Deniz Durmus Wins Prize for Best Paper

Deniz Durmus, PhD candidate in Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Penn State, recently was awarded a prize for Best Beauvoir Paper by a Graduate Student at the upcoming Diverse Lineages of Existentialism conference. Her paper, entitled “The Congruence between Beauvoir and Butler’s Ethics,” was selected through anonymous review, and the award will be presented at the Diverse Lineages of Existentialism conference, to be held in St. Louis, Missouri, June 19-21, 2014.

Deniz’s paper reclaims existentialist ethics and specifically the version developed by Simone de Beauvoir as relevant and informing contemporary accounts of ethics in the continental philosophical canon. Focusing on some basic ethical questions concerning vulnerability, violence, and oppression in Butler’s late writings which Beauvoir already accentuates, Deniz show that in addition to the much emphasized poststructuralist elements, there are also existentialist elements in Butler’s late work. Overall, she argues that the possibilities of existentialist ethics have not been exhausted yet, and they should be elaborated further.

Congratulations Deniz!