2026 SRS Conference Program

Political Community and Democratic Institutions

1. The experience of the political in education: the Hermeneutics of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Critical PedagogyCharles Sharp · California State University FullertonIn-person presenter
2. Narrating Humanity: Ricoeur’s Implied Re-Emplotment of HistoryBruce Novak · The Foundation for Ethics and MeaningIn-person presenter
3. In the Shadow of the Political: The Citizen and the Stranger in Ricœur's Political AnthropologyFélix Gauthier-Mamaril · University of OttawaOnline presenter
4. A theory of sociogenic hermeneutics: legal texts, material contexts, and democratic constitutionsReese Faust · Howard UniversityOnline presenter

Moderator: Héctor Acero Ferrer

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Care and Vulnerability in the Ethics of Solicitude

1. Ricoeur and Enactivism on the Relation between Patient and Healthcare ProviderGeoffrey Dierckxsens · Institute of Philosophy: Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS)In-person presenter
2. Ricoeur on Respect and Disability: A Resource for Understanding the Relation Between Desire and PainElizabeth Hill · Colby CollegeIn-person presenter
3. The Capable Human Being in Digital Psychiatry: Narrative Self-Guidance and the Refiguration of Human Self-UnderstandingMonica Ross · University of California, BerkeleyIn-person presenter
4. Solicitude: A Ricoeurian Response to “Skeptimentality” and the Ugly FeelingsJames Sisson · Middle Georgia State UniversityIn-person presenter

Moderator: Roger Savage

Panel

1. What do you Mean?: Re-engaging with Ricoeur’s “Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning” after fifty yearsJames Moore, Joseph EdelheitOnline presenter

Moderator: Michael Johnson

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Graduate Students Session 1 – Narrative Identity and the Mediation of Experience

1. The Story That Makes the Self: Augustine, Ricœur, and Narrative IdentityJeronimo Ayesta · Boston CollegeIn-person presenter
2. “Can This Be the Messiah”: The Fragility of the Samaritan Woman’s Witness in John 4Aileen Orillaza · Asian Theological SeminaryIn-person presenter
3. Selfhood Under Mediation: Ricoeur's Hermeneutics of the Capable Self in the Age of Digital Technologiesİbrahim Lütfi Oruçoğlu · Koç UniversityIn-person presenter

Moderator: Lily Kerhulas

Narrative Identity and Ethical Selfhood

1. Refiguring the Human: Narrative Identity and Ethical Selfhood Beyond Humanism and PosthumanismSara Fernandes · Universidade Católica PortuguesaOnline presenter
2. Refiguring Fate via the Process of Narrating in TimeCristal Huang · Soochow University, TaiwanIn-person presenter

Moderator: Charles Sharp

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Panel

1. Capable in Suffering: Explorations at the Margins of Ricoeur’s ThoughtChrisanttus Bemeri, Paul Fitzgerald, Monica Marcelli-Chu, Annie Rovzar, Stephen Szolosi · Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara UniversityIn-person presenter

Moderator: George Taylor

Philosophical Anthropology and the Idea of Humanity

1. The Task of Humanity as a Regulative Idea in RicoeurGeorge Taylor · University of PittsburghIn-person presenter
2. Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophical Anthropology and the Idea of HumanityRoger Savage · UCLAIn-person presenter
3. Antigone’s Dilemma and the Demand for Identity: Character and/or Selfhood and the Trauma of BecomingMichael Deckard · Lenoir-Rhyne UniversityIn-person presenter

Moderator: Fernando Nascimento

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Graduate Students Session 2 – The Ethics of Community and Social Import of Imagination

1. The Future of Family Medicine: AI, Just Institutions, and the Changing Ecology of CarePatrick Bloniasz · Boston UniversityIn-person presenter
2. Ricoeur and the Refiguration of Environmental ResponsibilityLily Kerhulas · Fordham UniversityIn-person presenter
3. Refiguring the Human Community: Ricoeur, Walsh, and Acosta in DialogueHéctor Acero Ferrer · Institute for Christian StudiesIn-person presenter

Moderator: Maria Gallego

Religious Imagination and Theological Anthropology

1. The Indestructible Symbol: Imagining the Imago Dei in Our Technological AgeBrian Gregor · California State University Dominguez HillsIn-person presenter
2. Paul Ricoeur’s Jesuitical Thinking and his Religious ImaginationSteven Mailloux · Loyola Marymount University; UC IrvineOnline presenter
3. Theological Anthropology within Philosophy: Ricoeur’s Conception of ManYun-Ping SUN · National Central University, TaiwanIn-person presenter
4. Ricoeur’s Interpretation of Jaspers’s “Cipher of Transcendence”Giovanni Pietro Basile · Boston CollegeIn-person presenter

Moderator: Hille Haker

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Language and the Ethics of Interpretation

