Author Archives: LinCentre

Call for applications: The Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP), spanning the departments of political science and philosophy at McGill University, l’Université de Montréal, Concordia University, and l’Université du Québec à Montréal, invites applications for its 2025 manuscript workshop award. The recipient of the award will be invited to Montreal for a day-long workshop expected to be held in May 2025 dedicated to their book manuscript. This “author meets critics” workshop will comprise four to five sessions dedicated to critical discussion of the manuscript; each session will begin with a critical commentary on a section of the manuscript by a political theorist or philosopher who is part of Montreal’s GRIPP community. The format is designed to maximize feedback for a book-in-progress. The award covers the costs of travel, accommodation, and meals.

Eligibility: The manuscript topic is open within political theory and political philosophy. Book manuscripts in English or French, not yet in a version accepted for publication, by applicants with PhD in hand by 1 August 2024, are eligible. In the case of co-authored manuscripts, only one of the co-authors is eligible to apply. One the one hand, applicants must have a complete or nearly complete draft (at least 4/5 of final draft) ready to present at the workshop. On the other hand, only works in progress by the workshop date are eligible. Authors with a preliminary book contract are eligible only if the deadline for submitting the manuscript’s final, revised version to the publisher is well enough after the workshop date to allow for revisions after the workshop.

Application: Please submit the following materials electronically, compiled as a single PDF file, in the following order:

1. a curriculum vitae;
2. a table of contents;
3. a short abstract of the book project, up to 200 words;
4. a longer book abstract up to 2500 words; and,
5. in the case of applicants with previous book publication(s), three (3) reviews, from established journals in the field, of the applicant’s most recently published monograph.

Candidates are not required, but may if they wish, to have two letters of recommendation speaking to the merits of the book project submitted (either separately or appended to the PDF) as well. Please do not send writing samples. The PDF file name should be your last name followed by a space and your first name. Send materials by email, with the subject heading “2025 GRIPP Manuscript Workshop Award” to <[email protected]>. Review of applications begins 15 January 2025. Contact Jean-Félix Caron <[email protected]> with questions.

Evaluation Process: The final decision for choosing the winner of the GRIPP manuscript award lies with the GRIPP Jury. The Jury will seek to meet within the first two weeks of the rolling deadline for submissions. All bilingual regular faculty members of GRIPP have the right to participate as members of the Jury. Each regular faculty member of GRIPP has the right to suggest a short-list of up to five proposals for consideration by the Jury, but the final decision rests with the Jury itself. All elements of the Jury’s deliberations are confidential; unfortunately, it is not possible for the Jury or its members to provide any feedback to applicants concerning the merits of their proposal. A full list of the regular GRIPP faculty membership is available at <http://grippmontreal.org>

Previous GRIPP Manuscript Workshops:

• February 2025*: Nicholas Southwood (ANU), Feasibility :  On What is Possible in Politics (*corresponds to the 2024 award)
• May 2023: Teresa Bejan (Oxford), First Among Equals
• May 2020**: Adam Lebovitz (Cambridge), Colossus: Constitutional Theory in America and France, 1776-1799 (**cancelled due to COVID-19)
• Jan 2020: Laura Valentini (LSE), Morality and Socially Constructed Norms
• May 2018: Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne), Not In Their Name
• April 2017: William Selinger (Harvard), Philosophers of Parliament: The Promise and Perils of the Legislature and the Origins of Liberalism
• May 2016: Katrina Forrester (QMUL), Reinventing Morality: A History of American Political Thought since the 1950s
• August 2015: Lea Ypi (LSE) [with co-author Jonathan White (LSE)], The Meaning of Partisanship
• May 2015: Magali Bessone (Rennes 1), Réparer les injustices coloniales : Perspective transitionnelle sur la justice réparatrice
• May 2014: Paul Gowder (Iowa), A Commitment to Equality: The Rule of Law in the Real World
• May 2013: Alex Gourevitch (McMaster), Something of Slavery Still Remains: Labor and the Cooperative Commonwealth
• May 2012: Daniel Viehoff (Sheffield), The Authority of Democracy
• May 2011: James Ingram (McMaster), Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism
• April 2010: Hélène Landemore (Yale), Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many
• April 2009: Alan Patten (Princeton), Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Cultural Rights
• March 2009: Kinch Hoekstra (UC Berkeley), Thomas Hobbes and the Creation of Order

