OCTOBER 9-11, 2003

May 3rd, 2003

Greetings from Stony Brook!

I must apologize for the somewhat impersonal sound of this message, but since I am writing to all of our PhDs at once, I hope you will understand. Also I hope you will be excited about the upcoming conference celebrating a quarter century of Philosophy at Stony Brook. And you are each a part of this extraordinary history!

In 1974, the year I arrived at Stony Brook, our first Philosophy Ph.D. (1975) Terry Pinkard (now Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University) set off to teach at Vanderbilt. Since then the successes of our Philosophy Program have become renown with nearly 150 doctorates.

THE STONY BROOK CONFERENCE. The idea is for all of you to return to Stony Brook on 9-11 October 2003 for a philosophy conference. It does not yet have a specific name other than CELEBRATING A QUARTER CENTURY OF PHILOSOPHY DOCTORATES AT STONY BROOK , but that will change once we see what you all have to offer. We thought the overall conference topic should effectively come from you…

THE CONCEPT AND CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION. Each of you are asked to prepare a 20 minute Philosophy paper around a set theme for one of the many organized sessions. There is space for each and all of you to participate!

Many of you already know about this conference and have been discussing a particular session that you would like to organize. Some of you have already been contacted about organizing or participating in a session. Because there are over 140 SB Philosophy Ph.D.s, each of you is limited to participation in one session.

SETTING UP SESSIONS. If you have not yet been contacted, you are hereby invited to communicate with others working in a similar area to set up a five-person session. One of you should serve as organizer of the session, but the organizer should also present a paper. Ideally, you should try to find participants from different generations of SB Ph.D.s.

There will be three- hour panels of five participants each. What you present should reflect your current research and writing.

Three-hour sessions will be concurrent on Thursday morning and afternoon, Friday morning and afternoon, Saturday morning, followed by a plenary and reception/party in the afternoon-evening. Please plan to arrive on Wednesday and to stay until Sunday morning!

I ask that you send me the topic of your session, the participants, and the titles of their papers.

We will find a current graduate student to moderate the session.

TIMELINES. Since October is not far away and summer is around the corner, we would appreciate it if you are able to form session groups by May 15th. I'm sorry there is so little time, but I am off to Leeds for IAPL in a couple of weeks. Your help in getting these sessions set up would be greatly appreciated.

We selected the October 9-11 date since the Merleau-Ponty Circle is in September and SPEP is in early November this year.

PUBLICATION: If this conference is at all successful, we could certainly produce what could be one of the most exciting publications reflecting more than a quarter century of philosophical research from one of the most significant institutional achievements in Philosophy! You are of course all part of that achievement, and now we want to celebrate it.

RECEPTIONS: At a recent faculty meeting, we decided to devote one of the evening receptions to celebrate Stony Brook Women Ph.Ds in Philosophy. This will call attention in particular to a recent book by Eva Kittay and Ellen Feder.

BOOK EXHIBIT. In addition to presentations and discussions, we are also organizing a Book Display. The exhibit will be limited to books published by Stony Brook Doctorates and Faculty. So we are asking you to send us a copy of each of your books for the display. We would then like to donate these books to the Solzberg Library (the Department Library).

LOCATION: We have reserved the whole top floor of the new Stony Brook Student Activities Center for sessions, book exhibit, and related events. Many of you who have not been back to Stony Brook in a number of years may not know the wonderful SAC, which now has a second stage that opened in 2002. Of course, we will have a reception back in Harriman Hall (what many will remember as the Old/Meta Physics Building)! We hope to have the Saturday afternoon events either in the Childs Mansion or the newly opened Sunwood (both in Old Field).

LODGING: I have made reservations at the HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS, located on Rt. 347, a five-minute ride to campus. Please make reservations right away. The following link includes all the detail concerning the HOLIDAY INN (included breakfast, special rate of $119. single or double, shuttle service to/from LIRR and Islip Airport). Because the special room rate is for single or double, I recommend that you contact someone else who will be attending and offer to share a room (cutting the cost in half).

http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~hsilverman/SB_PhD_Conference_2003/Holiday_Inn_Express.htm

WEBSITE: I will be posting further details concerning the conference at the following website. This way I will be able to update it as the conference begins to take shape. So just go to the following:

http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~hsilverman/SB_PhD_Conference_2003/SB_Conference_Main_Page.htm

CONFERENCE SUPPORT: Michael Sigrist, who entered the program in 2001, is working with me in making this conference happen.

The current department Chair, Kelly Oliver has encouraged and supported this conference and has committed some funds for receptions, but we will need to ask you to try to obtain support for your participation from your home department. After all, you will be giving a paper at a Philosophy Conference! You will be able to print out the Program from the website to demonstrate that you are on the Program in order obtain local funding.

This year, serving for the first time as Philosophy Placement Director, I discovered that Stony Brook Philosophy graduates are already a wonderful network.. In part, the purpose of this conference is to bring you all together for an event where you can see old friends, but also where you can meet others who, like you, hold their doctorates in Philosophy from Stony Brook. And you can be sure that our current graduate students will greatly benefit from getting to know you and your work..

The Conference will also be an opportunity to thank Kelly Oliver for her superb work as Chair of the Department for the past two years and to introduce many of you to our incoming Department Chair Lorenzo Simpson, who will be taking office at the end of the summer.

Although I often see many of you at IAPL, SPEP, APA, etc, I’m really looking forward to seeing you again, and particularly those of you whom I haven’t seen in years!

More details as I begin to hear from you!

Best to all of you,

Hugh

p.s. the following sessions are already in preparation:
http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~hsilverman/SB_PhD_Conference_2003/ORGANIZED_SESSIONS.htm