Graduate Student Workshop: Mercedes Lopez Mateo
Please join us over Zoom to discuss the current Ph.D. work of Maria de las Mercedes Lopez Mateo .
To attend this event, please register below. The AWS will send out a zoom invitation to all members in the days leading up to the event including the chapter to read beforehand. The event itself will be a friendly discussion of Mercedes’ work and we invite you to bring your thoughts, ideas, and constructive critiques of the chapter.
Rootedness Beyond Progress: Simone Weil’s Conception of the Future
In The Need for Roots, Simone Weil clearly specifies that a human being has roots by virtue of their participation in a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future. While there is an abundant body of literature—both primary and secondary—on Weil’s understanding of the past (for instance, her relationship to culture, tradition, or Greece), this is not the case with regard to the future, which she seems to address primarily in terms of a critique of progress.
How, then, are we to understand what it means to be rooted in the future, when much of the philosophy of the last centuries has been able to pose this question only in terms of progress? This chapter proposes an interpretation of the Weilian definition of the future and argues that it conceals ethical and political perspectives that ultimately lead back to Aristotelian philosophy.
Mercedes López is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, supported by a fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Universities. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona), the Autonomous University of Madrid, and Carlos III University of Madrid. She also holds a master’s degree in Philosophical Criticism and Argumentation, as well as a master’s degree in Classical Studies. Her PhD dissertation focuses on the concept of rootedness in Simone Weil and her reception of classical literature and ancient political philosophy. The text presented here is part of her PhD dissertation, which she is currently writing.
Her most recent publications include a book on the Ethics of Care, Arqueología de los cuidados (Alianza Editorial, 2025); a monograph on Simone Weil (Libros de Filosofía & Co., 2023); and a new introduction to Plato’s Parmenides (Gredos, 2025), as well as peer-reviewed articles in several specialized journals in the fields of Philosophy and Classical Studies.
Registration will close by the end of the day on Tuesday February 10.
Reading Group 4: Weil and Politics
Reading Group Four: Weil and Politics
Francisco de Goya. The Third of May 1808, 1814. Oil on canvas, 266 cm × 345 cm (105 in × 136 in). Museo del Prado, Madrid.
“On the Abolition of all Political Parties” with Scott Ritner
Sessions will be 1.5 hours in length, 45 minutes for Dr. Ritner to unpack his reading of the text and 45 minutes for general questions, answers, comments, and ideas. These sessions will be held on zoom and are open to all AWS members, so if you or anyone you know is interested in participating, please join the AWS. The sessions will be recorded, slightly edited, and made available to the public via Youtube. More details to follow.
Scott B. Ritner teaches Political Theory at University of Colorado Boulder. He earned his PhD from The New School for Social Research in 2018. Scott's research focuses on 20th and 21st Century Critical Social Theory, Race & Ethnic Politics, fascism and antifascism, and Popular Culture. His book manuscript, Revolutionary Pessimism, The Political Thought of Simone Weil is under advance contract with Stanford University Press. He is the author of numerous articles and chapters on Weil's political thought. When he is not researching or writing, you can (try to) find him in the mountains.
Dr. Ritner will be referencing the following translation/ edition: Simone Weil, On the Abolition of all Political Parties. Translated by Simon Leys. New York: New York Review of Books, 2013. If possible, please read this version for ease of reference.
Remember to register by no later than March 9 to secure your spot. A zoom link will be sent the day before the event.
2026 Colloquy at Texas A&M University
The call for papers has been extended to December 15. Please email us your abstract on this timely theme of Weil, Roots, Exile, and Migration or other Weil-related papers.
If you will not be able to attend in-person, we will have a special on-line presentation option and you will be able to watch the other presenters at the conference virtually.
Reading Group 3: Weil and God
Reading Group Three: Weil and God
“Forms of the Implicit Love of God” with Kate Lawson
Sessions will be 1.5 hours in length, 45 minutes for Dr. Lawson to unpack her reading of the text and 45 minutes for general questions, answers, comments, and ideas. These sessions will be held on zoom and are open to all AWS members, so if you or anyone you know is interested in participating, please join the AWS. The sessions will be recorded, edited, and made available to the public via Youtube.
Kathryn Lawson is a Faculty Fellow at King’s University College in Halifax in the first year program, department of humanities. She received her PhD from Queen’s University in Kingston, ON, where she worked as a lecturer and teaching assistant in the department of philosophy. She has worked as a lecturer at Carleton University, and Heritage CEGEP college. Kate’s book Ecological Ethics and the Philosophy of Simone Weil: Decreation for the Anthropocene was published with Routledge’s Environmental Ethics series (2024). The book examines the philosophy of Simone Weil alongside the ecological ethics of the Anthropocene. Additionally, she acted as co-editor and contributor to a collection on the political philosophy of Weil and Hannah Arendt with Bloomsbury (2024). She has also published a number of chapters and peer reviewed articles on thinkers including Weil, Arendt, Jean Luc Marion, Edith Stein, Richard Kearney, and Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Dr. Lawson will be referencing the following translation of the text, which we recommend all participants use for ease of reference: Simone Weil, “Forms of the Implicit Love of God,” in Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009) : 83-142.
This event has passed but you are welcome to watch the video below and please consider joining us for future events.
Reading Group 2: Weil and Literature
Reading Group Two: Weil and Literature
John Collier. Clytemnestra after the Murder (1882). Oil on canvas, 239 × 174 cm (94 × 69 in). Guildhall Art Gallery, London.
“The Iliad or Poem of Force” with Cynthia Wallace
Sessions will be 1.5 hours in length, 45 minutes for Dr. Wallace to unpack her reading of the text and 45 minutes for general questions, answers, comments, and ideas. These sessions will be held on zoom and are open to all AWS members, so if you or anyone you know is interested in participating, please join the AWS. The sessions will be recorded, edited, and made available to the public via Youtube.
Dr. Wallace will be referencing the following translation of the text, which we recommend all participants use for ease of reference: “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force,” trans. Mary McCarthy (Chicago Review; Jan 1, 1965).
Cynthia R. Wallace is Associate Professor of English at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, where she also directs the Irene and Doug Schmeiser Centre for Faith, Reason, Peace, and Justice. Her research and teaching focus on the intersections of contemporary women’s writing, religion, and ethics. She is author of the books Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering (Columbia UP, 2016) and The Literary Afterlives of Simone Weil: Feminism, Justice, and the Challenge of Religion (Columbia UP, 2024). Her writing on Weil has also appeared or is forthcoming in Religion and Literature, Attention, the Kenyon Review, the Ploughshares blog, Commonweal, the Christian Century, and The Routledge Companion to Simone Weil.
This event has passed but you are welcome to watch the video below and please consider joining us for future events.
2025 Colloquy at Marquette University
The theme of this year’s colloquy – Simone Weil: Philosopher, Activist, and Mystic – represents central aspects of a person who oriented her philosophical exercise as an act of the intellectual spirit encountering others in their suffering reality and, from there, moving beyond history to the mystical manifestation of a crucified love.
Grad Student Workshop: Emily Griffiths
Please join us over Zoom to discuss the PhD work of Emily Griffiths and her chapter “Simone Weil’s Philosophical Medievalism”.