Sam Duncan (Tidewater Community College) writes in:

Since using Zoom so much recently I've been thinking more and more about the possibility of trying to put together some kind of Zoom group with other philosophers to read and give comments on one another's papers….I'm in a super small department and really only have one or two people I might ask for feedback on my own work so there's a self-interest component here. But more than that I thought it might be a good way to build more of a community and read some other people's work. Honestly, at the moment I don't really have anything I'm working on that's too far along so I'm more interested in reading other people's work at the moment. I thought it might make sense to make these deliberately broad and eclectic too. That might do something to get people in sub-disciplines talking to each other and it would be a real help with people trying to craft papers to get past the first round at generalist journals. Would you be willing to put a call out for something like this on the Cocoon? I'm willing to organize a group and use my college's Zoom account to host, though I'm thinking that if it got much larger than five or six people it might get unwieldy so depending on the response it might make sense to do more than one.  Anyway just a thought I've been having.

I think this is a wonderful idea. I checked with Sam, and he's happy to have anyone interested in joining such a group email him (sld24688@email.vccs.edu). However, given that as he notes such a group could balloon to an unwieldy size, we thought it could be cool to also open up this thread for readers to try to create Zoom groups of their own as well. So please, if you're interested in creating or joining a Zoom group to trade papers (or even just do a reading group), feel free to comment below with any relevant details (such as your area of focus, contact info, etc.). You can also feel free to talk back and forth in the comments section as well to arrange things!

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3 responses to “Open thread for creating Zoom writing-groups”

  1. Jared Oliphint

    I’m not sure if this fits the spirit of the OP, but I have developed a group called GAME (the Group for Analytic Metaphysics and Epistemology; though not at all limited to those AOS’s) that meets every other week here at TAMU and is somewhat open-ended in subject matter. Before COVID restrictions we met in person, but since meeting virtually we have had guests like Edward Zalta and Kevin Zollman present their work, and future guests include Maegan Fairchild and our own José Bermúdez. If you’re interested in attending or have questions about how to participate, feel free to email me at joliphint@tamu.edu.

  2. Quitterie Gounot

    I’m writing in ethics, esp moral psychology, and also have interests in phil of law, feminist phil, phil of religion. I’m at the dissertation stage, if any other grad students in particular would like to team up, but open to other possibilities, too. I’ll be writing to Sam Duncan too – Just saw this post and figured I’d comment here too in case the original group is already too big or there are other lurkers on this site.

  3. Sam Duncan

    I haven’t gotten as many replies to this as I’d expected. And though I think a small group would be fine– or actually in many ways ideal– I thought I’d put out the call once more. Two things I want to be clear on: 1. Grad students are more than welcome. 2. I picture this as a working group that reflects the sort of collegial atmosphere Marcus has maintained at the Cocoon. So if it works like I want it to you shouldn’t worry about getting your work torn apart (which I’ve found happens all too often in working groups or in conferences). Anyway, if you’ve emailed me I’ll get back to you by the end of the day tomorrow. If you’re interested and you haven’t been in touch though do shoot me an email though.

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