Fall 2017

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY WITH A DIFFÉRANCE!

DePaul University

Department of Philosophy

2352 N. Clifton Suite 150

Chicago, IL 60614 las.depaul.edu/

philosophy

Speakers & Conferences 2-6 Department & Faculty News 7-12 Graduate News 13-18 Alumni News 19-21 Undergrad Core Courses 22

Greetings from the

Retrospect and

Prospect

It's been a busy start to aca-

demic year 2017-18. Autumn

quarter began with the wel-

coming of our new Graduate

Fellows, Eric Aldieri, Jessica

Avery, Laura Campos, Bryan

Maddox, and Sarah Simms, as

well as ENS Exchange student

Raphaëlle Serero. Our program

featured memorable presenta-

tions by visiting speakers Peggy

Kamuf (University of Southern

California) and John Lysaker

(Emory). In the middle of the

quarter came the 56th annual

meeting of the Society for Phe-

nomenology and Existential

Philosophy (SPEP), which this

year convened in Memphis,

Tennessee and featured over

45 DePaul faculty, graduate

students, and alumni—an

astonishing representation and

a testament to the strength

and enduring success of our

PhD program. Special kudos go

to Ashley Bohrer (PhD 2016,

currently at Hamilton College)

and Güçsal Pusar (PhD candi-

date), who won two of the

three major prizes awarded at

SPEP (see inside for details).

Congratulations to both of

them on this terrific achieve-

ment! Back home, three of our

PhD students successfully de-

fended their dissertations last

quarter: Floyd Wright, Selin

Islekel, and Kristina Lebedeva.

In November, we hosted a ma-

jor conference on Critique in

German Philosophy, organized

by Maria Acosta and Colin

McQuillan. The conference was

a major success, featuring

many prominent national and

international scholars

(including several of our own

faculty), and was thoroughly

enjoyed by all those who par-

ticipated.

It has been an eventful start to

the year in the university,

which in November inaugurat-

ed its first lay President, Dr

Gabriel Esteban. The university

generally, and by extension the

philosophy department, faces a

number of challenges going

forward, especially that of de-

clining enrollments due largely

to changing demographics.

Within the department, a cur-

riculum review committee has

been established to examine

our undergraduate program

and consider possible enhance-

ments. Meanwhile our pro-

gram as a whole, both under-

graduate and graduate, is un-

dergoing a 2-year process of

Academic Program Review.

Last but not least, our new

philosophy department web-

site launched recently, bringing

a fresh new look to our online

presence. If you haven't al-

ready done so, check it out.

I hope that everyone enjoyed a

restful yet productive winter

break. As we look ahead to

winter and spring quarters, a

busy agenda beckons, including

our annual Graduate Student

Colloquium, a Graduate Stu-

dent Workshop, and a confer-

ence on materialism featuring

keynote speaker Sylvia Federici

(Hofstra University), as well as

several visiting speakers and a

meeting of the Chicago Area

Consortium in German Philoso-

phy. I encourage everyone to

participate in all of these

events and to make the most

of the philosophical opportuni-

ties they afford. Welcome to

the New Year!

William McNeill

Professor & Chair, Philosophy

DEPAUL UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

PHILOSOPHY@DEPAUL

VISITING

Page 2 Phi losophy@DePaul

Fa l l 2017

VISIT OUR EVENTS PAGE FOR FURTHER DETAILS: las.depaul.edu/philosophy/about/events

The Department of Philosophy wishes to thank our visiting speakers for their memorable presentations during Autumn Quarter 2017

Peggy Kamuf

University of Southern California

“Is Justice Burning?

On Secrecy and the Death Penalty”

John Lysaker

Emory University

“Voice Lessons:

Accounting for Ourselves as Ourselves”

Nathan Ross

Oklahoma City University

February 9, 2018

Fredrika Spindler

Södertörn University

March 9, 2018

Yannik Thiem

Villanova University

April 6, 2018

Deborah Cook

University of Windsor

April 20, 2018

VISITING

Winter & Spring Quarters 2018 Visiting Speaker Preview

Page 3 Phi losophy@DePaul

Fa l l 2017

VISIT OUR EVENTS PAGE FOR FURTHER DETAILS: las.depaul.edu/philosophy/about/events

Page 4 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Conference Recap

The 56th annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philos-

ophy was hosted by The University of Memphis, TN. The DePaul Department of

Philosophy was extremely well represented once again! A very reliable source has

reported that there were over 45 (!) current and former professors and students

of DePaul’s Department of Philosophy in attendance. Thirty of them were on the

program…. I think that’s the most we’ve ever had…

56th Annual SPEP Conference

SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY

TWO OF THE THREE ANNUAL SPEP CONFERENCE PRIZES

WERE AWARDED TO OUR OWN!

