THE AMERICAN WEIL SOCIETY
May 27, 2010
To the Members of the Society,
I am happy to report a successful Thirtieth annual colloquy at Boston College last month. Fifteen wide ranging papers were presented, and the colloquy ended with a first for us: a banquet that was a dinner cruise in Boston Harbor. All owe sincere thanks to Tomeu Estelrich for his and Boston College’s wonderful hospitality. For members receiving this letter, I have appended a list of papers, and usually an e-mail of the author so that interested members, if they wish, may contact the author and request a copy of the paper.
At the annual business meeting it was decided to accept Inese Radzin’s invitation to hold next year’s colloquy in Berkeley at the Pacific School of Religion. Upon her suggestion that we concentrate on Weil’s political and social thought, which we have not taken up in some time, the assembled members agreed to a general theme of Weil and politics and then chose as the specific title, “Simone Weil: Politics and Anti-Politics.” By this, members are invited to think about criticisms of Weil’s political thought that it is not really political, but also responses that could be made along the lines of: “If that’s politics, then maybe we’d better try something else in living together.” Papers are invited on this topic. As usual, all timely proposals will be considered. The deadline for proposals is January 15, and they should be sent to .
The date of the colloquy for the moment remains to be decided. Easter falls on April 24 next year. The usual date for the colloquy which is the last weekend in April therefore is not possible. Nor is the weekend following (April 30-May 1) for local reasons. Thus we would like everybody’s input to choose between April 15-16, 2011 ( NB Palm Sunday is April 17) or May 6-7. If you have an opinion please let me know. We will make a decision relatively shortly so please let us know even shorter than that.
An important bit of news is that the American Weil Society website has been redone, and has received its own domain name: . Visit it. Lucian Stone has done a wonderful job with it, and now that the domain is in our control we should be able to keep it quite up to date. If you have any observations let us know. He is quite anxious to hear about how everybody receives it. One important addition to it is that it will now contain a book review section which Rebecca Rozelle Stone is editing. Look, too, for the link to the Weil bibliography project which can give a number of recent references.
I would add here that even though the information on the website is quite public and free, we are paying for the domain. Therefore let me remind to pay your dues as soon as possible if you have not done so.
Finally, I note some recent publications:
Simone Weil, Oeuvres completes Paris, Gallimard, 2010. The second half of the writings from Marseilles.
E. Jane Doering, Simone Weil and the Specter of Self-Perpetuating Force, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.
Two books of now somewhat hoary and classic status have also been reprinted:
Larry Blum and Victor Seidler, A Truer Liberty: Simone WeilMarxism, New York, Routledge, 2010
Eric O. Springsted, Simone Weil and the Suffering of Love, Wipf & Stock, 2010.
You will discover that if you go to the website, and then to the book review section, that if you click on the image of a book that it will take you to a site where you can order the book.
Sincerely,
Eric O. Springsted
President