Nova PhDs

There have been several significant events in the graduate program recently.

At the end of March Naz Pantaloni defended his dissertation proposal titled “The Im/Possibility of Democracy: Derrida and Habermas”

On Tuesday night Adriel Trott defended her dissertation titled “The Challenge of Physis: Reconciling Nature and Reason in Aristotle’s Politics”

Yesterday Ashley Vaught defended his dissertation titled “The Specter of Spinoza in Schelling's Freiheitsschrift”

(I was unfortunately unable to make any of these events.)

As many of you know already, on April 6 Mike Brogan, his wife Meghan and daughter Frances welcomed Gabriel Brogan to the world. Mike et al. will be moving to Maryland. He is set to take up his new job at St. John's.

What sort of outreach are we doing to invite these new phds to join our discussion? While I am still here at Villanova I do not mind helping out . . . but I need some info. (hint, hint, Joe).

On a final note: a panel on Hannah Arendt consisting of myself, Liam Kavanagh and Azadeh Erfani was accepted for the upcoming SPEP conference.

Well, friends, I am leaving VU. I have accepted a good tt offer from the City University of New York-York College, beginning in August.

August will mark 14 years since I came to Villanova; Walter was in his first term as grad director, Denny and Sally had just arrived, Maria Carl was teaching Aquinas, Larry Stepelevich was teaching Hegel, and the only other person on this blog there that long ago was Chris Diehm. A lot has changed.

Note the new email for personal communication: timothy.w.kirk@gmail.com

--Tim

Folks -

A bit of news: Tim Kirk was (I believe) recently appointed to the National Ethics Committee of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. You can find their website at : http://www.nhpco.org/templates/1/homepage.cfm

Oh, another quick note: Several Villanova folks will be down in Fredericksburg, Va in early April for the North American Sartre Society meeting. I count: myself and the members of my panel (Dera Sipe and Rebecca Goldner of the VU graduate program), Farhang, and Jess Elkayam (sp?) who is also in the graduate program. Where else are VU people showing up? (Why wasn't the Hermeneutics Society meeting advertised here too?)

Made a crucial error in my previous post. Ed defended his dissertation PROPOSAL, not his dissertation. Apologies.

Yesterday, I attended the dissertation defense of one Edward Kazarian. It was entitled, “The Science of Events: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis.” Committee is Carvahlo (chair), Walter, and Tom Busch. Room was full. I could not really tell you what the proposal was about, but that is largely due to my ingornace of the topic area and the highly specialized nature of Ed's project.

I wish Ed well!

Before too much time passes I would like to note the following:
A few weeks ago Michael Brogan successfully defended his dissertation on Levinas. It was nice to catch up a bit with Mike and his wife Meghan. Reflecting on changes in the graduate program over the last few years I was struck by the fact that although the room was full for Mike's defense there are now very few if any courses in which Levinas' works are systematically studied.

Two weeks ago Raoni Padui sucessfully defended his dissertation proposal. Raoni is writing on the theme of the transcendental in Hegel and Heidegger. The event was held in a seminar room in the Saint Augustine Center and there were so many people present that a few of us had to sit on the floor . . . including yours truly.

time to comb through the JFP (just came out yesterday) and try to help our worthy colleagues find good positions. i just finished going through it this morning, and the following is what i have found in terms of listings mentioning continental. if anyone catches one i missed, be sure to add it in; more importantly, if anyone has any info. that might benefit our people, please post it here. if it's too "inside," you might want to just post a note indicating to our people to drop you an email.

24. Fordham: Asst., 3-2, AOS Continental
61. New School: Asst., 2-2, AOS c. 19
62. New School: Assoc., 2-2, “traditional” New School area of strength (e.g. Continental)
70. UMass-Boston: Asst. or Assoc., 3-3, Pragmatism or Critical Theory (esp. Habermas)
80. Catholic U.: Open rank, 3-2, AOS: Gn. philosophy (esp. Kant).
100. Loyola College, MD: Asst., Gn. Idealism.
107. Penn State: Rank open, 2-2, AOS Phenomenology (esp. Husserl).
129. Salisbury U.: Asst., AOC Continental and Phil. Rel.; 3-3.
138. Washington and Jefferson, PA: 3-1-3; teaching needs include Continental, race, gender.
139. Washington and Lee: AOS Continental.
142. Belmont U., Nashville: Asst./Assoc., 4-4, AOS c. 19-20
170. USF, Tampa: Full or Assoc., AOS open, but esp. c. 18-19, 2-2
172. Bellarmine, Louisville: T/T, c. 18-19, 4-4.
175. Grand Valley State, Allendale, MI: Asst., AOS Continental (also Aesthetics), 3-3.
210. Illinois Institute of Tech., Chicago: one year fellowship. c. 19-20, American, biology, neurosciences, lang., feminist, phil. rel.
218. Missouri State U., Springfield: Asst., 3-3, Modern and Continental.
226. SIU-Edwardsville: Asst. Prof., 3-3, Contemporary Continental. Also Phil. lit., art, film, etc.
268. U-T Austin, Rank open, 2-2, AOS History: Ancient, Early modern, or post-Kantian Continental
273. Boise State: AOS Open, but need ethics. Also need Kant, c. 19, Medieval.
275. Cal State Long Beach: AOS History, esp. ancient and c. 19-20 continental.
287. Loyola Marymount, Los Angeles: Asst., 3-3, AOS Phenomenology (esp. Husserl)
294.-296. UC-Berkeley: 2 are open rank; 1 is Asst. Prof. AOS Open, AOC Open, though Continental among preferences.

