Slavery and Abolition in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy CFP

Proposals due October 15, 2025 Workshop will be held May 13-15, 2026, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia (with remote option as necessary) Coordinators: Aminah Hasan-Birdwell (Emory University) and Carrie Shanafelt (Yeshiva University) Keynote Speaker: Robert Bernasconi (Pennsylvania State University) Plenary Lectures: Huaping Lu-Adler (Georgetown University) and Tacuma Peters (Hunter College) Call for Papers: Recent studies of eighteenth-century philosophy have generated incisive questions about the limitations of the moral and political insight of British and European philosophers who were invested in (or silent about) transatlantic slavery. During this period, the rapidly expanding traffic and enslavement of African people appears as a topic of common knowledge and discussion in religion, law, economics, literature, and drama. Writings by enslaved and self-emancipated women and men attested to the violence and degradation of the conditions of slavery, as well as to the hypocrisy of much of Western moral and political discourse. This symposium invites proposals (500 word max) for 25-minute presentations that consider writing about slavery and abolition both as and in conversation with eighteenth-century philosophy. We expect to host 15-20 junior and senior scholars whose presentations engage with these topics directly or indirectly: Marronage and Slave Rebellions Theology and Abolition Economic Theory and Slavery Black Abolitionists (in context) Gender and Enslavement Marriage and Slavery Natural law and Slavery Moral Philosophy and Slavery Women Philosophers on Slavery Colonialism and Slavery Reparation and Restitution Colorism and 18th-Century Theories of Race Political Slavery War and Slavery Local Histories of Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century (Georgia)