Workshops in Philosophy

Workshops are a distinctive institution of the University of Chicago and an integral part of the Department of Philosophy. Departmental faculty and graduate students serve, often in close collaboration with faculty and graduate students from at least one other department, as primary sponsors for most of the interdisciplinary graduate workshops listed below. These workshops are, at heart, joint ventures among students and faculty from different graduate programs. All philosophy PhD students, as well as MAPH students concentrating in philosophy, are strongly encouraged to participate in at least one or two workshops over the course of any given academic year.

The workshops, most of which are funded by the Council on Advanced Studies, serve three important functions within the life of the Department of Philosophy. (1) They create a venue in which advanced graduate students can present dissertation material and get helpful feedback. Every session of a workshop, which typically meets every two weeks throughout the year, is devoted to intensive discussion among the participants about a paper. (2) They provide the primary financial and logistical vehicle through which leading philosophers from other universities are brought to the University of Chicago, guaranteeing in each case that there will be an interested, informed, and well-prepared audience for such visiting speakers. The plethora of offerings on a variety of philosophical topics at the University of Chicago is partially due to the Department’s lively workshop culture. (3) Each workshop is a forum specially designed to promote a targeted form of interdisciplinarity, allowing graduate students from various departments or units in the university to come together with faculty and students in the Department of Philosophy in a common intellectual conversation united by a broader sense of intellectual purpose.

Some workshops have enjoyed vibrant conversations for many years; others have started recently to support emerging interdisciplinary conversations on campus. Questions about the character or schedule of an individual workshop, along with requests to schedule a presentation to the workshop, should be directed to the graduate student coordinator (see links to individual workshops on this page).