrey Dudiak (The King's Univ. Coll.): "The Other Within: A Levinasian/Quaker Chiasmus"
• Session 24,Hermeneutics, Lafayette Room
  Moderator: Ronald K. Rowe II (Purdue Univ.)
  • Andrew Ball (Purdue Univ.): "Reciprocity, Revelation, and Redemption: The Post-Secular Hermeneutics of Levinas, Ricoeur, and Buber"
  • Jack Marsh (Boston Coll.): "On the Ethical Imagination, or Levinas and Hermeneutics"
• Session 25, Specters of Marx in Levinas, Althusser, and Derrida , PMU 256
  Moderator: Jeremy Galen (Univ. of Chicago)
  • Stacy Bautista (Loyola Univ.-Chicago): "Levinas and Critique of Ideology: Suffering Subjectivity"
  • Ford Turrell (Nashville State Comm. Coll.): "The Amputation of Alterity: Language, Violence, and Peace in Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida"

11:15-11:30am, Break

12:00-1:30pm, Plenary Session #2 , West Faculty Lounge
Moderator:TBA

• Georges Hansel (Univ. de Rouen): "The Meanings of the Law of Retaliation (Lex Talionis)"

1:00-2:30pm, Lunch, Sagamore Restaurant

2:30-4:00pm, General Business Meeting, West Faculty Lounge
Moderators: NALS Executive Committee

4:00-4:15pm, Break

4:15-5:45pm, Plenary Session #3, West Faculty Lounge
Moderator: TBA

• David Hansel (Univ. de Paris-V): "You Who Are Looking at Me: An Encounter with Emmanuel Levinas"

5:45-6:00pm, Break

6:00-7:30pm, Sessions 26-27

• Session 26, Levinas's Challenge to Theory: Against Community , ADR
  Moderator: Kristen Seas (Purdue Univ.)
  • Richard Glejzer (North Central Coll.): "Levinas at the Ends of Community"
  • Andrew Taggart (St. Charles Comm. Coll.): "Desire, Reflection, Community"
• Session 27, The Ethical and the Professional , Lafayette Room
  Moderator: Paul Rutz (Purdue Univ.)
  • Margaret Hendrickx (Binghamton Univ.): "Meeting Levinas in the Marketplace in Conversation with Calvin Schrag"
  • Christopher Roberts and Jennifer Ziegler (Purdue Univ.):"Identifying an Implicit 'Ethic of the Other' in Stakeholder Reactions to Fatal Accidents and Close Calls: Implications for Firefighter Safety Training"
  • Stephen David Ross (Binghamton Univ.): "The Market as Uncommon Community"

7:35-7:45pm, Closing, West Faculty Lounge

• Announcements of the NALS:

  • A Microsoft (.doc) version of our current CFP is available for download.
  • The 2007 conference schedule is available both as a Microsoft Word .doc and as a webpage. We also have bios highlighting NALS' 2007 plenary speakers.
  • We are (once again) working on the Levinas Society Memebership Pay-pal link. Your memembership will need to be up to date for the conference. Your patience is appreciated.
  • Newsletter of the NALS 2.3 / June 2007

• Thanks again to everyone who made our 2007 conference such a success. We look forward to bringing the same critical energy and enthusiasm to Seattle.

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