Down the Line

Coming Events

I’ll be speaking on “The Specter of Slavery in Aristotle’s Mixed Regimes and the City in Prayer,” at the History of Philosophy Society in Waco, TX at the end of April 2022.

I’ll be speaking on a panel on “Evental Errors: Nature in Badiou’s Scientific Event and Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun,” at the Association for Philosophy and Literature in Banff, Canada in May 2022.

I’ll be speaking about my new book project at the Feminism and Classics 2020 conference (now postponed until May 2022) in Winston-Salem.

I’m speaking on a panel on the work of Walter Brogan, founding member of the Ancient Philosophy Society, at the APS satellite meeting of SPEP in College Station, TX in October 2022.

Recent Past Events

2021

Presented paper on “The Art of Measure, Hedonism, and Akrasia in Plato’s Protagoras” at the Ancient Philosophy Society’s June 2021 meeting online.

2020

Author Meets Critics panel on Serene Khader’s book, Decolonizing Univerisalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic, sponsored by the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World at the Eastern APA meeting in January 2020.

Spoke on “The Specter of Slavery in Aristotle’s Mixed Regimes and the City in Prayer,” at a panel on Political Dysfunction at the Central APA in February 2020.

2019

I presented on Plato’s Republic on November 14 at Boston College at 7:30 PM in the Boston Area Colloquium on Ancient Philosophy (BACAP) 2019-20 series.

I presented on my new book at Boston University on November 15 in their ancient philosophy workshop. I presented a lecture on the book at the College of Wooster on February 7 and Denison University on February 8. The lecture was called, “The Matter of Sexual Difference in Aristotle’s Biology.” Students of College of Wooster interviewed me for their undergraduate journal, which they are publishing soon.

I was a critic on an Author Meets Critics panel at SPEP in Pittsburgh for Erin Tarver’s book, The I in Team: Sports Fandom and the Reproduction of Identity (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

2018

I spoke on the continued problems of online harassment in philosophy at SPEP in October.

In March I began work as the editor of the Women in Philosophy series at the American Philosophical Association blog. Posts for series go up every other Wednesday at 3 pm Eastern. If you want to pitch an idea for the blog, email me at trotta@wabash.edu

I recently returned from a month in Europe: a week in Greece with my GLCA Ancient Philosophy collaborators and a colleague at the American College of Greece in early July (see here and here and here) and then to the Collegium Phaenomenologicum for a week talking about anthrôpos in Aristotle with the esteemed Claudia Baracchi.

In June, I participated in the third annual GLCA W/G/S Institute, this time in Cincinnati, where I was working with a colleague on developing a collaborative Feminist Philosophies course. I wrote some of my thoughts about it on Facebook.

I was happy with the positive reception to my paper that is part of my recently under review book manuscript at the Ancient Philosophy Society at Emory University in Atlanta, GA on April 27, 2018 on “The Material Contribution to Form in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals.”

I gave the keynote at Ball State’s Conference for Pre-College Philosophy on April 16 on “Reading Plato’s Cave in the Cave” to a group of high school students, as well as to the college students organizing the event. Was so impressed by the thoughtful and relevant questions from the high school students. The kids are alright.

I was the invited Speaker for the induction ceremony for Phi Sigma Tau, the International Honor Society in Philosophy, at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock on April 13. I found out two hours after I landed that the event was canceled due to flooding, but we rescheduled via video conference for the following week.

On March 1, 2018, I was honored to be invited to present a chapel talk at Wabash on “Nasty Snake-Filled Heads and the Workings of Ideology.” Watch it here!

2017

I presented a paper on polytheism and democracy along the lines of my post on “Philosophy and Monotheism, Politics and Democracy” at SPEP in Memphis on October 21, 2017 that resulted in one of my favorite conference tweets from a member of the audience.

In May 2017, I participated in the GLCA Women’s/ Gender/ Sexuality Studies Collaborative Initiative workshop on transnational feminisms.

I was happy to attend “Ancients, Moderns and Postmoderns: A Conference in Honor of Catherine Zuckert,” on the occasion of her retirement in May 2017.

