ACLA Virtual Conference 2025 - Lost in Austin: Critical Inheritances of a Philosophical Maverick
We are proposing an ACLA Seminar to convene, for the first time, the interdisciplinary community of scholars working on or in the spirit of J.L. Austin (1911–1960). Though widely, albeit often begrudgingly, acknowledged as an important twentieth-century philosopher, Austin is unique among this rarified class of thinkers in several unfortunate ways: he is the progenitor of no noteworthy schools, there are no chaired positions named for him, and until recently there were no collections of essays about his work and even fewer conferences about his legacy. Yet, many scholars owe a debt to Austin, and there have been signs recently of a more pronounced reemergence of interest in him.