The Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought was created to foster dialogue and interaction between scholars and students working on Chinese thought across different disciplines and through a variety of approaches. We invite submissions on any aspect of Chinese thought, as well as comparative work that engages Chinese perspectives.
The 2026 conference will take place in person at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on April 3-4, 2026. Conference participants will be provided with two nights of hotel accommodations, all meals, and charter transportation from and to the IAD or BWI airports. (Participants who wish to use the charter service should contact the organizer in advance to coordinate travel plans).
We have limited travel funds available for participants without institutional support or in financial need. If you wish to be considered for travel assistance, please indicate so in your submission. We encourage graduate students, junior scholars, and scholars in contingent or vulnerable positions to apply.
The Gettysburg College Philosophy Department is committed to faculty-student collaboration and to engaging students in professional and research activities. In that spirit, this year’s conference will include an additional day of student panels on April 2, featuring Gettysburg students’ work on Chinese thought. Participants who wish to attend these panels and/or serve as commentators on student papers are warmly invited to indicate so in their submission. Those participating will receive an additional night of hotel accommodation on April 2.
For consideration, please submit a 1-page abstract for blind review to Mercedes Valmisa at mvalmisa@gettysburg.edu with the subject line: “MCCT 2026 Abstract Submission” by January 2, 2026. For more information, visit the conference website at https://chinesethought.iu.edu/home.php. [website updated soon]
Our keynote speaker will be Brook Ziporyn, Mircea Eliade Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy, and Comparative Thought at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Ziporyn is a scholar of ancient and medieval Chinese religion and philosophy. Ziporyn received his BA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, and his PhD from the University of Michigan.
Ziporyn is the author of Evil And/Or/As the Good: Omnicentric Holism, Intersubjectivity and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought (Harvard, 2000), The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang (SUNY Press, 2003), Being and Ambiguity: Philosophical Experiments With Tiantai Buddhism (Open Court, 2004); Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Hackett, 2009); Ironies of Oneness and Difference: Coherence in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li (SUNY Press, 2012); Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and its Antecedents (SUNY Press, 2013); and Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism (Indiana UP, 2016). His translation of Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings was published by Hackett in 2020, and his translation of the Daodejing was published by Liveright Books and the Norton Library in 2022. His latest work, Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2024.
