AGPT Conference 2025 — American University

Day 1: Friday, April 25

SIS Founders Room

1. 9:00–10:00

   Check-in and coffee

2. 10:00–11:30

   Panel 1: Alternative Agents of Global Thought

   • Ayaka Simon Silas (Phoenix University Agwada, Nigeria), “In Search of African Theory of Democracy: Utilising the Tiv Cultural Philosophy of Ya-Na-Angbian”
   • Tomohito Baji 馬路智仁 (University of Tokyo), “Our Ocean, Our Sovereignty: Epeli Hau’ofa and Anticolonial Pacific Self-determination”
   • Rahul Sagar (NYU Abu Dhabi), “The Birth of Indian Liberalism”
   • Shoufu Yin 殷守甫 (University of British Columbia), “Globalizing the Genealogy of Diasporic State: Why and How”

   Chair: Nayeli Riano (Georgetown University); discussant: Amsale Alemu (Howard University)

3. 11:30–12:45

   Lunch at the Mary Graydon Center

4. 13:00–14:30

   Panel 2: Comparing Concepts: Cities and Cultures

   • Alexander Orwin (Louisiana State University), “Ignorant Cities and Ways of Life: How Muslim Philosophers Adapted Plato’s Bad Regimes”
   • Yidi Wu 吳一笛 (Boston University), “Sincerity and Eudaimonia: Human Perfection and Politics in Confucianism and Aristotle”
   • Tianhong Ying 應天宏 (Northern Michigan University), “Bridging Liberalism and Confucianism: How Confucian China Shapes the Secular Foundation of Locke’s Liberalism”
   • Sujin Heo 허수진 (American University), “Iberian Languages of International Ordering in Japan”

   Chair: Yixin Bai 白逸欣 (Georgetown University); discussant: Jiseob Yoon 윤지섭 (Georgetown University)

5. 15-minute coffee break

6. 14:45–16:15

   Panel 3: The Art and Archaeology of Knowledge

   • Ross Moncrieff (University of Oxford), “Comparing to Connect: Neo-Confucian and Jesuit Scholastic Philosophy Compared and the Presentation of Confucian Thought in Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687)”
   • Agnik Bhattacharya (University of California, Irvine), “Amir and Archaeologists: The Global History of Afghan Archaeology in Modern Afghanistan, 1919–1922”
   • Utku Cansu (Princeton University), “The Birth of Rhetoric from the Spirit of Music: Aesthetic and Moral Education as Political Reform in Nietzsche’s Political Thought”
   • Ankit Kawade (Johns Hopkins University), ““A New Name for Manu”: Ambedkar’s Critique of Nietzsche”

   Chair: Olga Obolenets (New York University); discussant: Theodore Lai (Georgetown University)

7. 15-minute coffee break

8. 16:30–18:00

   Panel 4: The State and its Critics

   • László Kontler (Central European University), “Adventures of the State in Time and Space: Fénelon’s Télémaque in Eighteenth-Century Hungary”
   • Erin Hagood (Columbia University), “The Rebirth of Benjamin Constant in the Second Empire of Louis Bonaparte”
   • Olga Obolenets (New York University), “Education, Citizenship, and the Ancients in the Thought of Carl von Clausewitz”
   • Carlos Eduardo Pérez Crespo (Universidad Católica de Chile), “Constituent Power, Representation, and Monarchy: Carl Schmitt’s Study Notes on the Constitutional Debates of the French Revolution (1789–1791)”
   • Dandan Chen 陳丹丹 (SUNY Farmingdale State College), “In Response to Constitutional Crisis: The Latent Carl Schmitt in Zhang Junmai’s Political Thought”

   Chair: Botian Zheng 鄭博天 (Georgetown University); discussant: K. Morgan McGlothlin (Georgetown University)

9. 18:00–18:30

   Dinner and drinks in the Founders Room

10. 18:30–20:00

    Keynote: Caroline Elkins (Harvard University), “Legalised Lawlessness”

    In conversation with Elizabeth Thompson (American University) and Amsale Alemu (Howard University).

Day 2: Saturday, April 26

SIS Founders Room

1. 8:30

   Breakfast

2. 9:00–10:45

   Panel 5: Ordering International Law and Politics

   • Pablo Kalmanovitz (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México), “Carlos Calvo on jus ad bellum and State Formation in Latin America”
   • David Ragazzoni (New York University), “The Forgotten Origins of Kelsen’s Cosmopolitan Pacifism: ‘Dante Alighieri’s Philosophy of the State’ (1905)”
   • Artur Simonyan (Tartu Ülikool and Freie Universität Berlin), “Novosiltsev Instructions: Framing the Counter-Revolutionary International Law”
   • Willy Nieto Minaya (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru), “The Monroe Doctrine and Peruvian Foreign Policy: Between Suspicion and Alignment (1900–1930)”
   • José Joel Peña Llanes (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Universidad Anáhuac México), “Analysis of the Judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on arraigo and Informal Preventive Detention: A Comprehensive Assessment of Compliance and Implications for Mexico”

   Chair: Liliya Khasanova (Tufts University); discussant: Caroline Elkins (Harvard University)

