Sarah Carey
Sarah Carey is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy. She has been a Dissertation Fellow with the Center for Democratic Deliberation and a Graduate Student Resident in the Humanities Institute. She will defend her dissertation, titled “A Promise to Witness Faithfully: Complex Communication Across Incommensurable Differences in Lugones and Derrida” on April 18, 2024. Her dissertation brings together decolonial feminism and deconstruction to offer an elaborated account of the resistant practice Lugones names “complex communication.” Her project argues that complex communication is not only a resistant political strategy for building coalitional relations across deep social differences; in the wake of colonialism’s communicative barriers, communicating complexly is also an ethical responsibility.
Email: sjc488@psu.edu
Areas of Specialization:
20th Century Continental Philosophy
Feminist Philosophy
Areas of Competency:
Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Critical Phenomenology
Teaching Interests:
Philosophy of Film and Literature
19th Century Continental Philosophy
Critical Philosophy of Race
Tiesha Cassel
Tiesha Cassel (she/they) is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy and African-American and Diaspora Studies. Her dissertation, Black Feminist Worldbuilding at the Limits of Philosophy, explores Black feminist critiques of Western metaphysics through the idea of Black Feminist Worldbuilding.
Email: tac47@psu.edu
Areas of Specialization:
20th Century Continental Philosophy
Africana Philosophy
Feminist Philosophy, esp. Black Feminist Philosophy
Areas of Competency:
Critical Philosophy of Race
Critical Theory
Philosophy of Religion
Political Theology
Selected Publications:
Cassel, Tiesha. “A Genealogy of Speaking Out of Turn: Tracing the Philosophical Legacies of Black Women in America.” In Non-Canonical Women Philosophers and Feminisms. Hildesheim: Universitätsverlag: Olms Verlag, 2024.
Corinne Lajoie
Corinne Lajoie (they/them) is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Crawford Graduate Fellow in Ethical Inquiry at the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State University. Their dissertation, “Beyond Accommodation: Disability Access as a Collective Responsibility,” exposes problems with dominant conceptions of access in society, arguing that minimal compliance with the law does not yield meaningful access for disabled people. Instead, we must move beyond a focus on accommodation and treat access as a collective social responsibility.
Email: cvl5810@psu.edu
Areas of Specialization:
Ethics
Feminist Philosophy
Social Philosophy
20th Century Continental Philosophy, esp. Phenomenology
Areas of Competency:
Bioethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Philosophy of Medicine
Teaching Interests:
Existentialism
Philosophy of Trust
Disability and Technology
Selected Publications:
2021 Lajoie, C. “The Problems of Access: A Crip Rejoinder via the Phenomenology of Belonging.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 8(2): 318-337.
2020 Lajoie, C. “Sense and Normativity: Merleau-Ponty on Levels of Embodiment and the Disorientations of Love.” Chiasmi International. Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty, 22: 393-407.
2019 Lajoie, C. “A Critical Phenomenology of Sickness.” Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 23(2): 48-67.
2019 Lajoie C. “Bodies at Home: A Feminist Phenomenology of Disorientation in Illness.” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 34(3): 546-569.
Ashley Lamarre
Areas of Specialization:
Critical Philosophy of Race
Feminist Philosophy
Areas of Competency:
Black Aesthetics
Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Selected Publications:
Ben Randolph
Ben Randolph is defending his dissertation in April 2023. He is a Fellow at the Rock Ethics Institute for 2022-2023, he was a Resident at the Penn State Humanities Institute for Summer 2021, and he is a Beinecke Scholar. His dissertation reconstructs Adorno’s conception of hope in conversation with Kant, Habermas, and Honneth’s alternative approaches to the concept. He has published and presented on topics in the history of philosophy, continental philosophy, social and political philosophy, and modernist literature.
Email: bmr21@psu.edu
Areas of Specialization:
Social and Political Philosophy, esp. Critical Theory
20th-Century Continental Philosophy
Areas of Competency:
Philosophy of Race
Kant and 19th-Century Continental Philosophy
Literary Theory
Teaching Interests:
Ethics
Psychoanalysis
Theories of Capitalism and Colonialism
Iziah Topete
Iziah C Topete is the Sparks Fellow for 2023-2024. His dissertation, “Cugoano’s Political Theory for Redressing Slavery: Challenging Locke,” bridges his specializations in modern philosophy and critical philosophy of race. His study focuses on the African abolitionist Cugoano and his communitarian theory of natural rights vis-à-vis philosophers such as Hobbes, Pufendorf, Locke, and other abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp. His research agenda is to develop granular interpretations of the intellectual visions of black anti-slavery theorists to challenge the privilege philosophers place on the canonical narrative of the social contract. The contractarian position was incapable of adequately addressing the wrongs of transatlantic slavery and antebellum slavery.
Email: ict5031@psu.edu
Areas of Specialization:
History of Modern Philosophy
Critical Philosophy of Race
Kant
Areas of Competency:
Latin American Philosophy
Metaphysics
Ethics
Continental Philosophy
Wayne Wapeemukwa
Wayne is a Graduate Fellow at the Humanities Institute and SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship holder who will be completing his dissertation, “Partisans of the Soil: Land, Race, Capital, and Métis Dispossession,” in Spring 2023. His research reanimates dialogue between Marxism and Indigenous political theories as they engage questions of land, race, capital, and history. He specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century Marxism, its uptake among Indigenous activists, as well as Indigenous-feminist approaches to decolonization.
Email: wrw37@psu.edu
Areas of Specialization:
Social and Political Philosophy, esp. Marxism and Critical Theory
Indigenous and Decolonial Theories
19th – 20th century Continental Philosophy
Areas of Competency:
Critical Philosophy of Race
Indigenous and Decolonizing Pedagogy
Selected Publications:
“Oedipal Empire: Psychoanalysis, Indigenous Peoples, and The Oedipus Complex in Colonial Context,” in Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalytic Theory. Ed., Sheldon George and Derek Hook. Routledge Press. (2021) (LINK)
“Land, Water, Mathematics, and Relationships: What Does Creating Decolonizing and Indigenous Curricula Ask of Us?” in Education Studies, v.57, no. 3, pp. 345-363. Co-authored with Dr. Hollie Kulago, Paul Guernsey, and Matthew Black. (2021) (LINK)
“Contagion Castration: Lacan’s Extimacy and Fanon’s Sociogeny on Anti-Indigenous Environmental Racism and COVID-19,” Contours, Issue 10 (Summer 2020) (LINK)
Nicole Yokum
Nicole is currently a graduate fellow at the Humanities Institute completing her dissertation, “The Politics of Attachment: Toward a Critical Theory of Affect.” Her project explores how emotional dispositions become distorted under conditions of capitalist, racist, sexist, and heterosexist oppression, excavating resources from early critical theory in conjunction with contemporary feminist, queer and affect theory. Using attachment styles as a heuristic for interpreting modes of relating to the socio-political order, she reclaims the value of affective “pathologies” – through the lens of insecure attachment – as an ethical and politically productive response to oppression
Email: nqy5050@psu.edu
Areas of Specialization:
Social and Political Philosophy
Continental Philosophy, esp. Frankfurt School, Psychoanalysis, and Foucault
Feminist Philosophy
Areas of Competency:
Queer and Affect Theory
Critical Philosophy of Race
Ethics
Teaching Interests:
19th Century Philosophy, esp. Nietzsche
Kant, esp. First Critique
Black Feminism