UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute has announced the 2024 PIKSI-Rock — "Philosophy in an Inclusive Key" — summer conference lecture speakers: Ásta of Duke University, Tyrone S. Palmer of Wesleyan University and Vrinda Dalmiya of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. The conference will take place June 2-12.

"The PIKSI-Rock leadership team is excited to bring these speakers, who are at the forefront of their fields, into dialogue with our brilliant cohort of students," said PIKSI-Rock Director Hil Malatino, associate professor of women's, gender and sexuality studies and philosophy at Penn State, and interim director of the Rock Ethics Institute (REI). "These scholars exemplify the best in engaged, contemporary philosophical practice, serving as mentors to the next generation of scholars who will transform the field."

The Rock Ethics Institute’s PIKSI-Rock program is an initiative designed to encourage undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to consider future study in the field of philosophy and to address the noticeable lack of diversity within academic philosophy. The program focuses on students who might not otherwise see themselves pursuing a career in philosophy due to socioeconomic, racial, ethnic or gender-based barriers.

All lectures are open to the public and will begin at 2 p.m. in the main room of the J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation Building adjacent to the Nittany Lion Inn. Admission is free.

Public talk schedule:

Ásta — Tuesday, June 4

Ásta is professor of philosophy at Duke University. Her current work lies at the intersection of metaphysics, feminist philosophy and social philosophy. She is the author of “Categories We Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories” (Oxford, 2018) and co-editor (with Kim Q. Hall) of "The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Philosophy" (2021).

• Talk Title: "Metaphysics for Liberation and Social Science"
• Abstract: "There has been considerable new work on the metaphysics of sex and gender, race, sexuality and disability. The methodology employed in this work varies considerably. In this talk I advocate for a certain conception of doing social metaphysics. This conception involves a descriptive task and a critical task; it requires that we always keep in mind what we want the theory for; and it involves meeting certain epistemic and ethical demands. I conclude by discussing some ways in which social metaphysics of this kind can support political activism and policy making, as well as research in the social sciences."

Tyrone S. Palmer — Friday, June 7

Palmer is assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University, where he teaches courses on Black critical theory, poetics and continental philosophy. His scholarly work has been published in Qui Parle, Critical Ethnic Studies, TOPIA and the Affect Theory Reader 2: Worldings, Tensions, Futures.

• Talk Title: "Felt-Antagonisms: On Blackness and Affect"
• Abstract: "While it is nearly impossible to neatly summarize or sufficiently condense affect into one strain or trend due to its (anti-)foundational multiplicity and resistance to categorization, it can be said that the disparate tendencies, orientations, and dispositions which comprise the discursive terrain of “affect theory” cohere around a commitment to affirmation. Considering the grammars and concepts that comprise affect theory’s various means of articulation, one notices a trend—affect affirms life, creation, mobility, capacity, and—in the broadest of terms—existence. This affirmationist impulse is always in opposition to a negative mode of theorization characterized by stasis and (en)closure, and has a number of implications for the ethico-political ramifications of affect (i.e., to what and to whom affect can ‘speak’). This talk considers the stakes of the affirmative drive of affect (theory), exploring the relation, and apparent contradiction, between affect theory as a resolutely affirmationist discourse and its position as what Eugenie Brinkema terms “the negative ontology of the humanities,” that which is invoked to address any seeming absence or unthought possibility within humanistic inquiry. I argue that the insistent affirmationist drive of affect and its foreclosure of the negative is mirrored by and intertwined with the structuring absence of Blackness within its precincts. Identifying Blackness as the figure which affirmationist theory constructs itself against, this talk considers what might be gleaned from a fidelity to the antagonistic negativity which Blackness brings to bear on the world."

Vrinda Dalmiya — Monday, June 10

Dalmiya teaches philosophy at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. Her research interests are in care ethics, feminist epistemology, environment and gender and comparative philosophy. She is the author of several articles in these areas and of the monograph, “Caring to Know: Comparative Care Ethics, Feminist Epistemology, and the Mahābhārata” (Oxford, 2016). 

• Talk Title: "Epistemic Vulnerability and Justice: Lessons from a Cross-Cultural Exemplar"
• Abstract: “Epistemic injustices feed into political oppression. Staving off the former is therefore, necessary for (re)imagining a just geopolitical order. As a step towards this, I explore an exemplary agent from the classical world of the Sanskrit epic, Mahābhārata. Could the figure of a king who fails and is stopped from fulfilling his promise—a paradoxically non-ideal Ideal—teach us to embrace epistemic vulnerability? Could a celebration of such vulnerability enable epistemic justice and a different kind of ‘being together’ in contemporary times?”

The Rock Ethics Institute was established in 2001 through the support of Doug and Julie Rock. The institute promotes engaged ethics research and ethical leadership from its home in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts.