The American Society for Aesthetics is pleased to announce that it has funded a graduate student philosophy conference for $3,500.

This conference will be held at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona on November 22-23, 2025. 

(Please note that this is a change from the originally advertised dates of November 21-22, 2025.)

Conference Information

SWGAC is co-organized by ASA graduate student members Kyle Kirby, Ella LaRose, and Lenin Vazquez-Toledo, with faculty advising by Hannah Kim and Jonathan Weinberg.

The full conference program is now available HERE.

Questions? Contact SWGraduateAesthetics@gmail.com.

For full details, up-to-date information, and registration, visit the conference website:

Southwest Graduate Aesthetics Conference.

Keynote speakers

Angela Sun (Washington and Lee University) on "Rewatching"

This presentation draws on insights from the philosophy of perception to provide an account of the value of rewatching movies. I argue that when we rewatch a movie, our attention is freed up to engage its non-narrative elements in a way that immerses us more deeply in the world of the movie. I conclude by showing how rewatching movies can help us practice deploying attention more mindfully and meaningfully in our everyday lives.

Roy Cook (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)  on "The Doubly Indeterministic Logic of Fiction"

In this presentation we identify two distinct modes of fictional indeterminacy. In some cases a proposition P can be indeterminate in a fiction F (i.e., P is neither true nor false in F) where the corresponding instance of excluded middle: P v ~ P is true in F. In other cases a proposition P can be indeterminate in a fiction F (i.e., P is neither true nor false in F) where the corresponding instance of excluded middle also fails to be true in F and fails to be false in F. After clearly setting up the logical framework required to understand this phenomenon and providing examples of each mode of fictional indeterminacy, we conclude by noting some challenges this phenomenon raises for constructing a single unified semantics for fiction.

Deadline for abstract submissions: August 31, 2025 (now closed)

CFP (.pdf)