Note 1: Participation in the Webinar is by invitation only. In order to receive the invitation for the Webinar, please email Leonard Lawlor, lul19@psu.edu, or Ted Bergsma, tzb5226@psu.edu.

Note 2: All times below are Eastern Standard Time (EST) for the USA and Canada.

Program for the 2020 Global Bergsonism Research Project Webinar November 6-7, and 13

Friday, November 6

8:45am

Welcome Comments from Leonard Lawlor (Penn State University, USA) and Caterina Zanfi (Centre national de la recherche scientifique/École Normale Supérieure, Rue d’Ulm, France)

Session 1: Global Bergsonism

9:00-11:00am

Moderator: Leonard Lawlor, Penn State University, USA

Frédéric Worms, École Normale Supérieure, Rue d’Ulm, France

Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago

“History of Life and Vital Dilemmas: A Global and Bergsonian Discussion Between Dipesh Chakrabarty and Frédéric Worms”

Session 2: Encounters with Bergson: Evaluations and Analysis

11:15am-12:45pm

Moderator: Nicolas de Warren, Penn State University, USA

Joël Dolbault, Independent Scholar, France “Pan-psychism in Bergson and James”

Mohit Abrol, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India “Bergson-Eliot Encounters: Philosophical Notes on Time, Theology and Culture”

Session 3: Sympathy, Ethics and Aesthetics: Bergsonian Approaches in Dialogue

4:00-5:30pm

Moderator: Débora Morato Pinto, Universidad Federal de São Carlos, Brazil

Melanie White, University of New South Wales, Australia “Bergson and Sympathy”

Miguel Paley, The New School for Social Research, USA “Utility, Affect, and Self-Constitution: A Bergsonian Reading of Levinas and Whitehead”

Saturday, November 7

Session 1: Creative Evolution: Philosophical and Biological Perspectives

9:00am-10:30am

Moderator: Yasushi Hirai, Fukuoka University, Japan

Tano Posteraro, Penn State University, USA “Canalization and Creative Evolution: Images of Life from Bergson to Whitehead and Beyond”

Emily Herring, University of Ghent, Belgium “Bergson’s Creative Evolution and 20th Century Biology”

Session 2: Bergson and the Political: Liberalism and Colonialism

4:00-5:30pm

Moderator: Émile Kenmogne, Yaounde University, Cameroon

Alexandre Lefebvre, University of Sydney, Australia “Bergson and Liberalism”

Larry S. McGrath, Independent Scholar, USA “Bergson’s Views on Colonialism: Education and Empire in North Africa after the French Third Republic”  

Friday, November 13

Session 1: Bergson and Anglo-American Evolutionary Theories

10:45am-12:15pm

Moderator: Povilas Aleksandravicius, Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania

Bruno Rates, University of São Paulo, Brazil “Creative Evolution and American Evolutionary Thought: The influence of Edward Drinker Cope, James Mark Baldwin and Nathaniel Southgate Shaler on Bergson’s Views of Life and Technology”

Mathilde Tahar-Malaussena, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France “The History of the Bergsonian Interpretation of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution”

Session 2: Bergson and Critical Philosophy of Race

2:15-3:45pm

Moderator: Alia Al-Saji, McGill University, Canada

Leah Kaplan, Emory University, USA “Black Time and the Suspension of Duration”

Rebecca Hill, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia “Reading Bergson beyond the Figure of Man with Wynter and Indigenous Philosophy”

Session 3: Bergson, Knowledge, and the Planetary

4:00-5:30pm

Moderator: Caterina Zanfi, Centre national de la recherche scientifique/École Normale Supérieure, Rue d’Ulm, France

Suzanne Guerlac, University of California, Berkeley, USA "Thinking with Bergson: Decolonizing What it is to Know and Rethinking the Planetary"