and in "Canadia":
306. Concordia, Montreal, Quebec: T/T, Contemporary Continental. (Matthias is directing this search.)
310.-313. University of Ottawa: one of these is AOS French philosophy.
314. University of Toronto: Assoc. or Full, AOS c. 20 continental (esp. phenomenology)

Hi All:

A few things from here:

Andy Davis will be defending in a few weeks, on Hegel and Plato. Not sure who is on his committee.

Also heard a rumor that Mike Brogan will be defending in November, which is a nice suprise. He hasn't been back, but apparently has decided to finish up the dissertation.

Joe and Greg were to get married this summer; how did that go (yes, I could simply ask Greg, who is mere yards away daily)?

Finally, Farhang and Emily should be welcoming a child in the next few weeks.

All of this is very exciting!

Regarding the discussion a few months ago on academic attire, I'm curious if anyone on the list has had a gown made other than the one we were given at graduation, and what you chose to do to customize it? Did anyone end up taking the plunge??
--Tim

So, Joe, how was your trip to Belgium? You gave a general lecture and then led a seminar?

I heard from Matt Groe recently - he has accepted a 3 year position at Jacksonville University down in Florida.

I noticed the following on the Leiter report the other day:

Leigh M. Johnson (Penn State) hired by Rhodes College. AOS: 19th/20th C. Continental, Social and Political Philosophy.

Leigh tells me that she is to defend before the end of the semester.

If any of you are going to be in Belgium in early May, you might give me a shout as I am going to be in Leuven giving a lecture at the Institute of Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The lecture, on May 10, will be on Max Horkheimer's moral theory. The next day I will give a doctoral seminar on architecture and democracy that will contain some of the same material as the paper I gave at SPEP on the panel with Ammon and Ted. Both are hosted by the Institute's Center for Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy.

This will be my first time in Leuven, or Belgium for that matter. I will probably have a couple days to myself. Any of you have any advice on what one should do and see there?

Since the program is out for April's Central APA, I figured I would post the info on the panel I am going to be on:

Friday, April 20
II-H. Colloquium: Crossing the Analytic-Continental Divide

9:00-10:00 a.m.
Chair: Joshua Shaw (Penn State Erie, The Behrend College)
Speaker: Scott C. Davidson (Oklahoma City University)
“The Scandal of Philosophy: Cavell and Levinas on the Problem of Skepticism”
Commentator: Tyler Roberts (Grinnell College)
10:00-11:00 a.m.
Chair: Cristina Lafont (Northwestern University)
Speaker: Benjamin Bayer (University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign)
“Taking Sellarsian Holism Seriously”
**Graduate Student Travel Stipend Winner**
Commentator: John Fennell (Grinnell College)
11:00 a.m.-Noon
Chair: Joseph K. Schear (California Polytechnic State University–San Luis Obispo)
Speaker: Joseph C. Berendzen (Loyola University–New Orleans)
“Is Coping Nonconceptual? On Merleau-Ponty, Dreyfus, and McDowell”
Commentator: Joseph Neisser (Sam Houston State University)

I don't think there are any other Villanova-related people on the main program. I don't know about the group program. Anyone going to be in Chicago for the conference?

hi all,

i'm currently trying to figure out what to do with an upper-level course on 19th and 20th century continental philosophy i'm revamping for the fall. the main problem is that i'm a little constrained by our rental system at WCU. students pay a fee each semester and are entitled to get the main course text for each course they take. so for most of our courses, we try to get some kind of anthology as the primary text. we can have the students buy supplementary texts, as well, but due to the economic constitution of our students, it's generally expected that these not run to more than a $40-50 addition.

my big problem is that i can't find a good anthology that i like. we've used the blackwell reader in the past, but i'm not super happy with the selections it includes. and then there's the kearney reader, but it doesn't look like what i'm after either. here's the way i'd like to structure the course:

4 units,
1 -- philosophy, history, and freedom (primarily hegel and marx)
2 -- technology and art (heidegger's technology and origin of the work of art essays)
3 -- god and man (mainly kierkegaard and nietzsche, but i wouldn't mind throwing in some hegel, marx, and feuerbach)
4 -- modern existentialism (sartre and de beauvoir)

one obvious solution would just be to excerpt small selections within copyright laws from a bunch of things and put them up as pdf's on my webpage, but i have found that our students tend to read less when they are forced to pull things off the web like that.

so, any suggestions for either a good anthology or a couple of anthologies that would capture a decent amount of this sort of stuff?

hi all,

i'm going to be accompanying a contingent of students from Western Carolina traveling to the National Conference for Undergraduate Research this April at Dominican University in San Rafael, CA. anyone else going to be down there, or going to be sponsoring students' papers?

hope all of you are well --

I could use some help.