Ashley presented her award winning paper “Colorblind Racism in Ear-

ly Modernity: Race, Colonization, and Capitalism in the Work of

Francisco de Vitoria.” Ashley is currently a Visiting Assistant Profes-

sor at Hamilton College in New York.

Ashley Bohrer, PhD 2016

SPEP Junior Scholar Award

Güçsal presented his award winning paper “Heidegger on Kant, Finitude,

and the Correlativity of Thinking and Being.” He is currently com-

pleting his dissertation, titled “Kant, Heidegger, and the Metaphysics of

Metaphysics.”

Güçsal Pusar, PhD Candidate

SPEP Conference Paper Award

Page 5 Phi losophy@DePaul

Fa l l 2017

CRITIQUE IN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY

Conference Recap

The conference gathered a large number of national and international scholars, ex-perts on German Idealism, Romanticism, and Critical Theory. It was a big success! A volume collecting a final version of all the papers will come out with SUNY press.

María del Rosario Acosta López (Associate Professor of Philoso-

phy, DePaul University) and J. Colin McQuillan (Associate Profes-

sor of Philosophy, St. Mary’s University), were the organizers of a

Conference on Critique in German Philosophy at DePaul in

November 2017.

Page 6 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

42ND ANNUAL COLLEGIUM PHAENOMENOLOGICUM NATURES OF SPACE, SPACES OF NATURE

The Collegium Phaenomenologicum convened for its forty-second annual session in the Umbrian town of Citta di Castello at

the end of July. Participating faculty included our own Sean D. Kirkland , Richard A. Lee, Jr. and Peg Birmingham.

Conference Recap Continued

Planning for the next session has already begun. “Aristotle: Psuchê, Phusis, Anthrôpos” is planned for

July 9-27, 2018 with our own Prof. Sean D. Kirkland as Director. Check out the preview below.

Please see Collegium Phaenomenologicum for additional information.

The Collegium Phaenomenologicum will convene for its 43rd annual session in Città di Castello, Italy, from July 9–27, 2018. The Colle-gium is intended for faculty members and advanced graduate and postdoctoral students in philosophy and related disciplines. The core of the program consists in a series of lecture courses, individual lectures, and intensive text-based seminars. A participants conference will be held July 7-8.

Week 1: Psuchê and Phusis

Lecture Course by Will McNeill, DePaul University, USA

Lectures by Richard A. Lee/Christopher Long (DePaul University/Michigan State University), Charlotte Witt (University of New Hampshire), and Françoise Dastur (Université Nice Sophia Antipolis). —Plus a “Zôê –Drawing” Course by Artist-in-Residence Matthew Girson.

Week 2: Phusis and Psuchê

Lecture Course by Alejandro Vigo, Universidad de Navarra, España

Lectures by Ömer Aygün (Galatasaray Üniveritesi), Walter Brogan (Villanova University), and Emanuela Bianchi (New York University)

Week 3: Anthrôpos

Lecture Course by Claudia Baracchi, Universitá degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Italia

Lectures by Arianna Fermani (Università di Macerata), Alessandra Fussi (Università di Pisa), and Sara Brill (Fairfield University)

Page 7 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Academic Convocation 2017 & Adjunct News

Department of Philosophy

Faculty and staff gathered at the St. Vincent de Paul Parish Church for the annual Academic Convocation Thursday, Aug. 31, to begin DePaul University's 120th school year. Provost Marten denBoer and President A. Gabriel Esteban, Ph.D., spoke to the crowd and more than a doz-en awards and recognitions were presented. (DePaul Uni-versity/Jeff Carrion)

Left to right, Morgen MacIntosh-Hodgetts, Jennifer Burke, Jessica Holler, Heather Sevener, and Todd Kleine were presented with Staff Quality Service Awards during DePaul's annual Aca-demic Convocation. (DePaul University/Jeff Carrion)

STAFF QUALITY SERVICE AWARD RECIPIENTS

Danielle Meijer, Department of Philosophy Adjunct, was part of the "Haunted House" Interactive Hal-loween Exhibit sponsored by The DePaul Humanities Center. Danielle gave a live TED talk (about the hor-rors of TED talks). Danielle holds an M.A. in experimental psychology and teaches critical thinking at De-Paul University .

