Texas Tech University

It’s a busy week at the Humanities Center!

Join us for a talk and a reading by the Kosovar writer and translator Vlora Konushevci, a talk by the philosopher Manuel Vargas, and an evening of scholarly discussion and a catered reception with this year’s Alumni College faculty fellows.

Thursday, October 16th | 5pm, Escondido Theater, Student Union Building

TTU Creative Writing Program Reading Featuring Vlora Konushevci

Co-sponsored by the Thomas Jay Harris Institute for Hispanic and International Communication in the TTU College of Media and Communications, the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and the TTU Department of English, the TTU Creative Writing Program is proud to feature Vlora Konushevci, a visiting writer and translator from Kosovo.

Vlora Konushevci (poet, translator, and essayist; Kosovo) is the author of the poetry collection Lavdi Vetes and the editor-translator of the bilingual anthologies Poetry Without Borders (Albanian–Serbian) and Magma (Albanian–English). Her poetry and translations appear in The Common, Songs of Eretz, and European Literature Network. A winner of multiple literary awards and a contributor to Kosovo’s cultural press, she also works as a certified translator for national and international institutions. Her participation is made possible thanks to the University of Iowa’s Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate College.

Friday, October 17th | 3:00pm, Humanities Building 264

Humanity Speakers Series:
Dr. Manuel Vargas(UC-San Diego),
“Reconsidering the Free Will Debate”

Co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy 2025-2026 Colloquium Series.

This talk advances a cluster of distinctive theses about what is sometimes called “the” free will debate. Among them: pluralism about the subjects under dispute; a case for non-error theoretic eliminativism about free will; the virtues of focusing on culpable agency as one regimentation of concerns about free will, and methodological caveats about how to frame the stakes; and last, consideration of a thesis I call “socio-normative insulationism,” according to which some subset of concerns oftentimes associated with free will seem relatively insulated from skeptical concerns.

Dr. Manuel Vargas a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California San Diego. One facet of his research focuses on the overlap of moral and psychological issues concerning human agency and freedom. A second facet concerns the history of philosophy in Mexico, and a third focuses on issues in contemporary Latina/o/x/e philosophy.

Vargas is the author of the forthcoming Mexican Philosophy (OUP), which showcases notable episodes in the history of philosophy in Mexico. He is also the author of Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (OUP, 2013), which won the American Philosophical Association’s Book Prize in 2015. With John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, and Derk Pereboom, he co-authored Four Views on Free Will (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), and the forthcoming revised and expanded second edition (Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming). With John Doris, he edited the Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology (OUP, 2022) and with Gideon Yaffe, he edited Rational and Social Agency: The Philosophy of Michael Bratman (OUP, 2014).

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