<http://grippmontreal.org>

The Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP) invites applications for a limited number of 2023-24 graduate student fellowships. Fellowships are available to graduate students in political philosophy or political theory at Concordia, McGill University, l’Université de Montréal, l’Université du Québec à Montréal, and the École nationale d’administration publique whose application is sponsored by a GRIPP faculty member. McGill and Université de Montréal students must be enrolled in the Ph.D. program; Concordia, UQAM, and ÉNAP students may be enrolled in the MA or the Ph.D.

Fellowships:

Stipends will vary by degree program, by the Fellows’ existing funding, and by the number of successful applicants, but will be up to $7,000 for PhD students who do not have other competitive fellowships, and up to $2,500 for MA students. Those who hold external or endowed fellowships may receive reduced stipends rather than a full amount.

Fellows are also eligible for travel funding to present papers at appropriate academic conferences up to $750 per year. Conferences should be competitive (accepting papers by submission, not by invitation) and should not be graduate student-only events; the intent is to support travel to present at conferences such as ACFAS, APA, APSA, APT, CPA, CPSA, SPQ, etc.

Responsibilities:

Successful applicants are expected to attend and participate in all GRIPP activities, including the Fellows Research Workshop and the visiting speakers’ Research Colloquium (around 2 seminars per month, held on Fridays at 2-4pm), 1-2 conferences per year, the Charles Taylor Lecture Series in Political Thought, two book manuscript workshops, and one workshop per semester on methods and approaches in political theory and philosophy.  In most cases, papers will be circulated and should always be read in advance.

Fellows will be expected to either

a) present a manuscript in progress at a seminar, which must be circulated at least one week in advance, with an abstract available in both French and English.  These papers, normally dissertation chapters or manuscripts in preparation for submission to conferences and journals, should be 6000-10,000 words in length, i.e. about the length of a journal article;

or

b) lead discussion of a manuscript in progress (which may be written by a Fellow, or a GRIPP-affiliated postdoc or faculty member, or a visiting speaker).  This will involve speaking for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of the session.  A straightforward summary of the paper isn’t called for, since all attendees should have read the paper, but rather an explanation and elaboration of its key arguments and contributions, followed by constructively critical engagement, suggestions for future directions, challenges, and questions.  The aim is to help the author, and to provide a good starting point for useful discussion.

Fellows in their first year with GRIPP will act as discussants; so will those who presented papers last year.  Returning fellows who acted as discussants last year will present papers this year.

If you will be a discussant, you should indicate any broad preferences about the kind of work you are most interested in discussing (these may not be honoured).

If you will be presenting a paper, you should offer a tentative title and abstract of the paper, along with preferences about when in the year you would like to present (these may not be honoured, and you will be expected to present whenever your session is scheduled).

GRIPP is a bilingual research group. Workshops will operate according to the principle of passive bilingualism.

Applications:

All applications should be sent by email to Jean-Félix Caron <[email protected]> with the subject “CFA GRIPP.” Applications must include:

1. The filled out application form “Application for GRIPP Fellowship”
2. A recent digital photo of the candidate

In your application form, you are required to name a faculty member who is a member of GRIPP who supports your application. This is your “nominal sponsor.” Your nominal sponsor will normally be your thesis advisor, but if your thesis advisor is not a member of GRIPP you are still eligible to apply by asking a member of GRIPP to sponsor your application. You are also asked to name a “financial sponsor.” Filling this slot is optional. It is primarily meant for applicants who are aware of faculty members willing to support their application financially by providing matchings funds for their fellowship should they get one, especially when the potential financial sponsor is not a member of GRIPP and is different from their thesis advisor and nominal sponsor.

