Gregory Brown
513 Agnes Arnold Hall
Department of Philosophy
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-3004

Leibniz Society of North America Newsletter (2011-2012)

APA Sessions

  • EASTERN APA: Marriott Wardman Park, Washington, DC (27-30 December 2011)
  • Wednesday, 28 December 2011
  • Group Session 11:15 - 13:15.
    • Chair: Christia Mercer (Columbia University)
    • Speaker: Lea F. Schweitz (Lutheran School of Theology-Chicago)
    • Topic: "Human Uniqueness, the Species Problem and the Image of God"
    • Commentator: Ohad Nachtomy (Fordham University / Bar-Ilan University-Israel)

LSNA Essay Contest

  • 2011 Leibniz Society Essay Competition: The winning essay in the 29th Annual Leibniz Society of North America Essay Competition is "Leibniz: Geometry, Physics, and Idealism," by Douglas Bertrand Marshall, who is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.
  • Thirtieth annual competition (2012): In an effort to encourage the study of the philosophy of Leibniz in North America and to give recognition to deserving scholars, the Leibniz Society of North America (LSNA) is continuing its annual Essay Competition. Submitted essays should be on some aspect of the philosophy of Leibniz. They should be from twelve to twenty-five pages in length (double-spaced), and should be submitted by June 1, 2012, as determined by postmark. The author of the winning essay will have the option of publishing it in the Leibniz Review. To facilitate anonymous judging, the author's name should be given only on a separate title page or cover sheet and should not appear in the body or footnotes of the paper; neither should identifiable information such as full references to publications by the author. Judges reserve the right not to name a winner in the event that none of the submissions is deemed to be of sufficient quality or suitability for the award. Full scholarly apparatus is preferred but not required; sufficiently developed works-in-progress will, therefore, have a chance in the competition and may be submitted. Previous one-time winners are encouraged to re-enter, but a given person can win the competition at most twice. Essays in French or German may be submitted as well as in English.  Please send submissions to the Coordinator of the LSNA Essay Competition: Professor Mark Kulstad, Department of Philosophy, MS-14, Rice University, Houston, TX 77251-1892, U.S.A. // (713) 348-2724 // kulstad@ruf.rice.edu

Sixth Annual Leibniz Conference of the Leibniz Society of North America

  • The Sixth Annual Conference of the Leibniz Society of North America will be held in Montreal in October of 2012; it is being organized by François Duchesneau and Justin Smith.

Leibniz Society of North America
Executive Committee Meeting
University of California, San Diego
15 June 2011

  • In attendance were Martha Bolton, Laurence Carlin, Mark Kulstad, Jeffrey McDonough, Donald Rutherford, and Justin Smith.
  • The meeting was called to order at 12:38 PM.
  • I. The 2012 Meeting of the Leibniz Society of North America
    • The 2012 meeting will be in Montreal and hosted by Justin Smith and François Duchesneau. A tentative date of September 12 was proposed.  There was some concern that it was too early in the semester, and some expressed a preference for a date later in the fall semester.
    • There was also some discussion about whether to have a theme for the conference. The committee decided it might be best to have a theme only every other year so as to avoid potentially limiting the number of submissions every year.
  • II. Future LSNA Meetings
    • here are no concrete plans for meetings beyond the 2012 meeting.  The Committee discussed various possibilities, and there should be plans for the 2013 meeting very soon.
  • III. The LSNA Essay Competition
    • Mark Kulstad announced that he will step down as coordinator of the annual essay competition. The committee thanked Kulstad for his thirty years of service as coordinator. The LSNA will seek a new coordinator for the competition.
    • The committee discussed whether the winner of the competition should be invited to present at a conference. In the past, the winner was invited to present at the APA Central Division meeting.  However, the LSNA no longer meets at the Central Division meeting.  After extensive discussion, the consensus of the committee was that the timing involved between the publication of the Review and the Eastern Division APA meeting, and the ever-changing date of the annual LSNA meeting, the tradition of offering the winner a conference presentation could no longer be sustained.  The matter was put to a vote, and the committee voted unanimously to eliminate the invitation to present at a conference to the winner of the competition.  However, the winning essay will continue to be published in The Leibniz Review.
  • Meeting adjourned at 1:20 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Laurence Carlin