Plenary Bios

Plenary Speakers

Donald A. Landes is Professeur agrégé (Associate Professor), Faculté de philosophie, Université Laval, Québec (Québec). He translated Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, New York: Routledge, 2012. He is the author of Merleau-Ponty and the Paradoxes of Expression (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), which was awarded The Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize in Phenomenology for an outstanding book in phenomenology from the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, and The Merleau-Ponty Dictionary (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).

Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning is a Queen's National Scholar in Anishinaabe Language, Knowledge and Culture (ALKC), Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Queen's University. A member of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation and an interdisciplinary artist and scholar, she received a PhD from the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western University (2018), and holds graduate degrees in critical theory (MA, Western, 2005), and in contemporary art (MFA, Simon Fraser, 1997). She points to her early childhood grounding in her mother’s cultural lessons as her primary philosophical influence and source of creativity. Manning has wide-ranging interests in Anishinaabe ontology, critical theory, phenomenology, and art, investigating questions of Indigenous imaging practices, mnidoo interrelationality, epistemological sovereignty, and the debilitating impact of settler colonial logics.

Keynote Speakers

Dorothea Olkowski is Professor and former Chair of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; Director of Humanities; Director of the Cognitive Studies Program; and former Director of Women's Studies. She is author of more than one hundred articles and twelve books, including the just published Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception (Indiana U. Press, 2021), as well as Postmodern Philosophy and the Scientific Turn (Indiana U Press, 2012), The Universal (In the Realm of the Sensible) (Columbia U. Press, 2007), Feminist Phenomenology Futures (with Helen Fielding)(Indiana U. Press, 2017), Deleuze and Guattari's Philosophy of Freedom: Freedom's Refrains (with Eftechios Pirovolakis) (Routledge, 2019), and Deleuze at the End of the World: A South-American Perspective on the Sources of His Thought (with Juilán Ferreyra) (Rowman Littlefield, 2020).

Anishinaabe Elder Mona Stonefish (Bear Clan) is a Doctor of Traditional Medicine and an international activist for peace, Indigenous, women’s, and disability rights. She is a former Senator of the Anishinaabemowin Teg - language preservation, a Keeper of Wisdom, and a Grandmother Water Walker. Stonefish is also a member of the Native American Museum of Washington D.C., a member of the Art Gallery of Windsor Board of Trustees, a traditional dancer, and recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2013). She was honoured with the prestigious Clark Award for her contributions as an advocate focused on the role of human rights, restorative justice and education, and as an advisor to Windsor Law on Indigenous matters (University of Windsor, 2016). She was also recognized with the 2017 Journey Toward Success Visionary Award. Stonefish was also 1 of 6 o-curator-artists to receive the Lieutenant Governor's Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation, for the exhibition, “Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario,” Guelph Civic Museum, 02/20/2020. In their extensive travels, she and her granddaughter Sky Stonefish support and teach one another, confront discrimination and fight to tear down barriers together.

Gail Weiss is Professor of Philosophy at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She is General Secretary of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle and serves as Executive Co- Director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP). She is the author of Refiguring the Ordinary (Indiana U. Press, 2008) and Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality (Routledge 1999). She co-edited 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology (co- edited with Ann V. Murphy and Gayle Salamon) (Northwestern U. Press, 2020). Her current monograph, Existential Ambiguities: Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty, is under contract with Indiana University Press. Weiss has also edited several volumes focused on issues of embodiment, including: Intertwinings: Interdisciplinary Encounters with Merleau-Ponty (SUNY 2008), and Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with Dorothea Olkowski (Penn State Press 2006).

Shiloh Whitney is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. Her research lies at the intersection of feminist philosophy, 20th century French philosophy, and phenomenology. Her current projects bring the work of French thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Kristeva, Fanon, and Bergson into dialogue with issues and thinkers of the affective turn, theorizing affect and its role in producing embodied differences. Her work can be found in journals such as Hypatia, Chiasmi International, and PhaenEx.