2025 Conference: Experience and Nature
John Dewey's Experience & Nature: A Centennial Celebration
October 16-18, 2025 • Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
As 2025 marks the centennial of the publication of John Dewey’s monumental work, Experience and Nature, we are excited to announce a conference to celebrate this anniversary at the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Dewey is one of the most well-known philosophers, educators, and public intellectuals in American history, and recognition of his significance is on the rise. Dewey’s Experience and Nature provides the definitive statement of Dewey’s “empirical naturalism” (or “naturalistic humanism”), a metaphysical approach that is pro-science without being overly scientistic, undermines centuries of philosophical question-begging, and offers an alternative to theories that set humans against nature, society, and, ultimately, themselves. The work focuses on philosophical method, the metaphysics of nature, and the philosophy of mind; it also situates Dewey’s theories of knowledge, meaning, art, and value within its naturalist-humanist metaphysics. Though long an object of study among Dewey scholars, the book’s significance for contemporary thought in a variety of fields remains underappreciated. Experience and Nature has much to offer contemporary discussions in philosophy, history, aesthetic theory, psychology, and anthropology. This conference will bring together Dewey scholars and other contemporary thinkers both inspired by Dewey and working on relevant topics in Dewey’s spirit.
Keynote Addresses
Open to the Public! SIU Student Center Auditorium and on YouTube.
- Mark Johnson (University of Oregon), "The Greatest (Philosophical) Story Ever Told" - Thursday Oct 16 at 4:30pm (Livestream link TBD)
- Roberta Dreon (Ca' Foscari University of Venice), "Dewey’s Layered Conception of Experience: Hegelianizing James, Jamesianizing Hegel" - Friday Oct 17 at 9:00am (Livestream link TBD)
- Steven Fesmire (Radford University), "The Moving Unbalanced Balance of Things: Dewey’s Ecological Imagination and the Denotative Method" - Saturday Oct 18 at 11:30am (Livestream link TBD)
Additional Invited Speakers
- Vincent Colapietro, Univ. of Rhode Island
- Johnathan Flowers, CSU Northridge
- Bethany Henning, St. Scholastica
- Aleksandra Hernandez, University of Miami
- David Hildebrand, CU Denver
- Gioia Laura Iannilli, Università di Bologna
- Steven Levine, UMass Boston
- Nicola Ramazzotto, University of Pisa
- Teed Rockwell, Sonoma State
- Frank X. Ryan, Kent State
- Carl B. Sachs, Marymount University
- John Shook, Bowie State University
- Tibor Solymosi, Villanova University
- Seth Vannatta, Morgan State University
- Robin Zebrowski, Beloit College
Program
We begin Thursday morning, October 16th at 10:00am and conclude by 2:00pm on Saturday, October 18th.
Pre-Conference Events
But wait, there's more! For those arriving early, there are two pre-conference events of interest:
- Wednesday, October 15, 2025 at 12:00 Noon: Center for Dewey Studies Lunchtime Talk, Joseph Smith (SIU), "On the Black Hand Side: Cornel West and the Black Prophetic Critique of Pragmatism" (Flyer) (More info)
- Wednesday, October 15, 2025 at 6:30pm: Kimberly Ann Harris (University of Virginia), "The Truth of Race: The Philosophical Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois" at the American Institute for Philosophical and Cultural Thought. Pre-conference reception thereafter. (Website)
Conference venue
Travel Information
We are organizomg shuttle service from the STL airport on Wednesday, October 15th and back on Saturday, October 18th or Sunday, October 19th. You should have already been contacted about the shuttle, so please let us know if you haven't heard anything.
Conference Outing/Banquet
On Friday evening (October 17th), we will have an outing to Giant City State Park with hiking and educational opportunities, followed by a banquet dinner at the Giant City Lodge, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Tickets for these events are extra and were paid at registration; we may have some additional spots available. If so, you will be able to pay on-site. Let us know if you're interested ✉️.
