The 13th Annual Meeting of the
Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition

University of San Franciso
California
September 8-10, 2022

Silence

Thursday, September 8

1:00 – 5.30 PM
Open House USF Rare Book Room Exhibition

“Silent Poetry”
(optional to drop in during this time)

5:30 PM
Fromm 125 - Maraschi Room
(Coffee/tea and some snacks served outside of Fromm Hall)

Welcome
Jeff Paris
(Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences)
Announcements from the conference organizers

5:45 – 7:30 PM
Fromm 125 - Maraschi Room

Plenary Opening Session
Moderator: Gerard Kuperus

The Aesthetics of Dancing in Silence
Opening performance by Jeca Rodríguez-Colón
(Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts)

Silence: The Unbearable Freshness of Being
Ada Jaarsma (Mount Royal University)
Noelle Oxenhandler (Sonoma State University)

The Silent Commons: Deep Listening to Turtle Island
Jason Wirth
(Seattle University)

7:30 PM diner on your own

Friday, September 9

All day:
“Silent Poetry”
Exhibition in the USF Rare Book Room

8:45 – 10:15 AM (Concurrent Panels)

Fromm 110 - Maier Room

Silent Forests
Moderator: Brian Treanor

Merleau-Ponty and the Silence of the Forest
Laura Pustarfi
(California Institute of Integral Studies)

Primeval Forests and the Silence of Desire: An Irigarayan Hermeneutics
Dan Bradley
(Gonzaga University)

Fromm 125 - Maraschi Room

Monstrous Sensibility and Beauty
Moderator: Josh Hayes

Accessing the Silent Conditions Through Monstrous Sensibility
Dominique Walmsley

Waiting: A Quiet Struggle Toward Beauty
David Macauley
(Penn State University)

Fromm 115 - Berman Room

Nothing and Other Silence
Moderator: Chris Lauer

Mushin and the Return from Nature to Society: Some Reflections on the Silent Importance of Plant Being in the “Ten Oxherding Pictures”
Geoffrey Asthon
(University of San Francisco)

10:30 AM – 12:00 (Concurrent Panels)

Fromm 110 - Maier Room Panel

Attending to Silence
Moderator: Brian Treanor

Listening-into-silence to a Silence beyond Silence
Mary Jean Larrabee
(Depaul University)

Attending The Silence of Stone(s)
Paul Harris
(Loyola Marymount University)

Fromm 125 - Maraschi Room

Dialectical Silence
Moderator: Elizabeth Sikes

Silence and the Dialectic of Magnanimity
Christopher Lauer
(University of Hawai‘i, Hilo)

Dialectics of Silence for a Time of Crisis: Thinking through the Movements between Silencing and Attentive Silence with Michel Serres and Simone Weil
Marjolein Oele
(University of San Francisco)

Fromm 115 - Berman Room

Cage’s Silence
Moderator: Josh Hayes

Actively Listening to Cage’s Silence: How to Draw One’s Attention to the Present
Adam Blair

Emptiness, Indeterminacy, Silence: Zen’s Influence on the Compositional Method of John Cage
Matthew Swanson (Misericordia University)
George Sprengelmeyer (Quinnipiac University)

12:00 - 1:15: Lunch (on your own)

1:15 – 2:45 PM (Concurrent Panels)

Fromm 110 - Maier Room

The Politics of Silence
Moderator: Ron Sundstrom (USF)

But Here I Cannot Be Silent—Eastern European Philosophers on Truth in the Age of Postmodern Propaganda
Julia Sushytska
(Occidental College)

Arendt’s Silent Treasure: Freedom from Bullshit
Justin Pack
(California State University—Stanislaus)

Fromm 125 - Maraschi Room

Allegory and Art Criticism
Moderator: Meera Nosek (USF)

The Silent Defiance of Allegory
Jennifer Rissler
(San Francisco Art Institute)

Silence in Art Criticism
Joseph Kassman
(University of California—Berkeley)

Fromm 115 - Berman Room

Trakl’s “A Winter Evening”
Moderator: Marjolein Oele

“The Pealing of Silence”: Gadamer on Georg Trakl’s Poem “A Winter Evening”
Ian Alexander Moore
(Loyola Marymount University)

A Luminous Silence: The Creative Solitude of John Haines’ Poetics
Josh Hayes
(Alvernia University)

3:00 – 4:30 PM (Concurrent Panels)

Fromm 110 - Maier Room

Scenes of the Voice and the Silence that is Not One
Moderator: Amanda Parris

The Silences of Subjection and the Voice of the Thing: Black Thinking’s Maternal Call in Fred Moten’s Heideggerian Poetics
Michael Eng

'So Much I Want to Say’: Silence, Visuality, and the of Writing Feminist Voices with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Kimberly Lamm

Fromm 125 - Maraschi Room

Sounds of Silence
Moderator: Benjamin Liu (LMU)

Acoustic Imprints: Sounds of Silence in Contemporary Art
Kate Farrington and Maria Patricia Tinajero
(Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts)

Fromm 115 - Berman Room:

Silent and Silencing Discourses
Moderator: Josh Hayes

Language and Silence: Poetic Discourse in Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Albert Saijo's Zensational Rhapsody
Tim Freeman
(University of Hawai‘i, Hilo)

The Trump Pandemic: How Did He Kill So Many Americans?
Natalie Nenadic
(University of Kentucky)

4:45 – 5:30 PM

Fromm 125 - Maraschi Room

Bob Mugerauer Memorial Session

With contributions from: Gerard Kuperus (USF) Meera Nosek (USF), Marjolein Oele (USF), Tanu Sankalia (USF), Elizabeth Sikes, Brian Treanor (LMU), and Jason Wirth (SU).

