Nova PhDs

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.

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

Classes started today here at Loyola. While it might seem odd to be terribly excited about the end of summer break, the start of the fall semester is pretty big here--since we haven't had a fall semester since 2004! Katrina hit on what was supposed to be the first day of classes (tomorrow, as I am sure tv has let you all know, is the anniversary) last fall. Given the circumstances, it is pretty great to be here reading syllabi to a room full of students. And with Ernesto seemingly coming nowhere near here, we should be sitting pretty (for now...).

okay, so i think i've decided just to do the standard black with PhD blue velvet panels. the next questions are, what company did those of you who already have robes use, and how much should i expect to pay for a quality gown? i probably need to order it this week to get it before our august 5 graduation that i have to attend...

It's of course that time of the year. Unfortunately, I will not be able to do attend graduation at AU this year (my first) since my sister is graduating the very same day from Bryn Mawr. But I hae been thinking about this issue for a while. I really wish we had a proper cap and gown for our phd. Being the only doctoral program at Nova, we don't have our own school's colors, or gown. Other schools do. The generic cap and gown we got from Nova for graduation had one major virtue: it was free. But it is alrady falling apart.

Is there anyway we could start a tradition of cap and gowns? I was thinking about buying a typical philosophy phd online — with the blue stripes — to have for good, but it'd be nice to have a nova one. Any thoughts?

(By the way, Why is there a comment period? Is there dairy in comment for them to expire?)

I had a dream last night that Jean-Luc Nancy was an analytic philosopher. He was apparently considered a "logical fallist" which was a philosophically defensible reworking of sophistry.

Chris Diehm is having trouble posting, so I am putting this up for him:

"I just wanted to let everyone know that I was on NPR's "Talk of the
Nation" program today (2/2/06). They did a special live broadcast from
Wausau, Wisconsin, and in the second part of the show the subject was
hunting. I was a panelist along with three others, and my role was to
talk about some of the ethical issues connected to hunting. I'm sure most
VU folks missed it (it seems that in most large-city areas, only 1 hour
of the program is aired, and my panel occurred in the second hour), but
you can access the show for another 24 hours by going to NPR's
website--www.npr.org--and follow the links for "Talk of the Nation.""

(Sorry I have not said much recently. I have been meaning to respond to Jaime's entry on the cont/analytic post but things have been a little crazy.)

You all may have run across the article Ivan Tribble in the Chronicle. (It requires subscription; let me know you have no means of getting the piece.) It basically advised folks on the market, as well as young untenured faculty to worry about their blogs. Tribble contended that since hiring committee members tend to google candidates, having a blog — personal or professional — may hurt one's chances.

I just read this piece about someone getting fired because of a blog. Granted, she was fired from DeVry and not Harvard, but it does show that this could be an issue.

On our blog, mostly folks who have a phd AND a job post stuff. Nothing here is of the nature that would be detrimental to our careers either, I think. Would anonymous blogs be better?

An update on my status:

I am currently in western North Carolina, sponging off of Whitmire. I had previously been staying in a sort of Catholic commune in Memphis--long story. In any event, I am keeping active academically, at least insofar as John has arranged for me to give a lecture at Western Carolina. Interestingly, I spoke to a 2nd Grade class in downtown Memphis on Monday (again a long story), so I am thinking of turning this into a lecture tour. Look for me in your town...

Ahoy,

I figured I would post a response to John's query on the main page for all to easily see--anyway, I am in Memphis, safe and sound. Hopefully I will have a home and job to return to in a few days...

so, if joe can figure out how to get us some categories (i don't see anything myself), this would presumably go under "teaching" and "conferences.

i don't know how many of you know about the NCUR, but it's a pretty big conference that you might encourage some of your best students to submit abstracts to this fall (online abstract submission is oct. 3-dec. 2, 2005). the papers don't have to be complete at that time. if they are accepted, they're invited to present at the conference at the beginning of april (6-8). it's usually mostly juniors and seniors presenting, but the director of the honors college here at Western Carolina tells me that he actually had one freshman from his honors tutorial get a paper accepted this past year.

i mention this for a few reasons.
1) it's apparently a great opportunity for the students to share their work on a variety of topics (they do several phil, english, etc. panels) with each other, to meet other top notch students from around the country, see how they measure up, get a publication on their record (for those who are seriously considering grad school), and so forth.

2) i take it that it would look very nice to our various administrators (particularly for those of us coming up for tenure in a few years), for any of us to have students accepted.

3) this year (2006 i mean), the conference will be held at UNC-Asheville (which started the conference 20 years ago), so if any of you were funded by your schools to accompany your student(s) to the conference, you'd get the chance to spend some time in beautiful western north carolina and visit me in west asheville!

here is the link, if y'all are interested.

i was just reading through the spep program and was struck by a few things. the first (which we already discussed a couple months ago) is just how many villanovans are going to be giving papers, moderating, etc. it's really amazing; it's like we're taking over the organization. next year should be a lot of fun back in philly (party at ammon and heather's? ;)

second thing i noticed is that there seems to be a bit more of what i'd call "classical" phenomenology than at a couple of spep's past — several husserl panels, some M-P, and a couple of sartre panels (including the one with all the big hitters — busch, bernasconi, flynn, martin). i remember one where there was not even a sartre panel.

third thing — there doesn't seem to be quite as much heidegger as in years past. there's still a lot, but it just doesn't seem to me as heidegger-heavy.

finally — i calculated the acceptance rate for the 2004 conference at about 32% (101 accepted/311 submitted) from the business minutes, so good job to y'all who are presenting this year! (i do feel bad now for not submitting anything, but i really just wanted to get the job search behind me this past year. let's start planning some good panels for next year now!)

on to logistical matters: as long as i can get some money from my department, i'm planning to come out just to hit a few panels and catch up with what everyone is working on now, etc. (i will probably fly out thursday morning and back to asheville on sunday — anyone want to split a room? i should know something about money relatively soon, i think.) reply here or drop me an email if you like.

Today, Leiter has had some stuff up on his blog regarding "philosophical genealogy"--meant in the straightforward sense of lineage based on dissertation directors. Obviously, all of the stuff on his blog has to do with analytic philosophers. I started thinking about ours, though it is really hard to draw out. For those of us who worked under Busch, I could only go back as far as our "grandfather"--John O. Riedl. He got his PhD from Marquette in 1930, but I don't know under whom.

As you might imagine, Ammon's is the most imediately impressive--IF we accept habilitations and dissertations. If you allow for that (and I don't see why we shouldn't), one can do the following: Ammon-Denny-Gadamer-Headgear-Heinrich Rickert-Wilhelm Windelband-Hermann Lotzes. Lotzes is the last one I could figure...

Any more thoughts on this?