The Philosophy Department is sponsoring free, Weekly Movement Classes, every Wednesday at 1pm until the end of May, 2021. This class will be live on Zoom. Keep your camera off, or turn it on for an interactive experience. The Zoom link will be shared via email.

This will be a a mid-week dance-based body refresh — no dance or movement experience required. Together (with a sense of humour about it all) we’ll move through easy-to-follow sequences set to energetic music. Throughout this session you’ll increase your range of motion, challenge your stamina, build strength and learn a couple humility-affirming dance moves along the way. You’ll be encouraged to customize your workout with modifications offered to amp up or tone down any exercise to suit your personal needs. Make this class a routine and you’ll feel energized, toned, bright and connected to your body! 

Our instructor, Alyssa Martin, is an award winning choreographer, director and educator. She is the Artistic Director of surrealist dance theatre company, Rock Bottom Movement, a creative home she founded in 2012. Her creations blur the lines of theatre, dance and comedy in mischievous conversation with her modern dance antecedents. She has toured her work internationally, working in residence at art centres including The Banff Centre, Stratford Festival Lab, The National Ballet of Canada and Canadian Stage. She most recently premiered a feature length experimental film, Bin Chicken, a commission for Toronto Dance Theatre. In addition to choreography, Alyssa works as a movement educator with people of all ages and experiences. She teaches Pilates and Dance Synergy at Mindful Movement Centre, Dance and Musical Theatre in the Performance Department at Ryerson University, Creative Composition at George Brown College’s Dance Program and has guest taught within Laurier University’s Opera Department. She also leads “NONDance” workshops for the Rock Bottom community. She holds her Pilates Mat and Reformer Certification (earned under the mentorship of Leslie Parker) as well as her BFA in Performance Dance from Ryerson University. She has supplemented her training with workshops in dance, movement and creative process in Montreal, New York, Berlin and Vienna. She approaches all that she does with a sense of play and places priority on the wellbeing of the individuals she is moving alongside!  Alyssa’s very excited to be leading these classes for Queen’s philosophers!

Mid Week Move Poster (JPEG 400KB)   About Alyssa (JPEG 411KB)

Faculty and graduate students are welcome to join, over Zoom, the upcoming meeting of the Political Philosophy Reading Group, to discuss a paper by Patti Lenard (University of Ottawa): "When accessing citizenship requires a handshake: On the permissibility of denying religious/cultural accommodations to citizenship oath-takers". Further details, as well as Patti's paper, have been circulated via email. For more information, contact Christine Sypnowich (christine.sypnowich@queensu.ca).

The Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law, and Ethics (APPLE) group at Queen's welcomes you to the fourth talk in our winter speaker series on Thursday, April 15th, with Yamini Narayanan from Deakin University. 

The zoom link will be shared over email. For more information, click the button below, or contact contact Jishnu Guha-Majumdar (jgm12@queensu.ca).

Talk by Yamini Narayanan, "Animating caste" | APPLE

This virtual conference, "The Self and the Selfless" brings together academics from across the globe, posing questions around the philosophical thought of Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil. Featuring international leading Weil and Arendt scholars, the conference focuses on how these thinkers can assist us in navigating our own "Dark Times." The conference schedule is available here.

The talks are all posted on the website and the conference itself will involve panel discussions around the talks, so it is recommended but not required that all registered participants pre-view the talks. Registration ends Friday April 9, 2021. Pease visit the website and click on the registration tab to sign up.

This conference is organized by Kathryn Lawson (Queen's University) and Joshua Livingstone (Queen's University). 

The conference will hear plenary addresses from:

• Lissa McCullough (California State University Dominguez Hills) on Weil
• Elvira Roncalli (Carroll College) on Arendt
• Marie Cabaud Meaney (International Theological Institute in Trumau, Austria) on Weil and Arendt

It will feature:

• Antonio Calcagno (King’s University College at Western University)
• Benjamin Davis (University of Toronto)
• Diane Enns (Ryerson University)
• Alzbeta Hajkova (Purdue University)
• Marina Lademacher (University of Sussex)
• Paolo Monti (Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca)
• Rose Owen (University of Chicago)
• Silvia Panizza (University College Dublin)
• Ian Rhoad (American University)
• Scott Ritner (Temple University)
• Maria Robaszkiewicz (Paderborn University)
• Ilya Shodjaee-Zrudlo (McGill University)
• Tom Sojer (University of Erfurt)
• Sam Sokolsky-Tifft (Purdue University)
• Christopher Thomas (Manchester Metropolitan University)
• Philip Wilson (University of East Anglia)

Weil and Arendt Conference: "The Self and the Selfless" (Website)

APPLE is happy to sponsor a virtual symposium on recent PhD Kyle Johannsen’s recent book, Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering. The symposium will be held over Zoom. It will feature commentaries by Nicolas Delon (New College of Florida), Bob Fischer (Texas State), Gary O’Brien (Oxford), and Clare Palmer (Texas A&M).

Zoom link for APPLE Symposium on Wild Animal Ethics

For information about the book, please see the description below.

You may also be interested in an interview about the book, that recently aired on the New Books Network.

“Though many ethicists have the intuition that we should leave nature alone, Kyle Johannsen argues that we have a duty to research safe ways of providing large-scale assistance to wild animals. Using concepts from moral and political philosophy to analyze the issue of wild animal suffering (WAS), Johannsen explores how a collective, institutional obligation to assist wild animals should be understood. He claims that with enough research, genetic editing may one day give us the power to safely intervene without perpetually interfering with wild animals’ liberties.”

Questions addressed include:

• In what way is nature valuable and is intervention compatible with that value?
• Is intervention a requirement of justice?
• What are the implications of WAS for animal rights advocacy? 
• What types of intervention are promising?