Post-Conference Events
Not ready to head home? The following events of interest will be taking place after the conference concludes:
- All day Saturday and Sunday: Makanda Vulture Fest
- Saturday Evening at Oakland Nature Preserve, Carbondale: Pumpkin Glow 2025
- Sunday afternoon at Von Jakob Winery and Brewery: Ol' Moose
Organizing Committee
- Matthew J. Brown, Conference Chair - SIU
- John Capps, Rochester Institute of Technology
- Bethany Henning, College of St. Scholastica
- David Hildebrand, University of Colorado Denver
- Carl B. Sachs, Marymount University
- Andrii Leonov, SIU
Program Committee
- Thomas Alexander, Professor Emeritus, SIU
- Justin Bell, University of Houston-Victoria
- Paul Cherlin, Minneapolis College; Editor of Dewey Studies
- Johnathan Flowers, CSU Northridge
- Jessica Gonzales, Orange Coast College
- Céline Henne, University of Bologna
- Aleksandra Hernandez, University of Miami
- Steven Levine, UMass Boston
- P.D. Magnus, SUNY Albany
- William T. Myers, SAAP
- Nicola Ramazzotto, University of Pisa
- Teed Rockwell, Sonoma State
- Tibor Solymosi, Villanova University
- Seth Vannatta, Morgan State University
Thank you to our sponsors!
Funding provided by the American Philosophical Association and the SIU Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research.
(DEADLINE HAS PASSED) Call for Proposals / Call for Abstracts
Potential Topics
The goal of the conference is to celebrate the centennial of John Dewey’s Experience and Nature. We seek to encourage new interpretations and assessments of the legacy of Dewey’s Experience and Nature that are balanced, historically responsible, relevant, constructive, and critical. In the spirit of Dewey’s own philosophy, we also intend this conference to be forward-looking, asking both what we can learn from Dewey’s own theoretical philosophy and what resources exist in it that can be useful to the problems in contemporary philosophy, humanities, and the sciences, as well as to look into its relevance for the problems of human life and culture. Topics and guiding questions for talks, posters, and panel discussions thus might include, but are not limited to:
- Philosophical method, especially pragmatist, naturalistic, empirical, and cultural.
- What is the relationship between the project of Experience and Nature and the parts of Dewey’s philosophy that is applied, practical, interdisciplinary, and public-facing?
- Naturalistic metaphysics, liberal versus reductive/scientistic naturalisms, naturalism and empiricism, cultural naturalism.
- Philosophy of mind, especially pragmatic approaches to the mind-body problem, embodied and sociocultural theories of mind, the evolution of mind.
- How can Dewey's views of mind and consciousness inform contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, anthropology, and pedagogy?
- How can Dewey’s instrumental understanding of the human intellect, and his call for making social institutions more intelligent, inform the development and application of artificial intelligence and machine learning?
- Reassessing Dewey’s philosophy of meaning, language and communication in relation to experience, nature, and mind.
- Dewey’s account of cognition and science as a response to the complexity and precariousness of nature.
- How can Dewey's view of human embeddedness in nature affect our approaches to climate change, biodiversity, and animal rights?
- How should we rethink the relation of pragmatism to phenomenology in light of Experience and Nature?
- Naturalistic accounts of normativity, values, art, and criticism.
- How does Dewey’s critique of historically entrenched dualisms (e.g., mind/body, subject/object, fact/value, nature/nurture, individual/society) and his emphasis on pluralism support innovative research programs in cognitive science, biology, education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, philosophy, etc.?
- With a century's worth of hindsight, what developments and changes did Dewey fail to anticipate, and how can his approach be updated for the twenty-first century?
- Dewey and history. What is the place of Dewey’s Experience and Nature in the history of ideas? How should we evaluate Dewey’s philosophical-historical narratives in E&N?
- What critical light can be shed on Dewey’s ideas by contemporary posthumanist, biocentrist, and ecological thought that might revise and further his naturalistic project?
Talks that specifically cite and discuss Dewey’s Experience and Nature are encouraged, but talks on such topics that are broadly Deweyan in spirit are also welcome.
Proposal Formats
- Traditional Talks. Proposals for traditional talks consist of an abstract of up to 500 words, plus a bibliography of sources cited.
- Panel Discussions. Proposals for panel discussions should include a 500-word panel abstract describing the topic, as well as a 1–2-page description of the panel rationale, format, and the contribution of each panelist. Panels should not be loose collections of individual traditional talks; they should have a specific rationale for being presented together, with a format that matches the topic and rationale.
- Poster Presentations. The conference will include a reception and poster session where presenters will share their research with attendees as they walk around to view the posters and talk to the presenters. There are many useful guides for poster presentations for humanities and philosophy conferences online. Traditional talks which cannot find space on the main program will have the option to be considered for the poster session. Proposals for the poster session should consist of an abstract of up to 500 words, plus a bibliography of sources cited.