Former AWS President Tomeu Estelrich has very generously offered to be the host of the AWS annual colloquy next year at Boston College. The dates will be April 22, 23 and 24th 2021. The general theme of the conference will be the same as what was planned for this year (“Simone Weil on spirituality, beauty and justice”) and Prof. Elaine Scarry will still be our keynote speaker. That said, conference participants who had their abstracts accepted and who wish to present a slightly different paper (or a very different one) will be welcome to propose a new abstract to the organizing committee.

We will be re-posting the 2020 call for papers - with some modifications - in the early fall in order to select a few extra papers for April 2021 (the deadline will be, exceptionally, February 1st this year). This revised call will include an invitation to AWS scholars who wish to reflect, along Weilian lines, on issues related to the pandemic to propose something new. Needless to say, there are several burning issues that would make for very rich and timely exchanges. Over the summer and early fall, we will also be discussing the possibility of having a few international participants present their papers at the 2021 conference virtually. More detailed information about all these matters will be sent to AWS members in due course, as soon as we have a better sense of the evolving COVID situation. For now, as you all know, there is too much uncertainty concerning international travel, university funding, and hosting any large scholarly event on campus for the next many months to make our planning easy.

Tomeu Estelrich and Sophie Bourgault thank you in advance for your understanding and great patience with us during these unprecedented circumstances. In October 2020, Tomeu and Sophie will be in touch with all selected AWS 2020 conference participants to see whether they are still interested in presenting their research in April 2021 at Boston College or would rather withdraw from the program (the deadline to indicate their participation will be January 15th 2021). This will then give us a better sense of how many new abstracts we might be able to accommodate in the new 2021 conference program.﻿