2027 APA Central: NASSP CFAs (Sept. 10, 2026 Deadline)

Announcing two Calls for Abstracts for NASSP Group Sessions
at the Central APA Feb. 24-27, 2027, in Denver, Colorado!

NONIDEAL PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

NORTH AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY CENTRAL APA GROUP SESSION, FEB. 24-27, 2027, DENVER, CO

Much of the work in professional ethics — including medical, business, engineering, and pedagogical ethics — proceeds on assumptions familiar from ideal theory: namely, that the agent is a decisionmaker who can set policy or treatment decisions; that those decisions can be reliably implemented by teams of people who will comply and competently execute; that the social and institutional background for the decision is one of basic stability, minimally adequate funding, and so on. But between external stressors and internal structures, our institutions are often not like this.

Conscience clauses allow pharmacists and others to refuse to carry out decisions. Budgets get increasingly constrained and ideologically directive. Overlapping social and political problems, such as criminalization, immigration enforcement, addiction, and violence interfere with the lives of coworkers and clients/patients/students. Internal to organizations, power structures and social forces might generate dilemmas or exert social pressure to act in one way rather than another. Are there general principles or distinctive virtues for professional ethics in these and other nonideal contexts, or is moral particularism or casuistry the only response? Is there a moral philosophy of creating and seizing opportunities for institutional transformation? Does the ideal/nonideal distinction generate a useful frame for these questions?

Abstracts are invited for a Central APA group session of the North American Society for Social Philosophy, exploring nonideal professional ethics, viewing professionals’ agency (and opportunities for agency) as shaped and constrained by these and other factors, which are usually assumed away.

Abstracts of 300-400 words should be submitted in the form of an email attachment prepared for anonymous review, no later than September 10. Please email the abstract to both Roksana Alavi ([email protected]) and Avery Kolers ([email protected]). Submission of an abstract constitutes a commitment to register for the conference and attend the session in person if your paper is selected for presentation.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: POLITICS OF DELIGHT: PLAYFULNESS, JOY AND THE PRACTICE OF RESISTANCE

NORTH AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY CENTRAL APA GROUP SESSION, FEB. 24-27, 2027, DENVER, CO

Resistance is usually theorized through negation — as refusal, opposition, struggle against domination. In this session, we ask a different question: how can playfulness and joy themselves constitute resistance, not merely relief from the work of resisting? We invite papers that take joy and playfulness seriously as a philosophical and political category, rather than as an afterthought to more “serious” forms of critique. We are especially interested in work that risks the harder question: does naming play as resistance quietly instrumentalize it, stripping away the very non-instrumentality that makes it play? Papers need not resolve this tension but should engage it.

Suggested Tracks

Joy as epistemic and affective resistance — pleasure, delight, and the disruption of systems that depend on exhaustion or numbness
Play, freedom, and non-instrumentality — Schiller, Huizinga, Gadamer, and the space (real or illusory) that play carves out from domination
Humor, satire, and the carnivalesque — Bakhtin, political comedy, laughter as destabilization
Fugitivity and the undercommons — Black study, refusal, and joy that does not seek recognition from what it evades
Rest, leisure, and the right not to produce — critiques of productivity culture and joy as resistance to capitalist time discipline
Wonder, childhood, and the philosophy of play — what adults lose access to, and whether it can be reclaimed

We invite abstracts for a NASSP panel at the 2027 Central APA (Denver, CO: February 24-27) on the theme of “Politics of Delight: Playfulness, Joy, and the Practice of Resistance.” Please send a title and a 300-400-word abstract as an email attachment and prepared for anonymous review, to: Roksana Alavi ([email protected]) and Avery Kolers ([email protected]) no later than September 10, 2026.