New Electronic Textbook!

Prof. David Lafferty, Department of Philosophy Adjunct, wrote an electronic Business Ethics

textbook, "Morals and Money" which has been published by Kendall Hunt Higher Education.

See: Kendal Hunt Website. David received his B.A. in English and his M.A. in Philosophy from

DePaul University. Following that, David earned his Doctor of Law (J.D.) from The John Marshall

Law School.

Prof. James Walker, Department of Philosophy Adjunct Professor, has accepted a position as Profession-al Lecturer in the Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies Program here at DePaul! James is the co-founder of the Asteroidea Health Alliance in Northern Uganda. The Alliance’s mission is to equip community-based health initiatives in East and Central Africa with the tools and resources to improve the health and well-being of their communities.

James received his PhD in Philosophy from SUNY Albany in 2004 and spent over a decade teaching phi-losophy at the university level. His research interests include ethical issues of war and non-violent means of achieving and maintaining peace, particularly in East and Central Africa. In 2011 James left

academia and took a more hands-on approach to the issues. He became a licensed Registered Nurse in 2013 and spent the next three years working as an RN on a medical cardiology unit at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany, NY. In the fall of 2016 James returned to academia with the project of bringing together the various insights and perspectives he had gained through both his practical and scholarly work on the issues of peace building and empowering community-based health initiatives in East and Central Africa. This appointment sounds like an excellent match!

New Position for our own James Walker!

Page 8 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Faculty

H. Peter Steeves has been busy during the past few months.

His chapter, “Given to Bewilderment, Hand to Limb,” was

published in the book, Ontologies of Nature: Continental Perspec-

tives and Environmental Reorientations. Then, in August, Peter

presented at two events in Chicago: a closing address and

workshop titled “Against Sustainability, For the Earth” at the

Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy at the Univer-

sity of Illinois at Chicago, followed by another talk titled

“What is a Person?,” which was delivered to the Internal

Medicine medical staff at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical

Center.

In September, Peter was invited to be the keynote speaker at The Pacific Association for the

Continental Tradition conference in San Francisco.

Peter was the recipient of The Suchar Innovation and Development Award from the College

of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at DePaul University.

Peter was asked to assist Director Bruce McDonald on a film called Dreamland . The film, written by Tony Burgess and

Patrick Whistler, is the sequel to the motion-picture Pontypool. Peter wrote an extensive treatment of the philosophical is-

sues at work in the script's narrative, and shared his thoughts with the crew and cast (including Stephen McHattie and Lisa

Houle). The film, shot in Belgium and Luxembourg, is scheduled for a summer 2018 release. Director Bruce McDonald

coined the term “Production Philosophy” to describe Peter’s participation.

The Newsletter congratulates Michael Naas on being awarded a prestigious Humanities Center Fellowship for his project on Don DeLillo--one of just three fellow-ships awarded for the 2018-20 term.

Well done, Michael, and richly deserved!

Humanities Center Fellowship Award - Michael Naas

Page 9 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Faculty

Daryl Koehn visited our neighbors up north in late October, presenting her pa-

per on the ethics of CEO apologies at the University of Toronto. Also in October,

The Institute for Business and Professional Ethics hosted the International Vin-

centian Business Ethics conference. During the annual Society for Business Eth-

ics conference in Atlanta, Daryl received from the Society of

Business Ethics the “Career of Outstanding Scholarly Achieve-

ment Award in the Field of Business Ethics” for her contribu-

tions in defining and shaping the discipline of business ethics.

Peg Birmingham travelled to London in November 2017 and delivered one of

the keynote addresses, Superfluity: Hannah Arendt’s Report on the Human

Condition at the Ethics of Coding: A Report on the Algorithmic Condition con-

ference held at the Institute of Contemporary Art.

Writer and researcher Yuk Hui and philosopher Peg Bir-

mingham explored the intersections between the prac-

tice of ethics and the technology of algorithms. The

‘algorithmic condition’ marks a contemporary moment

when the global economy and governmental control

function through an algorithmic networked environment.