1. Masters of Metaphor: Ricœur on AristotleChristopher Genovesi · Psycholinguistics & Cognition Lab (Concordia University)Online presenter
2. Refiguring the Interview Subject: Participant Narratives and the Ethics of Fixing Speech as TextNathan Thomas · University College LondonIn-person presenter
3. Making All Things New: Contemplating the Human in HermeneuticsMichele Petersen · St. Ambrose UniversityIn-person presenter
4. In between hybris and wisdom of love: the spectrum of ipseityCristina Bucur · Independent ScholarIn-person presenter

Moderator: Patrick Bloniasz

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Psychoanalysis and Affectivity in the Fragile Self

1. Symbiosis and ‘Primary Affirmation’: Ricoeur on Freud with Honneth and WinnicottMatthew Brown · Texas Woman’s UniversityIn-person presenter
2. Sublimation, Forgiveness, and the Refiguration of the Human: Ricoeur, Psychoanalysis, and the Fragile Capable SelfRené Dentz · Pontifical Catholic University of Minas GeraisOnline presenter
3. The Split of Affectivity: Auto-Affection, Morality, and Conscience in Ricoeur’s Oneself as AnotherMichael Johnson · Concordia CollegeIn-person presenter

Moderator: Michael Deckard

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Graduate Students Session 3 – Fallibility, Forgiveness, and Affectivity in Ethical Selfhood

1. Refiguring the Wounded Self: Fallibility, Power, and the Limits of Ricœur’s Philosophical AnthropologyMartina Lodi · Institut Catholique de ParisIn-person presenter
2. Radical Passivity Before the Other or Mutual Recognition: Evaluating Levinas and Ricoeur on Selfhood and EthicsNicholas Korchowsky · Marquette UniversityOnline presenter
3. Affectivity, Temporality, and Political Agency: A Ricoeurian InterpretationOnur Erdal Kökerer · Duquesne UniversityOnline presenter

Moderator: Jeronimo Ayesta

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Artificial Intelligence and Human Moral Agency

1. Missing Humanity: A Ricoeurian Critique of Care RobotsAnya Workman, Fernando Nascimento · Bowdoin CollegeIn-person presenter
2. Capable AI Agents and Human Moral Agents. An Inquiry with Ricoeur's Concept of the Moral Self and Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the SunHille Haker · Loyola University ChicagoIn-person presenter
3. Refiguring the Human Before the Machine: Ricoeur, Narrative Identity, and Large Language ModelsCharles Hawkins · A. C. Marble School for Theological Formation, Episcopal Dioceses of Mississippi and Louisiana; Iona Collaborative of the Seminary of the SouthwestOnline presenter

Moderator: Brian Gregor

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Recognition and the Horizons of the Capable Self

1. From Refiguration to Recognition: Rethinking the “Re-” of the Fallible and Capable Human in RicoeurHsueh-i Chen · National Taiwan Normal UniversityIn-person presenter
2. Refiguring the (More-Than-)Human: The Self, Recognition, and Weird Ecological OthersNathan Bell · Dallas CollegeOnline presenter
3. World-Sharing: Toward a Ricoeurian Phenomenology of the Capable AnimalSamuel Underwood · Colby CollegeIn-person presenter

Moderator: Michele Petersen

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French Language Session – Refigurer le soi entre imagination et vulnérabilité

1. Imagination, Métaphore et Récit comme Ressources pour Refigurer l’humain: Guimarães Rosa à la lumière de Paul RicoeurCandice Carvalho · Independent ScholarIn-person presenter
2. Refigurer la vulnérabilité : D’une anthropologie de la déficience à une anthropologie de la relationCyndie Sautereau · Cégep Limoilou, QuébecOnline presenter
3. « Trompeur un jour, trompeur toujours » ? Vers une refiguration de l'homme coupable par l'anthropologie ricœuriennePaloma Claire Figueroa · McGill UniversityIn-person presenter

Moderator: Geoffrey Dierckxsens

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Graduate Students Session 4 – Creativity and the Horizons of Productive Imagination

1. The Ethical Nowhere: Toward a Fifth Domain of Productive Imagination in Paul Ricoeur’s Theory of ImaginationMaria Gallego · Boston CollegeIn-person presenter
2. On the Aesthetic Path of Ricoeurian Theory on Creativity: Le Corbusier’s Couvent de La TouretteVincent Yuxin Qiu · McGill UniversityOnline presenter
3. Imagining Social CategoriesSam Kahn · UC Santa CruzIn-person presenter
4. The Irony of Judgement: The Hermeneutics of Lyric, Conversion, and the Recurrence of (Natural) History in the Poetry of Tom ClarkBowie Hagan · UC Santa BarbaraIn-person presenter

Moderator: Hsueh-i Chen

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