Recent News

Philosophy Faculty Receives Research Grants

Jennifer Mensch, Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society and Philosophy, recently received two research grants to support her scholarship in the history of philosophy: a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society and a Kristeller-Popkin Fellowship from the Journal of the History of Philosophy.

Tuana named 2008 SWIP Distinguished Woman Philosopher

Nancy Tuana, DuPont/Class of 1949 Professor in Ethics, Professor of Philosophy, Humanities and Women’s Studies, and Director of the Rock Ethics Institute, has been named the Society of Women in Philosophy’s 2008 Distinguished Woman Philosopher. Begun in 1984, this annual award honors a woman philosopher whose contributions to the support of women in philosophy and to philosophy itself are outstanding and merit special recognition. A panel and reception celebrating Professor Tuana’s accomplishments will be organized for the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Philadelphia , December 27-30, 2008.

Robert Bernasconi Joins Faculty

Professor Robert Bernasconi will join the philosophy faculty at Penn State in Fall 2009 as Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy.  Professor Bernasconi’s primary research and teaching interests lie in critical philosophy of race, particularly in relation to the history of philosophy, and Continental philosophy, especially figures such as Sartre, Levinas, and Heidegger.  He is the author of How to Read Sartre (W.W. Norton, 2007), Heidegger in Question: The Art of Existing (Humanities Press, 1993), and The Question of Language in Heidegger’s History of Being (Humanities Press, 1985).  He is the editor or co-editor of thirteen books, including Race, Hybridity, and Miscegenation (Thoemmes, 2005), Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy (Indiana UP, 2003), The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge UP, 2002), Race (Blackwell, 2001), The Idea of Race (Hackett, 2000) and Re-Reading Levinas (Indiana UP, 1991).

Kathryn Gines Joins Faculty

Professor Kathryn Gines will join the philosophy faculty at Penn State in Fall 2008.  In 2008-09 she will be a Philosophy and Africana Research Center Post-doctorate Fellow and beginning fall 2009 she will be an Assistant Professor in Philosophy.  Professor Gines’s primary research and teaching interests lie in Continental philosophy, Africana Philosophy, and Philosophy of Race and Gender, and she focuses on figures such as Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Fanon, and Anna Julia Cooper.  Professor Gines has published articles on race thinking in Arendt’s work, questions of assimilation, and sex and sexuality in contemporary hip-hop, and she currently is working on two monographs entitled Rethinking France: Racism, Colonialism, and Violence and Hannah Arendt and the "Negro Question."  In 2007, Professor Gines organized the first annual Collegium of Black Women Philosophers (for more information, see http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i05/05b00401.htm).  The next meeting of the Collegium will be held at Penn State University in spring 2009.

Leonard Lawlor Joins Faculty

Professor Leonard Lawlor will join the philosophy faculty at Penn State in Fall 2008 as Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy.  Professor Lawlor’s primary research and teaching interests lie in Continental philosophy, especially figures such as Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, Husserl, and Nietzsche.  He is the author of multiple books, including This is Not Sufficient: An Essay on Animality and Human Nature in Derrida (Columbia, 2007), The Implications of Immanence: Toward a New Concept of Life (Fordham, 2006), Thinking Through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question (Indiana, 2003), The Challenge of Bergsonism: Phenomenology, Ontology, Ethics (Continuum Books, 2003), Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology (Indiana, 2002), and Imagination and Chance: The Difference Between the Thought of Ricoeur and Derrida (SUNY Press, 1992). He also is co-editor of Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty.

Philosophy Faculty Receives President's Award

Nancy Tuana, DuPont/Class of 1949 Professor in Ethics, Professor of Philosophy, Humanities and Women’s Studies, and Director of the Rock Ethics Institute in the College of the Liberal Arts, is the 2008 recipient of Penn State's President's Award for Excellence in Academic Integration.  This award is given to a full-time member of the faculty who has exhibited extraordinary achievement in the integration of teaching, research or creative accomplishments, and service.

Philosophy Faculty Featured in Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology

Christopher Long, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Studies, has been recognized by Penn State's Education Technology Services for his innovative use of blogging and podcasting in his philosophy courses. He will present his pedagogical use of Web 2.0 technologies at the Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology on March 29th, 2008.

To read his featured story, see: http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/stories/ChrisLong.

Cultivating Underrepresented Students in Philosophy (CUSP) program set to begin in Spring 2008

CUSP is an all-expense paid 2-day workshop held at the Philosophy Department at the Pennsylvania State University each April for up to 8 promising prospective graduate students in philosophy from traditionally underrepresented groups (such as, African Americans, Chicano/as and Latino/as, Native Americans, Asian Americans.

Philosophy Faculty Receive Research Chairs

Vincent Colapietro and Dennis Schmidt have been named Liberal Arts Research Professors of Philosophy. This research chair recognizes a faculty member’s outstanding scholarship and international reputation in his or her field.  Professor Colapietro’s research focuses on American philosophy, semiotics, and the work of Charles Sanders Peirce.  Professor Schmidt’s research concentrates on post-Kantian continental philosophy, ancient philosophy, aesthetics, and literary criticism.

John Christman is Keynote Speaker

John Christman will be the Keynote speaker at this year's Fall Conference of the Eastern Pennsylvania Philosophy Association (EPPA).  The Conference will be held on October 27, 2007 at Bloomsburg University, PA.

Shannon Sullivan Book Sessions

Shannon Sullivan’s Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege (Indiana UP, 2006) was selected for an author-meets-critics book session at the Chicago meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) on the afternoon of November 8, 2007. 

Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana’s co-edited volume Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (SUNY Press, 2007) will be the focus of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP) session at SPEP on the morning of November 8, 2007.

 

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