Colloquium Series

The NEIU Philosophy Colloquium Series began in 2014 and has been a regular department-sponsored event since Spring 2018. Its purpose is to give the Northeastern community access to all of the richness and diversity of contemporary professional philosophy. The Colloquium Series also provides professional philosophers with the opportunity to experience Northeastern firsthand and meet our students and faculty in an academic setting. All of the talks are free and open to the public.

NEIU Philosophy on Facebook NEIU Philosophy on Instagram

NEIU Philosophy on YouTube

Upcoming Talks

"Scalpels and Scaffolding"

R. A. Briggs, Ph.D., University of Chicago
October 19, 2026 3:00 p.m. Bernard Brommel Hall 102

Feminist theorists of relational autonomy hold that social conditions can uphold or undermine agency. Gender affirming surgeries provide a case study for exploring how relational autonomy works in practice. In theory, body modifications, including those done for gender affirmation, are meant to be autonomously chosen, but in practice, they require radical vulnerability to someone with specialized skills and tools. In the case of gender affirming surgeries, the patient is vulnerable not only to the surgeon, but to an entire medical team, including pre- and post-surgical caregivers, as well as to a wider society that can make their decisions easier or harder, and more or less effective. Autonomy requires social scaffolding.

This paper presents joint work with Jillana Enteen, whose decade-long research in Thai trans studies provides detailed case studies of gender affirming surgeries offered by Thai surgeons to non-Thais. Thai surgical settings offer opportunities for choice beyond what is offered in Western settings: instead of just the default “MtF” or “FtM” options, patients are presented with a rich menu of choices, including surgeons and surgical procedures. In the context of colonial histories, these opportunities for choice are not neutral. Western patients often receive a different level of care than Thai patients, and expect that Thai professionals, unlike Western professionals, are there to serve them.

We analyze these examples through the lens of relational autonomy. In which ways are patients vulnerable? How do surgeons and medical teams scaffold their agency? How do their subject positions as Westerners affect the power dynamics of the surgical setting? We synthesize philosophy with data from extended interviews with Thai surgeons to deepen our shared understanding of autonomy and vulnerability.

R.J. Briggs, Ph.D. is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.  They work on topics in metaphysics and epistemology, and are particularly interested in time, causation, probability, personal identity, and gender. They are the co-author with B.R. George of What Even Is Gender? (2023, Routledge), and one of the hosts of the syndicated radio program Philosophy Talk. They received their PhD from MIT in 2009, and have held academic positions at the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, The University of Queensland, and Stanford University.

Past Talks

2026-2027

• Kathryn Petrozzo, Illinois Institute of Technology, "Moving Beyond Irrationality: Mental Illness, Well-Being, and Ulysses Contracts"

2025-2026

• Ali Kaveh Aenehzodaee, Harper College, "On Tact"
• Greg Jacobs, Siskel/Jacobs Productions, "The Here Now Project"
• Gavin Whitelaw, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, "Global Retail, Local Morality: The Social Life of Unsold Food in Japanese Convenience Stores."
• Maité Cruz. Union College, "José Martí's Defense of Democracy."
• Mohamed Mehdi, Oakton College,“Backstage with the Hypocrites: The Demand for Consistency in our Political Commitments.”
• Raja Halwani, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, "The Ethics of Looksism."

2024-2025

• Katherine Valde, Loyola University Chicago, "Beyond the Value Free Ideal in Law & Science?"
• Stephen Engelmann, University of Illinois at Chicago, "Doing Oligarchy Better: On the Politics of Effective Altruism.”
• Stacey Goguen, Northeastern Illinois University, “Why Politics & Religion Belong in Science (and what we still get wrong about values and objectivity).”
• William French, Loyola University Chicago, "The Asymmetry in Threat Perception: Military Threats v. Ecological Threats."
• Nathan Wood, City Colleges of Chicago, "The Real Value of Anti-Realism."

2023-2024

• Maren Behrensen, University of Twente, Netherlands, “Political Eschatology and Gender: Information Warfare against Queer Communities.”
• Patrick O'Donnell, Oakton College, "Better Living through Pessimism."
• Ben Almassi, Governors State University, "The Fire Next Time: Prescribed Burns as Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Epistemic Reparations."
• Takunda Matose, Loyola University Chicago, "Justice and The Monty Hall Problem of Public Health."
• Will Behun, McHenry County Community College, "Not so much heretical as insane: myth in classical Gnosticism."
• Tom Carson, Loyola University Chicago, "The Problem of Misplaced Trust and Distrust."

2022-2023

• David Hilbert, University of Illinois at Chicago, "Berkeley's Political Metaphysics."
• Blake Dutton, Loyola University Chicago, "Extracting Gold from the Counterfeiter’s Bag: al-Ghazālī on the Tradition of Philosophy in Islam."
• Sophia Mihic, Northeastern Illinois University, "Freedom, Property, and Privacy: The Political Economy of Abortion and Reproduction After Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization."
• Raff Donelson, Chicago-Kent College of Law, "The Inherent Problem with Mass Incarceration."
• Tyler Zimmer, University of Chicago, "Do Billionaires Deserve Their Wealth?"
• Shireen Roshanravan, Northeastern Illinois University, "Pretending-to-be and Masterful Political Performance."

2019-2020

• B.R. George, Carnegie Mellon University, "Painfully Literal Dudes."
• Thirza Lagewaard, Free University, Amsterdam, “How Epistemic Injustice Can Deepen Disagreement.”
• Agnes Callard, University of Chicago, “Is There Such a Thing as being Good or Bad at Philosophy?"
• David Vessey, Grand Valley State University, "Collapsing Life and Art."
• Alex Adamson, Northeastern Illinois University, “Against a Single History: Luxemburg and a Decolonial Critique of Political Economy.”

2018-2019

• Jessica Gordon Roth, University of Minnesota, “Recovering Early Modern Women Writers: Some Tensions.”
• Jorge Montiel*, Marquette University, “ A Relational Analysis of Oppression: Group Injustice and Institutional Mediation.”
• Megan Hyska, Northwestern University, “Propaganda for Realists.”
• William Paris, Northwestern University, “What does it Mean to Have a Revolution in Culture? Frantz Fanon’s Speculative Method of Critique.”
• Seth Mayer, Manchester University, “Philosophy, Democracy, and Mass Incarceration.”
• David Godden, Michigan State University, “Theorizing Testimony in Argumentative Contexts.”

2017-2018

• Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt University, “The Antinomies of Meta-philosophy.”
• Desmond Jagmohan*, University of California, Berkeley, “Dominus before Domination: Harriet Jacobs and the Meaning of Slavery.” 

2016-2017

• John Casey, Northeastern Illinois University, "Argument Pacifism."

2015-2016

• Morganna Lambeth, Northwestern University, "Does Everything have a Cause?"
• Raff Donelson, Northwestern University, "What is Punishment?"

2014-2015

• Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt University, "Why We Argue: A Deliberative Democratic Reply to Plato.”

*Denotes scholar as a graduate of Northeastern Illinois University