2016

I attended the Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics and Science Studies conference at Notre Dame from October 2-4, 2016.

On October 29, 2016 at 11:15 AM, I presented on, “Is Vital Heat in Aristotle an Elemental Force?” at the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy in New York City.

I presented the Annual Rukavina Lecture in Philosophy at Gonzaga University on October 6, 2016 at 4:30 PM on “The Physics and Metaphysics of Sexual Difference in Aristotle’s Biology.”

I spoke at Indiana University’s Consortium for the Study of Religion, Ethics and Society conference on “Wonder and the Natural World,” June 20-23, 2016 on “Nature: A Political Concept.”

On April 11, I presented at the Humanities Colloquium at Wabash College on my current book project, “Why Read Aristotle’s Biology?”  One of the great things about teaching at a liberal arts college is getting feedback from biologists and artists and theologians that challenges and refines my thinking in productive ways, like from an artist that artists in the last seventy-five years have been thinking about how to stop talking about form and how difficult that is.

The Indiana Philosophy Association Research Workshop met at Wabash on April 9, 2016.  I was happy to host this day-long single-session discussion.  Papers were distributed in advance and speakers had twenty minutes to present and thirty-five minutes (!) for Q&A.  We plan to hold the workshop every spring, with a conference every fall.  The workshop structure allowed for real conversation and friendship to develop.

On March 21, 2016 at 2 PM, I spoke at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte on my work on different models of sex and form and matter in Aristotle – a version of the first chapter of my current book project.

I offered comments at an Author Meets Critics panel at philoSophia on Robin James’ book, Resilience, and Melancholy.

2015

I presented a portion of work that is part of my new book project on Aristotle’s biology at the Ancient Philosophy Society at the Carnegie Center at the University of Kentucky. Here’s a short and sweet blogpost version of my paper, “Vital Heat’s Role in Sexual Difference in Aristotle’s Biology.”

I presented my paper, “‘Not Slavery, But Salvation’: Constitution and Government in Aristotle’s Politics,” at the Pacific meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Vancouver on April 2, 2015, on a panel sponsored by the Society for Ancient Greek philosophy.

A book panel on my book at Antioch College with panelists Kevin Miles of Earlham College and Lewis Trelawny-Cassity of Antioch was sponsored by the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s Ancient Philosophy Teaching and Research Collaborative Initiative.

2014

I presented on “Politics, Nature, Action: An Arendtian Aristotle Against Arendt’s Aristotle,” at the American Political Science Association in August 2014. The panel was co-sponsored by the Society for Greek Political Thought.

On March 24, 2014, I spoke at the Wabash Humanities Colloquium.  My talk was entitled, “Deliberation Gone Wild: An Aristotelian Response to the Foucaultian Critique.”  Addressing Foucault’s criticism of Habermas that deliberative democracy fails because structures of power intervene to prevent everyone with a stake in the deliberation from being involved even to the point where those in power decide what it means to be reasonable or rational, I argue that Aristotle’s conception of deliberation and political life keeps the question of what it means to be rational, what it means to live well, and who should be a part of the community as a constant concern that remains before the community and hence keeps it in practice, open.  Good conversation especially questions about the cultural sense of this power as articulated in Aristotle’s sense of ethos were raised.

On March 16, 2014, I gave the keynote lecture at the Pennsylvania Circle for Ancient Philosophy which met at Villanova University (Storify curated by Chris Long). #PCAP14 I gave an earlier version of this talk at the University of South Florida in January.

On March 12, 2014, I spoke at Rowan University in South Jersey, having been invited by my good friend Ed Kazarian.  I spoke on a project I’ve been working on to think of the public philosopher in Aristotle.  The talk was called, “Not Slavery, But Salvation: Aristotle and the Big vs. Small Government Dilemma.”

I used the research funds from my Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professorship to travel to Greece in 2014 and 2015.  I discussed blogging the first trip at Wabash’s annual presentation of faculty research, the Ides of August, on August 22, 2014, which was written up by Wabash FYI.