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

Leibniz Society of North America Newsletter (2013-2014)

APA Sessions

  • EASTERN APA: Marriott Baltimore Waterfront, Baltimore, MD (27-30 December 2013)
  • Sunday, 29 December 2013
  • Group Session GVIII-6, Leibniz Society of North America, 11:15 - 13:15.
    • Chair: Ursula Goldenbaum
    • Speaker: Sukjae Lee (Seoul National University)
    • Title: "Towards a New Reading of Leibnizian Appetites as Uneasiness"
    • Commentator: Adam Harmer (University of Toronto)

LSNA Essay Contest

  • 2013 Leibniz Society Essay Competition: The winner for 2013 is Julia Jorati, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University, for her essay, "Monadic Teleology without Goodness and without God."
  • Thirty-second annual competition (2014): 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, 2014, 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 by email attachment (Word or pdf format) to the Coordinator of the LSNA Essay Competition: Professor Laurence Carlin, Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh: carlin@uwosh.edu

Seventh Annual Conference of the Leibniz Society of North America

Leibniz Society of North America
Business Meeting
Yale University
19 October 2013

  • Approximately 15 LSNA members were in attendance, including five members of the executive committee (Martha Bolton, Ursula Goldenbaum, Jeffrey McDonough, Ohad Nachtomy, and Don Rutherford).
  • Leibniz Societies Presidents' Meeting in Hannover
    • On behalf of the Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Gesellschaft, Wenchao Li, Leibniz-Stiftungsprofessur der Leibniz Universität Hannover, convened a meeting of representatives of the international Leibniz societies in Hannover, May 31-June 1, 2013. The main item of business was the 10th International Leibniz Congress, to be held in Hanover on July 18–23, 2016. This is being planned as a major event, commemorating the 300th anniversary of Leibniz's death and the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Leibniz-Gesellschaft. Prof. Dr. Li emphasized the Gesellschaft's concern to have the international Leibniz societies and their members actively involved in the planning of the Congress and as participants in its programs. More information will be distributed to LSNA members as it becomes available.
    • A second item of business was the establishment of an annual prize for PhD dissertations on Leibniz. The first prizes will be awarded at the 2016 Congress, for those completing dissertations after August 1, 2011. The deadline for submissions will be December 31, 2015. More details about the prize will be announced soon.
  • Future LSNA Meetings
    • Ar the time of the meeting, only one future annual conference was confirmed: the 2016 meeting to be hosted by Greg Brown in Houston. The LSNA president is in discussion with other members whom it is hoped will be able to host annual conferences in 2014 and 2015. (Since the Yale meeting, conferences have been confirmed for 2014 at the University of South Florida and 2015 at Ohio State, Columbus.)
    • There was a lively discussion of the need to sustain the program of annual LSNA conferences and to ensure that they occurred in locations that reflected the geographical and institutional diversity of our members. To this end, a critical concern was the level of financial support that had to be guaranteed by the host institution. Details provided by the Yale organizers suggested that the required level of funding was less than some had anticipated and that it was realistic to hope that annual conferences could continue to be held in a variety of locales.
  • Thanks
    • On behalf of the Executive Committee, I would like to offer my hearty thanks to Julia Borcherding, Tom Feeney, and Matt Leisinger for arranging an excellent annual conference at Yale. The quality of papers was high, the discussion enriching, and the arrangements flawless. 

Respectfully submitted,

Donald Rutherford