I would like to do a long unit on American political development in the 20th Century. As a model for what I am looking for, think Richard Rorty's "Achieving our Country." He offers a narrative, analysis, and prognosis of liberal/left thought from roughly the New Deal to the late 1990's. Does anyone know of a similar sort of work -- or, say, an essay or chapter of a book - that would do something similar but from a conservative perspective? I have looked at D'Souza's "Letters to a Young Conservative," but it isn't the quality of Rorty's work (and it offers an inordinate amount of time to various "stunts" he and his friends pulled at Dartmouth). -- Any suggestions are welcome.

Hi Jamie -
I must confess I am a bit surprised that no one else has written. I think SPEP was an unqualified success.
I was not in on the organization/administration side of things, but I think that Walter and the core of graduate students made sure that everything ran professionally and smoothly. The facilities were for the most part adequate for the task (I attended a few sessions at which it was possible to hear talking/laughing/cheering next door - I imagine this is just a reality of conferences at hotels though).
At the last minute I was given the opportunity to moderate a session, but in doing so I missed Farhang's panel. The feedback I received on Farhang's session and the other sessions with VU folks -- and there were quite a few -- was positive. Hopefully you will hear from, for instance, Farhang, Joe, Ammon, and Ted about their session.
There was an author's session on Caputo. His new "The Weakness of God" is out. He received more praise than criticism. One of the commentators - whose name I cannot now recall - at one point in the session revealled his t-shirt which carried a picture of Nietzsche and the inscription "What would Nietzsche do?" There was also an author's session on Walter Brogan's "Heidegger and Aristotle: THe Twofoldness of Being." I was not able to attend, but I believe that so many people showed up that it was moved to a larger room. (I may be confusing the attendance at his author's session with the audience for his lecture on Agamben and the state of exception. In any case, Walter drew large crowds.). I did not attend Badiou's talk, or Wendy Brown's.
The highlight of the event for me was the opportunity to see so many friends. Our graduate community is now spread out all over the place, yet we are a pretty tight bunch. I love it. Some people had good news to share (and I will let him/them share it). Some people brought along their good news, so to speak: we met Mike and Shannon's daughter and saw again Ammon and Heather's daughter. There were 20+ of us out for dinner Friday night; kids at one end, the married, the newly engaged, and the bachelors spread out from there. We are a growing community, literally and figuratively.

*On a wholly different matter: because I mentioned to a few of you that I would try it again . . . last sunday I did indeed run the NYC marathon for the second time, and I actually did meet my goal: I beat my previous time by 10 minutes and 6 seconds. Lance Armstrong beat my time by almost 2 hours . . . but at least I came in ahead of the guy in the rhinoceros costume!

Any post-SPEP reflections to share with those of us who weren't there? I haven't been to SPEP in years, but I enjoy hearing dispatches from the front.

So, I just took a few minutes and went through the latest JFP looking for continental positions. Here's what I found. What think you?

6. Bridgewater State College (MA) – c. 19 Continental
29. Fordham – Critical Theory
83. James Madison (VA) – c. 20 Continental
91. Penn State – c. 19 or Medieval
109. Villanova – Contemporary Continental
124. Florida International – Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Critical Theory
130. Rhodes College (TN) – c. 19 and 20 Continental
138. UNC-Wilmington – c. 19 and 20 existential/phenomenological traditions
151. Vanderbilt – Ethics, Phenomenology, or Feminist Philosophy
159. Indiana University South Bend – c. 19 and 20 Continental
164. University of Dayton – Continental/post-modern philosophy
183. Wright State University (OH) – Continental
184. Augustana College (SD) – Open, but prefer Early Modern, c. 19, and/or Continental
245. University of Kansas – c. 19 and 20 Continental
255. California State University, Fullerton – Contemporary Continental
260. California State University, Los Angeles – Continental
265. Northern Arizona University – Continental
285. University of California, Riverside – c. 19 and/or 20 European
298. Carleton University (Ontario) – c. 19 and 20, or Ancient
299. Concordia University (Montreal) – Kant and German Idealism
304. University of Ottawa – French Philosophy
317. University of Alberta (Edmonton) – Continental

See you all at SPEP on Thursday!

hi all,

don't know who else is going to be at the eastern APA this year, but i saw in the proceedings that just came, that Adam Miller is on the main program. he's doing a colloquium paper on badiou and marion, saturday morning (12/30) at 9-11 am. alexi is commenting on it.

joe, there's a symposium on phenomenology and perception i'm sure you'd be interested in, with dreyfus and mcdowell speaking, and john haugeland commenting.