3. 15-minute coffee break

4. 10:45–12:15

   Panel 6: International Networks and Global Movements

   • Erkjad Kajo (Università degli Studi di Pavia), “The Albanian National Movement in Transnational Context: Rilindje’s Political Thought in Exile (1878–1912)”
   • Sheng Zhang 張晟 (Johns Hopkins University), “When Crimea, Istanbul, and Kashgar Shared the Same Sky: How Jadid Movement Linked the Turkic World and Offered Alternative Path of Modernization for Xinjiang”
   • Kuangyu Zhao (Indiana University Bloomington), “A Sobering Lesson from the Motherland of Republics: Liang Qichao’s American Tour and Evolved View on Chinese Democracy”
   • Jiayu Deng 鄧家玉 (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), “The Struggle for the Malayan Democratic Republic: Nation-Building and Political Thoughts of the Communist Party of Malaya (1930–1957)”

   Chair: Irene Hyangseon Ahn 안향선 (American University); discussant: Lisa Ford (George Washington University)

5. 12:15–13:15

   Lunch at the Mary Graydon Center

6. 13:15–14:45

   Panel 7: Ideological Entanglements in Global Economies

   • Madeline Woker (Sheffield University), “The Great Depression and the Search for a French Colonial New Deal”
   • Mingran Cao (Universiteit Leiden), “Economic Nationalism, Industrial Policy, and Cotton Plantations in Early Twentieth-Century China”
   • Sergio Infante (Yale University), “Bootleg Modernization, or, What Does It Mean to Have a Job?”
   • Lenon Maschette (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil), “Neoliberalism and Bolsa Família: A Theoretical Approach”
   • Gustavo Hessmann Dalaqua (Universidade Federal do Amazonas), “Revolution in Populism: Anticolonial Developmentalism in the Populist Republic”

   Chair: Kanika Varma (American University); discussant: Emily Matson (Georgetown University and Council on Foreign Relations)

7. 15-minute coffee break

8. 15:00–16:30

   Panel 8: Civilisational Discourses in Global Thought

   • Nayeli Riano (Georgetown University), “Crepuscular Enlightenment”
   • Theodore Becker-Jacob (Princeton University), “Race, Culture, and the Unnatural State: Edward Wilmot Blyden’s Natural Law Theory”
   • Philippe Xing (University of Cambridge), “Francis Galton, Empire and the Eugenic Science of Civilisation”
   • Gayathri Venugopal (Government Law College, Thiruvananthapuram), “Gendered Spirits and Constitutional Closet in the Indian Jurisprudence”
   • Daniel Olúwáṣetèmi Òní (Pennsylvania State University), “The Poetry of the Future: Creolization, History, and the Form of the New between C.L.R. James and Wilson Harris”

   Chair: Ji Young Kwon 권지영 (American University); discussant: Lars Vetle Handeland (Lunds universitet)

9. 15-minute coffee break

10. 16:45–18:15

    Panel 9: The Contested ‘Local’ and ‘Global’

    • Katy Brown (Maynooth University), “Perceptions of the ‘Mainstream’ and the Mainstreaming of the Far Right: from Ed Sheeran to Keir Starmer”
    • Wanda Dugiel (Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie), “Towards Deinstitutionalization of the World Trading System”
    • Malcolm Jorgensen 世傑 (MPIL, Heidelberg), “From International Legal Order to Geolegal Orders: The Politics of ‘Multipolarity’ in International Law”
    • Andrew Hurrell (Oxford University), “From Systems to Agents: Global Political Thought and Global IR in relation to the Changing Notion of the ‘Global’”

    Chair: Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (American University); discussant: Nikhil Goyal (University of Toronto)

11. 18:30

    Optional dinner near campus or downtown

Day 3: Sunday, April 27

1. 8:15

   Breakfast

2. 9:00–10:30

   Panel 10: Toward a Digital and Planetary Age

   • Claudia Favarato (Universität Bayreuth), “The Digipolitical and African Political Thought: A Theoretical Framework to Interpret the Political in the Digital Age”
   • Christopher Small (Universitat de Barcelona), “Stateless Action on Absent Grounds: An Ontological Search for the Political Agency of Nonbelonging”
   • Xavier Dwight M. Gentalian (De La Salle University, Philippines), “Rethinking Spaces of Political Agency: A Phenomenological Study on Philippine Perceptions of Political Agency in Video Games vis-à-vis the Real World”
   • Sarah Thomas (Catholic University of America), “Beyond Sovereignty: Reimagining Political Theology as Planetary”
   • Joseph Rodriguez (Duke University), “The Normative Value of Rights of Nature”

   Chairs: Elke Stockreiter (American University) and Sujin Heo 허수진 (American University)

3. 15-minute coffee break

4. 10:45–12:30

   Closing keynote dialogue: “Violence, Law, and Politics in the Changing International Order”

   Kelebogile Zvobgo (William & Mary), Lisa Ford (George Washington University) and Andrew Hurrell (Oxford University).

   The 2025 conference was supported by the Mohammed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace, the Department of Global Inquiry and the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal, all at the School of International Service, and by the Political Theory Institute of the School of Public Affairs, American University.