Simone Weil Society’s Annual Colloquy (2026):  Roots, Exile, and Migration

• Texas A&M University 
• 23-25 April, 2026

Day 1: Thursday, April 23^rd

12:00pm Benjamin Davis, Texas A&M, President’s Welcome to Texas

12:15-1:30pm, Panel 1, Beginning with Roots

• Inese Radzins, Cal State Stanislaus, “Uprootedness and Exile”
• Annalise Shero, Baylor University, “On Third Culture Kids and Weil’s Need for Roots”
• Rodrigo de los Santos Alamilla, Texas A&M, “Poetics of Foreclosure: Figures of Wandering through Glissant’s Relationality and Weil’s Gravity”
• Ching Sum Leung, Regis College, “Rootedness and Gravity in Diasporic Life: An Affective Reading of Simone Weil”

1:30pm-1:45pm, Coffee Break

1:45pm-2:30pm

• Deborah Casewell and Christopher Thomas, The Routledge Companion to Simone Weil

2:30-2:45pm Coffee Break

2:45-3:45pm, Book Panel on Mac Loftin’s In the Twilight of the Christian West: A Theology of Mourning and Resistance

• Matthew Ichihani Potts, Harvard University, comments on In the Twilight
• Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth, comments on In the Twilight
• Mac Loftin, Harvard University, response

4:00-5:30pm, Keynote Lecture

• Anne Norton, University of Pennsylvania, “The Uprooted”

6:00pm-onward, Dinner on your own in College Station or Bryan

Day 2: Friday, April 24^th

9:00-9:50am, Panel 1, Simone Weil and Political Theology

• Eric Aldieri, Bridgewater State University, “Possessive Individualism in Simone Weil and John Locke”
• Zoe Boyle, KU Leuven, “The Empty Throne: Simone Weil on Sovereignty and Negative Political Theology”
• Alberto Moreiras, Texas A&M, “On the Secondariness of the Political”

10:00-10:50am, Panel 2, Inner and Outer Rooting

• Letizia Masia, University of Perugia, “The Crisis of an Uprooted World: Attention and Relationships as a Way to Inner Rooting”
• Cristina Basili, University of Bologna/New School for Social Research, “Simone Weil and the Politics of Rootedness”
• Teresa Vilaros, Texas A&M, “Simone Weil and the Spanish Civil War”

11:00-11:50am, Panel 3, Mysticism 1

• Kathryn Lawson, University of King’s College (Halifax), “Dark Nights of the Soul: Mysticism in Edith Stein and Simone Weil”
• Alejandro Martínez Gallardo, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, “Plotinus and Simone Weil on How Does the Soul Get Back Home?”
• Xinghao Wang, Yale University, “Folded Univocity—Rethinking the Ground of Weil’s Metaphysical-Theological Structure”

12:00-1:30pm Lunch on/around campus

1:35 -2:50pm, Panel 4, Mysticism 2

3:00-3:50pm, Panel 5, Weil in Dialogue

• Deniz Zehra Morova, University of California, Berkeley, “Simone Weil, Spinoza, and Homer”
• Seth Jeter, University of Chicago, “Simone Weil’s and CLR James’ Alternative Marxian Critiques of Bureaucracy”
• Alejandra Novoa-Echaurren, Universidad de los Andes, “Anastasia Filippovna: Mental Illness as Exile. Dialogue between Simone Weil and Fyodor Dostoyevsky”

4:00pm-onward, Dinner on your own in College Station or Bryan

Day 3: Saturday, April 25th

8:00-8:55am, Panel 1, Weil and Reading the World

• Jacob Davis, Wheaton College, “Attentive Love: Simone Weil On the Ethics of Choosing a Romantic Partner”
• Charles Hughes Huff, Sacred Heart Seminary, “Attention, Second Nature, and the Formation of Hermeneutical Norms”
• Martina Bengert, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, “Transference, Transition, Attention. On the Last Pages of Simone Weil’s Last Notebooks”
• Scott Ritner,  “Simone Weil’s Politics”

9:00-9:50am, Panel 2, Simone Weil and Sense

• Luke Roberts, Villanova University, “Passivity and Asceticism in Simone Weil”

10:00-10:50am, Panel 3, Weil, Technology, and Education

• Erik Sandelin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Data as Force”
• Michael Jewell, University of Colorado, “The Root of Gratitude: Simone Weil’s ‘Centre’ as a Property Right Against the Threats of Artificial Intelligence”
• David Anderson, Texas A&M, “Giving Them Something to Love: Weil and Arendt on Education and How to Make Nations Great (Again)

11:00-11:50am, Panel 4, Concluding Reflections on Roots

• Ryan Poll, Northeastern Illinois University, “Soil Work: Simone Weil’s Political Thinking Between Gardens and Plantations”
• Coco Gagnet, University of Texas, Dallas, “Thinking Uprooted Hospitality with Simone Weil”
• Ali Hazel, Stanford University, “Roots and Contradictions”

12:00-12:50pm: Lunch and Coffee Break on campus

1:00-2:30pm, Keynote

• Nicolas de Warren, Pennsylvania State University, “Pitiless to those who possess it, or think they do: Power and Powerlessness in Simone Weil”

2:45-4:00pm: Business Meeting*

*open to all for feedback, transparency, community, and reflection

Related

• “Colloquy of the American Weil Society: The Politics of Labour (2024)“

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