Will McNeill's essay "Tracing Technē Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Legacy of Philosophy" was published in

Heidegger's Question of Being: Dasein, Truth, and History, ed. Holger Zaborowski (Catholic University of

America Press, 2017).

Will's essay "On the Essence and Concept of Ereignis: From Technē to Technicity" was published in After

Heidegger?, edited by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).

Yuk Hui

Page 10 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Faculty

The College of Liberal Arts and Socials Sciences recently awarded four of our professors a Summer Research Grant

to pursue research in their respective areas.

Summer Resear ch Grants

María Acosta will be using her grant to finish editing the transcripts of a seminar held in Strasbourg in the

summer of 2014 between Jean-Luc Nancy, one of the most prominent French philosophers alive, and a

group of graduate students who were studying with her at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. The

transcript still needs careful academic and editorial revision, the addition of footnotes throughout the

manuscript that will lead the reader to other places in Nancy’s work where he further develops the ideas

mentioned in some of his answers, and an introduction presenting the singular and original character of

the project. The Summer Research Grant will allow Maria to make the manuscript ready for publication.

The book, co-authored by Jean-Luc Nancy and Maria, together with the group of students who participat-

ed in the seminar, is tentatively titled Conversations on Community, Memory and Political Violence in Latin

America: A Dialogue with Jean-Luc Nancy.

Michael Naas will be using his grant to write a book-length manuscript on Hélène Cixous and Jacques

Derrida on the themes of photography, the telephone, and telepathy—major themes in the works of

both thinkers since the mid-1990s. As two of the best-known and most influential philosophers and liter-

ary theorists of the second half of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, Hélène

Cixous (1937-) and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) eventually became not just important interlocutors

but major influences and references for one another. Why They Clicked is an attempt to document the

mutual interests and influences between Cixous and Derrida, particularly in relation to their analyses of

various forms of technological reproduction and telecommunication, including photography and the

telephone, and the ways these are then deployed for a rethinking of everything from literature and

philosophy to mourning and telepathy.

H. Peter. Steeves received his grant to publish an essay in an anthology on the topic of Detective

Fiction and Chaos Theory. He will be focusing on the novels of Paul Auster and the mathematics of

fractals using the work of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and historian of science James Gleick.

This is an interdisciplinary project in many ways, one that brings together literature, mathematics,

physics, and philosophy. The main texts will be three of Paul Auster’s novels, City of Glass (1985),

Ghosts (1986), and The Locked Room (1986); philosophy texts by Judith Butler and Edmund Husserl;

and scientific and mathematical journal articles on Mandelbrot sets and the mathematics of fractals.

Auster’s novels are generally considered to be works of “postmodern” detective fiction in which de-

tectives are not so much solving a case as ruminating on what it means to be a character tasked with

“solving a case.”

Kevin Thompson will be using his funding for research and writing of an essay to be entitled “Hegel on

Virtue and, Institutions: Can there be a Genuinely Critical Patriotism?” The aim of the essay is to demon-

strate that the nineteenth century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) develops an important

and distinctive, though largely neglected, dismissed, or misunderstood, theory of virtue, one that, contra the

recent neo-Aristotelian revival of virtue ethics, assigns a robustly normative role to institutions in both the

acquisition and actual definition of a virtuous disposition. Hegel’s theory is often claimed to exemplify a

deeply conformist view. The aim of the essay is twofold: on the one hand, it will set forth a defense of He-

gel’s account against the charge of conformism, and, on the other, it will show that his theory actually lays

the groundwork for a genuinely critical form of virtue.

Page 11 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Faculty News

New Book! By H. Peter Steeves

On behalf of the Chair and the Department of Philosophy, we are pleased to

announce and celebrate the recent publication of H. Peter Steeves’s book,

Beautiful, Bright, and Blinding: Phenomenological Aesthetics and the

Life of Art (SUNY Press, 2017).

Through a careful analysis of concrete examples taken from everyday experi-

ence and culture, Beautiful, Bright, and Blinding develops a straightforward and

powerful aesthetic methodology founded on a phenomenological approach to

experience—one that investigates how consciousness engages with the world and thus what it

means to take such things as tastes, images, sounds, and even a life itself as art. H. Peter Steeves

begins by exploring what it means to see, and considers how disruptions of sight can help us

rethink how perception works. Engaging the work of Derrida, Heidegger, and Husserl, he uses

these insights about “seeing” to undertake a systematic phenomenological investigation of how

we perceive and process a range of aesthetic objects, including the paintings of Arshile Gorky,

the films of Michael Haneke, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, zombie films, The Simpsons, the

performance art of Rachel Rosenthal and Andy Kaufman, and even vegan hot dogs. Refusing

hierarchical distinctions between high and low art, Steeves argues that we must conceptualize

the whole of human experience as aesthetic: art is lived, and living is an art.

