The NEIU Philosophy Colloquium Series began in 2014 and has been a regular department-sponsored event since Spring 2018. Its purpose is to give the Northeastern community access to all of the richness and diversity of contemporary professional philosophy. The Colloquium Series also provides professional philosophers with the opportunity to experience Northeastern firsthand and meet our students and faculty in an academic setting. All of the talks are free and open to the public.
Spring 2024
“Political Eschatology and Gender: Information Warfare against Queer Communities”
Maren Behrensen, University of twente, Netherlands
3:05-4:15 p.m. Thursday, April 25
Bernard J. Brommel Hall Room 102
"In this talk, I analyze the current backlash against queer communities – and trans persons in particular – in terms of political eschatology and information warfare. I will focus on the specific example of Russian information warfare and international anti-queer and anti-trans networks with significant Russian input. Political eschatology is a form of secularized apocalyptic thinking that mobilizes by suggesting that we live in a time of moral and social decay, the end times just before ultimate collapse or salvation. The Russian regime has been utilizing this kind of thinking in order to garner support against the “decadent West” and destabilize democracies in Europe and North America. Queer communities have been an integral target of this strategy for well over a decade, but in recent years, trans communities have become the primary focus of vilification."
Maren Behrensen, Ph.D, is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Twente (UT), Netherlands. Prior to joining UT, they held post-doc positions at the Institute for Christian Social Ethics at the University of Münster, and the Center for Applied Ethics at Linköping University, Sweden. They specialize in ethics (with a focus on gender and sexuality) and social ontology.
Upcoming Talks
- 2024-2025 schedule coming soon!
Past Talks
2023-2024
- Patrick O'Donnell, Oakton College, "Better Living through Pessimism."
- Ben Almassi, Governors State University, "The Fire Next Time: Prescribed Burns as Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Epistemic Reparations."
- Takunda Matose, Loyola University Chicago, "Justice and The Monty Hall Problem of Public Health."
- Will Behun, McHenry County Community College, "Not so much heretical as insane: myth in classical Gnosticism."
- Tom Carson, Loyola University Chicago, "The Problem of Misplaced Trust and Distrust."
2022-2023
- David Hilbert, University of Illinois at Chicago, "Berkeley's Political Metaphysics."
- Blake Dutton, Loyola University Chicago, "Extracting Gold from the Counterfeiter’s Bag: al-Ghazālī on the Tradition of Philosophy in Islam."
- Sophia Mihic, Northeastern Illinois University, "Freedom, Property, and Privacy: The Political Economy of Abortion and Reproduction After Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization."
- Raff Donelson, Chicago-Kent College of Law, "The Inherent Problem with Mass Incarceration."
- Tyler Zimmer, University of Chicago, "Do Billionaires Deserve Their Wealth?"
- Shireen Roshanravan, Northeastern Illinois University, "Pretending-to-be and Masterful Political Performance."
2019-2020
- B.R. George, Carnegie Mellon University, "Painfully Literal Dudes."
- Thirza Lagewaard, Free University, Amsterdam, “How Epistemic Injustice Can Deepen Disagreement.”
- Agnes Callard, University of Chicago, “Is There Such a Thing as being Good or Bad at Philosophy?"
- David Vessey, Grand Valley State University, "Collapsing Life and Art."
- Alex Adamson, Northeastern Illinois University, “Against a Single History: Luxemburg and a Decolonial Critique of Political Economy.”
2018-2019
- Jessica Gordon Roth, University of Minnesota, “Recovering Early Modern Women Writers: Some Tensions.”
- Jorge Montiel*, Marquette University, “ A Relational Analysis of Oppression: Group Injustice and Institutional Mediation.”
- Megan Hyska, Northwestern University, “Propaganda for Realists.”
- William Paris, Northwestern University, “What does it Mean to Have a Revolution in Culture? Frantz Fanon’s Speculative Method of Critique.”
- Seth Mayer, Manchester University, “Philosophy, Democracy, and Mass Incarceration.”
- David Godden, Michigan State University, “Theorizing Testimony in Argumentative Contexts.”
2017-2018
- Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt University, “The Antinomies of Meta-philosophy.”
- Desmond Jagmohan*, University of California, Berkeley, “Dominus before Domination: Harriet Jacobs and the Meaning of Slavery.”
2016-2017
- John Casey, Northeastern Illinois University, "Argument Pacifism."
2015-2016
- Morganna Lambeth, Northwestern University, "Does Everything have a Cause?"
- Raff Donelson, Northwestern University, "What is Punishment?"
2014-2015
- Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt University, "Why We Argue: A Deliberative Democratic Reply to Plato.”
*Denotes scholar as a graduate of Northeastern Illinois University
