Discworld and Philosophy, CFA deadline extended to 7/22
Posted on | June 5, 2014
Call for Abstracts
Discworld and Philosophy
Edited by Nicolas Michaud
Abstracts and subsequent essays must be accessible to a lay audience as well as philosophically substantial. All writing should be engaging and directly relevant to the Discworld books, movies and games. comics or the TV series. This is a chance to engage one of the most compelling, rich, and creative worlds ever made through the accidentally dropping of an egg sandwich on a beach. Potential authors are encouraged to engage creative and challenging philosophical ideas that themselves challenge our own assumptions about the world, particularly if they’re funny.*
***The 10 to 12-paged papers are written in a conversational style***
Submission Guidelines:
- Submission deadline for abstracts (100-500 words) and CV’s: July 22, 2014
- Notification of accepted abstracts: July 30
- Submission deadline for first drafts of accepted papers: Sept. 15
Kindly submit abstract (with or without Word attachment) and CV by email to: Nicolas Michaud (philosophylives@gmail.com).
Possible themes and topics might include, but are not limited to, questions such as…
Moral Questions: Is it right to do steal, kill, and lie even if you have an Ankh-Morpork guild permit?
Social Questions: Who’s the foreigner? You or the people in the countries you visit (on your broomstick)?
Epistemic Questions: Do wizards really know anything if the spells have thoughts of their own?
Philosophy of Science: In a world were anything can happen, does science matter?
Or any other though-provoking philosophical issue brought up by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld!
For Example,
- Hello! My name is, DEATH: Does Personifying “Death” Make Dying Any Less Petrifying?
- Wearing the Black Ribbon: Should Vampires Abstain?
- Inclusion Through Exclusion: How to Get Along with (almost) Everyone in Ankh-Morpork.
- Witches and Wizards: Resolving the Tensions Between Science and Nature
- Running to Run Another Day: Rincewind and the Virtue of Cowardice
- The Power of Belief: Making (and Killing) God
- Vimes and Thin Soles: A Defense of Communitarianism
- “Ook”: Why it’s Better to be an Orangutan
- Knowing the Minds of Others: Practical Applications of “Borrowing”
- The Will to Manipulate the Heck Out of Everyone: Nietzsche on Vetinari
- Death Has Your Hourglass: A Problem in Free Will
- Why Good Men Just Kill You And Don’t Go On and On About It
- A Feminist Defense of Why Wizardry is Inferior and Wizards are Obnoxious
- The Disc Exists: Possible Worlds and Ontology
- The Danger of Music: Why Vetinari Should Have Listened to Plato
- The Power of Narrative: How Stories Write Us.
- The Last Hero Can’t Find His Dentures: Why Eudemonia Takes a Lifetime
- Practical Philosophy: A Guide to a Life Less Miserable by Ly Tin Weedle
Please visit http://www.opencourtbooks.com/categories/pcp.htm for more information on Open Court’s Pop Culture and Philosophy series.
To propose ideas for future volumes in the Open Court series please contact the Series Editor at pcpideas@gmail.com.
Thank you!
Nicolas Michaud