Deadline: August 31, 2023, 5 pm

GRIPP Manuscript Workshop May 24, 2023
Stewart-Bio room S/3-4, McGill University

Programme

9h00: Coffee & croissants / Café et croissants

9h30 : Welcome / accueil

9h45 — 11h30 : Présidente: Ryoa Chung (philosophie, Montréal)
Chapter One: “An Equal Commonwealth”: Balance
Commentator: Will Roberts (politics, McGill)
Chapter Two: Omnes Homines Aequales Sunt: Indifference
Commentator: Jacob Levy (politics, McGill)

11h30 — 13h00: Lunch / dîner

13h00 — 14h45: Chair: Rob Goodman (politics, Toronto Metropolitan)
Chapter Three: “Peers or Equalls”: Parity
Commentator: Yves Winter (politics, McGill)
Chapter Four: “Equals in the Creation”: Levelling Down
Commentator: Jeffrey Collins (history, Queen’s)
14h45 — 15h00: Coffee break / pause café

15h00 — 16h45: Chair: Pablo Gilabert (philosophy, Concordia)
Chapter Five: “Too Noble a Being”: Blind Spots and Smoking Guns
Commentators: Lisa Shapiro (philosophy, McGill) and Natalie Stoljar (philosophy, McGill)
Chapter Six: Conclusion: Peers and Equals
Commentator: Robert Sparling (politics, Ottawa)

18h30: Dinner / souper

The Groupe de recherche en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP) is pleased to announce the 2023 co-winners of the GRIPP Annual Montreal Political Theory Manuscript Workshop Award: “First Among Equals: A History of Equality in Theory and Practice,” by Teresa Bejan (Oxford), and “Feasibility: On What is Possible in Politics,” by Nicholas Southwood (ANU). A workshop will be held in Montreal on the first manuscript in 24 May 2023, another on the second in December 2023.

Céline Spector (Paris – Sorbonne)

Sunday 2 April

19h00 – Interview with Spector about the course of her career (in French)

Librairie Le Port de tête

Monday 3 April

16h-18h – Lecture I : « Les illusions du souverainisme »

Can the objection that democracy finds its privileged – even unique – expression within nation-states be overcome? Can we respond to the philosophers and political scientists who maintain that the nation is the sine qua non of democracy, the only possible place for the exercise of political rights, the breeding ground for liberty, equality, and fraternity? This lecture proposes to refute the illusions of sovereigntism, by defending the possibility of a post-national democracy. (In French)

Pavillon MIL (690A), A-4502.1

18h-19h – Reception, Atrium, Pavillon MIL (690B)

Université de Montréal, 1375 avenue Thérèse-Lavoie-Roux, Montréal, H2V 0B3.

Tuesday 4 April

16-18h – Lecture II : « Une République fédérative pour l’Europe? L’héritage des Lumières »

This lecture intends to show that the theories of the federative republic elaborated in The Spirit of the Laws and transformed by Madison and Hamilton shed light on the political future of the European Union. To envisage a theory of free and just institutions, without yielding to Kantian tropism, requires us to detect, in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, theories of the free association of republics that do not opt for cosmopolitanism. The investigation will thus contribute to justify, in a non-dogmatic way, a federative Republic in Europe. (In French)

Pavillon Athanase-David D-R200, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1430 rue Saint-Denis, Montréal, H2X 3J8.

On 3 April 2023 (11h30-13h30) there will be a master class for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers on the work of Céline Spector, the 2013 laureate for the Charles Taylor Lecture Series in Political Thought. Participants will read a selection of Spector’s writings in preparation. Four participants will prepare short critical responses to Spector’s works for presentation at the master class. Spector will respond to these presentations, and then the floor will be open for discussion with the other participants.

Spector is fluent in French and English; it will therefore be possible to participate in both languages.

If you wish to apply to participate in the master class, please send a letter of interest to Professor Christian Nadeau ([email protected]) by February 24.

Admission is open to graduate students and postdocs at all four Montreal universities, but priority will be given to GRIPP Fellows as well as to students or post-docs affiliated with the Centre de recherche en éthique (CRÉ) and Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la diversité et la démocratie (CRIDAQ). Please note your affiliation in your letter.

If you wish to be considered for one of the four presentation spots, please indicate this in your letter of interest, explaining why Spector’s work is important for your own research.

Those selected to participate will be notified by March 1. This will give participants one month to prepare for the master class.

Preparatory texts for participants [presentations need not be restricted to these texts]:

Articles / Chapters

« Montesquieu, les fédéralistes américains et nous : la République fédérative européenne », Lumières, 2021/1-2 (N° 37-38), p. 263-281.