H. Peter Steeves

Daryl Koehn’s book The Nature of Evil translated into Farsi!

Dr. Koehn’s book The Nature of Evil has recently been translated into Farsi. In December, 2017 an entire session devoted to her book was held in Mashad, Iran. The session featured comments by Bahar Rahadoust, the translator, and by the prominent Iranian philosopher Dr. Mostafa Malekian. Congratulations Daryl!

Dr. Mostafa Malekian

H. PETER STEEVES AWARD ANNOUNCEMENT!

The Newsletter congratulates Peter Steeves for winning an "Integrating Purpose Exploration into the

Curriculum" award from DePaul. The award is part of the "Explore Your Purpose Initiative" at DePaul.

Peter won this award for his HON 350 class, the senior capstone seminar in the Honors program.

Page 12 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Faculty News - Humanities Center

Fake 1: In Conversation with Great Minds: Ricky Jay - Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Screening of Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay

With an acting résumé that includes work in film (e.g, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and as a

James Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies), television (e.g., “The X-Files” and “Deadwood”),

and stage (most notably as himself); a list of celebrated publications featuring stories and

analysis of scoundrels, fakes, cons, and scallywags; and a reputation as the greatest sleight-

of-hand artist in the world, Ricky Jay is at the top of his game in every pursuit he undertakes:

the Joker, the Ace, and all four Kings combined in the arts & humanities’ deck of cards. The

Humanities Center engaged in an evening of magic and conversation in October as it wel-

comed writer, actor, scholar, historian, artist, magician, and all-around-genius Ricky Jay.

The Horror of the Humanities V - Monday, October 30, 2017

"Haunted House" Interactive Halloween Exhibit & Screening of the film The Eyes of My Mother (2016)

The DePaul Humanities Center’s fifth-annual Hal-

loween event began, as always, with an avant-

garde “haunted house” featuring multimedia, in-

teractive posters, installation art, and exhibits

pointing to the horror of everyday life as well as

the relationship between horror and the history of

the humanities; continued with a screening of a

contemporary masterpiece of Americana horror,

The Eyes of My Mother; and concluded with a talk

and Q&A with the film’s director, Nicolas Pesce.

The 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution - Wednesday, November 8, 2017 Richard A. Lee, Jr. and H. Peter Steeves took part in a Russian Revolution Event, with Rick acting as defense counsel for Pi-nocchio in an "agitational trial" and Peter acting as the attorney prosecuting Pinocchio.

In November of 1917, Bolshevik workers and soldiers successfully overthrew the provisional government that had been estab-lished in Russia only eight months earlier following the dissolution of the Tsarist autocracy. Under the guidance of Vladimir Len-in, the Marxist revolution promised land for the peasants, power for the workers, and food for the poor. A century later, the DePaul Humanities Center examined these promises and explored some of the methods the revolutionaries devised to fulfill them. Putting theory into practice in an evening devoted to a radical questioning of the hierarchies of public gatherings and academic institutions, ideas were presented while the audience was invited to participate by making the ideas their own, con-sidering how best to give them power. Featuring live music, performance, theatre, a world-premiere film by Our Literal Speed, and reports on Party work (Helena Goscilo on the Women’s Section, Zachary Cahill on the status of The Parapsychology Initiative, and Wil-liam Nickell on the challenges of cul-tural transformation) the participa-tory assembly—our “soviet”—pondered the positive aspects of the revolution, what its spirit represent-ed, and what we might learn from it given our situation today.

Page 13 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Graduate Program News

Jennifer Gammage presented "Time’s Redemption: The Recurrence of Nietzsche’s Supra-

historical" at SPEP and also presented "The Atopos Role of Tychē and Automaton in

Heidegger’s Aristotle Einleitung of 1922" at the Heidegger Circle satellite session at SPEP.

