Dear Colleagues and Friends,

On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, we are delighted to welcome you to our 59th Annual Conference and our first-ever virtual conference. Although the global pandemic left us with no choice but to cancel last year’s conference and go virtual this year, we hope you each take full advantage of the new opportunities afforded by the virtual platform, including having digital access to all of the conference panels for a full year. Recordings will be posted to the conference platform in the weeks following the conference, and links to electronic copies of many of the papers will be included in individual sessions.

The main SPEP program will take place on two consecutive Fridays and Saturdays (September 17-18 and 24-25), beginning each day at 11:00am. Please note that all of the session times listed on the program are United States Eastern Standard Time (EST). Bonnie Honig will deliver the first Plenary Address on Friday, September 17, 4:15-6:15 pm, and Mel Y. Chen will deliver the second Plenary Address on Saturday, September 25, 4:45-6:45 pm. Gail Weiss’s Co-Director’s Address will take place on Friday, September 24, 4:45-5:45 pm. There will be a special Publishers’ Roundtable on Thursday, September 23, from 11:00 am-1:00 pm. The Business Meeting will also be held on Thursday, September 23 from 4:30-6:30 pm, and all program participants are encouraged to attend. The meetings of our affiliate societies will take place on Thursday, September 23, 11:00 am -2:00 pm and Sunday September 26, 11:00 am -2:00 pm and 3:00 pm -6:00 pm. In addition, the 40th Annual Conference of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS) will meet in the early mornings on September 17, 18, 24, and 25 prior to the beginning of the main SPEP program.

Our conference website platform features a mix of live Zoom sessions and Zoom Webinars for the Plenary Addresses and Business Meeting. There is a separate page accessible from the tab above for memorial remarks for those members and other significant figures in continental philosophy who have passed away since our last annual meeting. As noted above, all sessions will be recorded and will remain available for viewing, both during and following the conference.

We are hoping that you find the OpenWater platform easy to navigate, but support is also available throughout the conference for any questions or technical difficulties that you may experience. If you are having difficulty during a virtual session, we recommend using the 'launch chat' button to communicate any issues you may be having to the designated tech support person who is assigned to each panel.

We wish you all an excellent conference, and look forward very much to meeting again in person in fall 2022 for our 60th Annual Conference.

Gail Weiss and Alan Schrift, SPEP Co-Directors