 « Que reste-t-il des Lumières ? Les droits de l’homme à l’épreuve des études postcoloniales », Lumières, 2019/2 (N° 34), p. 45-60.

 « Les Lumières de Charles Taylor », Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 2020/4 (N° 108), p. 497-512

« Liberty », in The Cambridge Companion to Montesquieu, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Sharon Krause et Keegan Callanan éds

Books

Rousseau, Cambridge, Polity Press, « Classic Thinkers », 2019,

No demos ? Souveraineté et démocratie à l’épreuve de l’Europe, Paris, Seuil, « L’ordre philosophique », 2021

Émile. Rousseau et la morale expérimentale, Vrin, 2022

Power and Domination: An International Research Workshop

Arts Council Room 160, McGill University

August 15^th – 17^th 2022

Co-Organized by the Research Group on Constitutional Studies (RGCS) of the Yan P. Lin Centre, the Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP), the Centre de recherche en éthique (CRÉ), and the McGill Department of Philosophy.

Description: RGCS, GRIPP, CRÉ, and the McGill Department of Philosophy are pleased to announce a three-day international workshop which will highlight new and ongoing work that undertakes substantive inquiry into the scope and dynamics of structures of social power and domination.

As the high tide of Rawlsianism recedes, political theorists and philosophers are devoting renewed attention to a number of concepts that had been central to classical social theory but largely submerged during Rawls’s ascendance in political philosophy. New works on domination, social structures, and power have proliferated. In particular, the relational egalitarianism pioneered by Elizabeth Anderson and the neo-republicanism favoured by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner have aspired to reorient the focus of political theory away from the distribution of goods and towards social structures constituted by hierarchical relations of social power amongst individuals, whether relations of oppression (emphasized by relational egalitarians) or of domination (the central issue for neo-republicans). This workshop will highlight work analyzing these key concepts.

The workshop will take place over three days. Day one will be a workshop on Arash Abizadeh’s manuscript on Power, Subjection, and Democracy, elements of which have appeared in recent articles on social power. Day two will focus on William Clare Roberts’s book manuscript, A Radical Politics of Freedom: Domination, Ideology, and Self-Emancipation. On day three, participants will present papers on key questions and concepts which work to clarify the stakes of competing definitions of power and domination and the implications of focusing our political theorizing on these concepts.

Format: To maximize the quality of discussion, participants are expected to have read the manuscripts beforehand. All participants will receive copies of the manuscripts in advance of the workshop.

Programme:

Aug. 15: Manuscript: Power, Subjection, and Democracy (Arash Abizadeh)

9:15: Coffee, Tea, & Pastries

9:30: Welcome

9:45 – 11:30: Chair: Jacob Levy (politics, McGill)

Commentators:

Amanda Greene (philosophy, UC Santa Barbara): The Grammar of Agential Power (Ch 1)

Daniel Weinstock (law, McGill): Agential Power & Causation (Ch 2)

11:30 – 13:00: Lunch

13:00 – 14:45: Chair: Dominique Leydet (philosophie, UQAM)

Commentators:

Éliot Litalien (philosophy, CRÉ): The Power of Numbers (Ch 3)

Mara Marin (politics, Victoria): Structural Power (Ch 4)

15:00 – 16:45: Chair: Pablo Gilabert (philosophy, Concordia)

Commentators:

Sean Ingham (politics, UC San Diego): Subjection to Power & Domination (Ch 5)

Niko Kolodny (philosophy, UC Berkeley): Democratic Equality (Ch 6)

19:00: Dinner

Aug. 16: Manuscript: A Radical Politics of Freedom (William Clare Roberts)

9:15: Coffee, Tea, & Pastries

9:30 – 11:15: Chair: Yann-Allard Tremblay (politics, McGill)

Commentators:

Alex Gourevitch (politics, Brown): Negative Freedom for Socialists (Ch 1)

William Paris (philosophy, Toronto): What’s the Matter with Self-Determination? (Ch 2)

11:15 – 12:45: Lunch

12:45 – 14:30: Ryoa Chung (philosophie, Montréal)