5.30 – 7:00 PM Dinner on your own

7:00 PM

Fromm 125 - Maraschi Room:

A Slice of Silence
Moderator: Jason Wirth
With Nathan Wirth, Joe Stroud and Peter Weltner

Saturday, September 10

8:30 AM
Bus leaves for the Star Route Farm in Bolinas

Note: Bring layers and something warm. Bolinas is a coastal town. It can be gorgeous t-shirt weather, or foggy and cold. We end the day for an outside reception and SF can be chilly!

10:15 – 11:45 AM (Concurrent Panels)

Druid Hall East

Wandering Silence
Moderator: Benjamin Liu

from Word, from Water, from Wander: Speaking from Silence
Benjamin Young
(University of South Florida)

Surprised Into Silence: A Proposal for Understanding More Clearly Aristotelian Contemplation
Erin Stackle
(Loyola Marymount University)

Druid Hall West

Knowing Without Naming It: Resounding Silence
Moderator: Jason Wirth

The Practice of Silence
Brian Treanor
(Loyola Marymount University)

Still, I Don’t Know: Paradoxes of Silence
Brian Schroeder
(Rochester Institute of Technology)

11:45 am – 2:00 PM
Lunch on your own & Explore Bolinas

2:15 PM
Bus pick up in Bolinas
(You can also walk back, about a 20 minute walk from the center of Bolinas)

2:30 – 4:00 PM (Concurrent Panels)

Druid Hall West

Practicing Silence
Moderator: Benjamin Liu

Speaking Lost Voices: Indigenous Stones and Other Loud Beings
Gerard Kuperus
(University of San Francisco)

The Aesthetics of Dancing in Silence
Jeca Rodríguez-Colón
(Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts)

Druid Hall East

Absent Silence
Moderator: Elizabeth Sikes

Silence: from absence to the right to silence, the secret and the blank
Susanne Schilz
(California State University—Stanislaus)

The poetic heart speaks only in silence: Sappho, Parmenides, and the Heart Sutra
Jessica Elbert Decker
(California State University—San Marcos)

4:15 – 5:45 PM (Concurrent Panels)

Druid Hall West

Moving into and out of Silence
Moderator: Marjolein Oele

The Silence of Memory
Elizabeth Sikes

There is Something to be Said for the Unspoken: Embodied Historicity and Trauma
Jerome Veith
(Seattle University)

Druid Hall East

Heideggerian Silences
Moderator: Josh Hayes

An Unheard-of Silence: Heidegger, the Monolith, the Monkeys and Us
Hakhamanesh Zangeneh
(California State University—Stanislaus)

The Silence of Nature: A Critical Engagement with Heidegger in View of Overcoming Anthropocentrism in the Ethics of Nature
Philipp Höfele
(Penn State University)

6:00 PM
Bus leaves for San Francisco

7:15 PM
Kalmanovitz Amphitheater

Final Reception
With pizza, drinks, and determining next year’s theme.

Food Guides

At USF:
- The Cafeteria in the University Center is the closest option
- The Market on Hayes and Cole has a Deli,
- Manitas Café on Hayes has El Salvadorian food
- Across the street is Hayes Pizza
- The Karma Café, also on Hayes and Ashbury has a variety of lunch option
- Papelote on Fulton has Mexican fare (at the moment only take out)
- Velo Rouge on Arguello a 10 minute walk, worth the great food. If it is too crowded: the Arguello Market next door has a Deli
- Haight Street (just over 10 minutes away) also has many options

Bolinas:
As you walk to Bolinas (about 20 minutes) on the left you see
- Bovida health food cafe
Small place with acai bowls, paninis, bagels, and salads
- Eleven
Across the street from Bovida. Focaccia and sandwiches
- Health food store
Tucked away behind the community center (left side) premade sandwiches and
salads
- Market (left side)
Deli
- Coast cafe (also left)
Variety of lunch options, including local fish
They also have a small pickup station just past the seating area
- Smileys Saloon (across the street)
Bar food

Bolinas has a museum and an art gallery, both worth a visit. The beach is another must.
You can get to the beach by following the main street, or you can take a right when you
enter town. It is certainly a town to lose track of time, so make sure not to miss the bus at
2.15 (it is about a 20 minute walk back from the center of Bolinas).

The PACT organization consists of Tim Freeman, Josh Hayes, Gerard Kuperus, Chris
Lauer, Marjolein Oele, Elizabeth Sikes, Brian Treanor, and Jason Wirth.

The PACT ombudsperson is Elizabeth Sikes.

PACT would like to thank Annabelle Lenderink, Brandon Marsh, Jeff Paris, and Savannah Perry.
The conference has been made possible by the generous support of the USF Fleishhacker Fund for Philosophy and the Star Route Farm Mini Grant.

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