Call for Chapter Proposals: Edited Collection, Iris Murdoch and Education

Word Limit: 400-word chapter proposals (not including title, authors, affiliations, and references)
Please submit your proposal to: Lesley Jamieson (LesleyPaige.Jamieson@upce.cz)
About the edited collection: There has in the last 3 decades been a vibrant and rapidly growing scholarship focused on Iris Murdoch’s fiction and philosophy. Moreover, her life has been the subject of a number of biographical treatments—most recently, she’s figured in retellings of the history of analytic philosophy centering on the “Wartime Quartet” (Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley—four women who studied at Oxford during the Second World War and each in their way made highly original contributions to philosophy): The Women are up to Something (2021); and Metaphysical Animals (2022). In the midst of this, themes of education, moral development, and Murdoch’s relevance to educational theory and practice have become increasingly pronounced. In 2022 alone, the Wartime Quartet was the theme of a suite of papers published by The Journal of Philosophy of Education; a chapter on Murdoch and education was included in the Routledge collection The Murdochian Mind; and individual articles appeared in The Journal of Moral Education, Changing English, and The Journal of Philosophy of Education.
This collection will bring these conversations together and give scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds the opportunity to carry them forward. It will provide new perspectives on what Iris Murdoch’s philosophy and fiction can offer to education and educational theory; what her views and experiences of education were; and what the educative potential of her literature and philosophy is for everyday life.
We invite philosophers, education studies scholars, literary scholars, and intellectual historians to contribute abstracts for chapters on:
• The significance of Iris Murdoch’s philosophical writings for teaching and learning across all sectors of education (including early, primary, secondary, and adult education).
• Suggested topics: love (of one’s students, of one’s subject matter) as virtues in teachers • connections between feminist theories of care-based education and attention • teacher education and the teachability of “attention” • universality and particularity in the teaching of applied ethics • the role of the moral imagination in attending to children, students, and learners • idiosyncrasy and interiority as relevant to teaching and learning • liberal theories of education and Murdoch’s critique of liberalism • Murdochian reflections on humanities education • and philosophy for children.
• The representation of education, teachers, and students in Murdoch’s fiction, personal writings (e.g., journals and letters) and biographical works.
• Suggested topics: Murdoch’s wartime experiences as a student at Somerville College (Oxford) • formative teachers in Murdoch’s life • remembrances of Murdoch as an educator • the representation of teacher-student relationships in Murdoch’s novels • school-friends in Murdoch’s life or fiction.
• The relevance of Murdoch’s philosophy and fiction to teaching, learning, and education beyond the classroom.
• Suggested topics: Nature and unselfing • motherhood and family life as sites of moral attention • void, suffering, and the fragility of goodness • connections between Murdochian perfectionism and Emersonian perfectionism • environmental, social, and psychological impediments to attention • political education and the need for “theory” • public philosophy • the role of art and literature in moral education • activity and passivity in love and learning • epiphanies.
We welcome submissions on topics other than those listed so long as they fit the broad themes of this collection.
Authors will be notified about the status of their submission by: December 1st, 2025.
Full chapter drafts will not be due until December 2026.
Publication Timeline: Securing a publishing contract for an edited collection requires presenting a list of contributors and chapter abstracts. Accepted submissions will be used to further this process with Palgrave MacMillan. Their ongoing Iris Murdoch Today series, edited by Miles Leeson and Frances White, has a track record of publishing similar thematic collections on Iris Murdoch’s philosophy and fiction; moreover, two of our editors have previously secured contracts with this publisher (Rebecca Moden’s Iris Murdoch and Harry Weinberger and Lesley Jamieson’s Iris Murdoch’s Practical Metaphysics), and with other publishers (Andrea Delaune’s Iris Murdoch and Early Childhood Education: Enhancing Attention and Moral Vision in Pedagogy)