Commentators:

Vanessa Wills (philosophy, George Washington): Ideology and Self-Emancipation (ch 3)

Yves Winter (politics, McGill): Ideology and Self-Emancipation (ch 3)

14:45 – 16:15: Chair: Hasana Sharp (philosophy, McGill)

Overall Thematic Discussion of Manuscripts

18:30: Dinner

Aug. 17: Papers

9:00: Coffee, Tea, & Pastries

9:15 – 11:00: Papers I

Alex Gourevitch, “Structural Domination and Social Reproduction”

Mara Marin, “Structural Obligations”

11:15 –12:30: Lunch

12: 30 – 14:15: Papers II

William Paris, “”Beyond Rights Externalism: James Boggs and the Question of Black Power”

Amanda Greene, “Power and Political Realism”

14:30 – 16:15: Papers III

Sean Ingham, “Luck and Power, Revisited”

Vanessa Will, “Marx’s Critiques of Rival Moral Theories”

18:30: Dinner

Registration: The workshop is open to everyone, but attendance is by registration and limited in number. RSVP the registration coordinator Michelle Atkin:

<[email protected]>

The Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal (GRIPP) invites applications for a limited number of 2021-22 graduate student fellowships. Fellowships are available to graduate students in political philosophy and political theory at Concordia, McGill University, l’Université de Montréal, and l’Université du Québec à Montréal who are supervised by a GRIPP faculty member. McGill and Université de Montréal students must be enrolled in the Ph.D. program; Concordia and UQAM students may be enrolled in the MA or the Ph.D.

Stipends will vary by degree program, by the Fellows’ existing funding, and by the number of successful applicants, but will be up to $7,000 for PhD students who do not have other competitive fellowships, and up to $2,500 for MA students. Those who hold external or endowed fellowships may receive reduced stipends rather than a full amount.

Fellows are also eligible for travel funding to present papers at appropriate academic conferences up to $750 per year. Conferences should be competitive (accepting papers by submission, not by invitation) and should not be graduate student-only events; the intent is to support travel to present at conferences such as APSA, APA, CPA, CPSA, and APT.

Successful applicants are expected to attend and participate in all GRIPP activities, including around 3 seminars per month (held on Fridays at 2-4pm), 1-2 conferences per year, two book manuscript workshops, and one workshop per semester on methods and approaches in political theory and philosophy.  In most cases, papers will be circulated and should always be read in advance.  [**Pandemic note: note that during the pandemic sessions may be held via Zoom.]

Fellows will be expected to either

a) present a manuscript in progress at a seminar, which must be circulated at least one week in advance, with an abstract available in both French and English.  These papers, normally dissertation chapters or manuscripts in preparation for submission to conferences and journals, should be 6000-10,000 words in length, i.e. about the length of a journal article;

or

b) lead discussion of a manuscript in progress (which may be written by a Fellow, or a GRIPP-affiliated postdoc or faculty member, or a visiting speaker).  This will involve speaking for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of the session.  A straightforward summary of the paper isn’t called for, since all attendees should have read the paper, but rather an explanation and elaboration of its key arguments and contributions, followed by constructively critical engagement, suggestions for future directions, challenges, and questions.  The aim is to help the author, and to provide a good starting point for useful discussion.

Fellows in their first year with GRIPP will act as discussants; so will those who presented papers last year.  Returning fellows who acted as discussants last year will present papers this year.

If you will be a discussant, you should indicate any broad preferences about the kind of work you are most interested in discussing (these may not be honoured).

If you will be presenting a paper, you should offer a tentative title and abstract of the paper, along with preferences about when in the year you would like to present (these may not be honoured, and you will be expected to present whenever your session is scheduled).

GRIPP is a bilingual research group. Workshops will operate according to the principle of passive bilingualism.

All applications should be sent by email to [email protected] with the subject “CFA GRIPP”. Applications must include:

1. The filled out application form “Application for GRIPP Fellowship”

2.  A recent digital photo of the candidate

Deadline: August 17, 2021, 5 pm

The Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en philosophie politique de Montréal is sorry to announce that, due to the global pandemic, we will not hold a competition this year for the Annual Montreal Political Theory Manuscript Workshop Award.