Eric Aldieri presented the following papers at the following conferences:

"On Preemptive Eulogy: Tracing Hauntological Narratives through Post-Emo Music" at the

2017 Mid-Atlantic American and Pop Culture Association's Conference in Philadelphia, PA.

"Childhood as Disssent: Benjamin's Figure of the Child as a Response to Lee Edelman" at

Loyola University Chicago's 2017 Graduate Student Conference.

Evan Edwards presented The Concept of "Natural History" in Thoreau's Late Work, at The

Thoreau Society Annual Gathering & Bicentennial Celebration of Thoreau’s Life, Works, and

Legacy, July 11-16, 2017, Concord, Massachusetts.

Kieran Aarons gave the following talks:

“Ten Theses for a Post-Solidarity Politics”, Transformations of Critical Theory, Northwestern University,

November 2017.

“Furio Jesi and the Aporia of Insurrection”, Hospitality and its Other, Southern Illinois University, October 2017.

“What is a Destituent Pledge?”, The Big No Conference, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, April 2017.

Kieran is also editing a Symposium on Furio Jesi's work in Theory & Event, which will come out next year.

Jacob Singer presented his paper,

"Protecting the Market Against

Itself: The Institutional Regulation

of Economic Self-Interest in He-

gel's Philosophy of Right" in the

Emerging Scholars Program at the

Society for Business Ethics in At-

lanta, GA in August 2017.

JACOB RECEIVED THE FOUNDER'S AWARD AT THE CONFERENCE!

Page 14 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Graduate Program News

Dissertations Successfully Defended

Ege Selin Islekel success-

fully defended her disserta-

tion with distinction, titled:

Monstrous Visions:

Mechanisms of Defense

and Regimes of Visibil-

ity, on October 6, 2017.

Selin’s dissertation was

directed by Kevin Thomp-

son. Elizabeth Millán,

Richard A. Lee, Jr. and Lynne Huffer (Emory University)

were readers.

Congratulations, Selin!

Pictured L-R

Elizabeth Millán, Richard A. Lee Jr. and Selin Islekel, and Kevin Thompson

Thomas Floyd Wright suc-

cessfully defended his disserta-

tion, titled: The Perversion of

the Absolute: Religion and

Representation in Hegel's

Phenomenology of Spirit, on

September 29, 2017. Floyd’s

dissertation was directed by

Kevin Thompson. Peg Bir-

mingham and Richard A. Lee, Jr. were readers.

Congratulations, Floyd! Pictured L-R

Richard A. Lee Jr., Peg Birmingham, Floyd Wright, and Kevin Thompson

Kristina Lebedeva suc-

cessfully defended her

dissertation, titled: In

the Presence of Suffer-

ing: Toward a New

Understanding of Evil,

on November 2, 2017.

Kristina’s dissertation

was directed by H. Peter

Steeves. Peg Birming-

ham and Kevin Thomp-

son were readers.

Congratulations, Kristina!

Pictured L-R

Kevin Thompson, H. Peter Steeves, Kristina Lebedeva, and Peg Birmingham,

Page 15 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Richardson Fellowship Awards

Carlie Hughes

received a Richard-

son Fellowship to

study in France dur-

ing the Spring Quar-

ter 2018. She plans

to take a course in

Paris at Alliance

Française for a few months to improve

her French. Afterwards she plans

to volunteer through WWOOF, a non-

profit organization that links volunteers

with organic farmers in France. Working

on an organic farm will put Carlie in a

social situation where she would be able

to speak French every day, and the limits

on volunteer hours will allow her enough

free time to work on translation assign-

ments. Carlie’s study in French language

will be important for her research in in

the her studies. The French philosophers

she is particularly interested in are Henri

Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Ludovico

Zizzo received a

Richardson Fel-

lowship to study

in Munich, Ger-

many in Spring

Quarter 2018.

His research is

focused in continental philosophy. He

plans to gain access to the direct

sources of authors such as Nietzsche,

Heidegger, and the German Idealists,

and to be able to read and engage the

in rich secondary literature on such

authors and the debates in the dynamic

German intellectual and academic mi-

lieu. He plans to join the Ludwig-

Maximilians-University of Munich and

sees it as a huge opportunity to further

his ability in the German language that

will be of great benefit to his future

academic work.

Zhen Liang

received a

Richardson

Fellowship to

study French

during the

Spring Quarter

2018. French

is crucial to Zhen’s future projects,

especially her potential dissertation on

the hermeneutic interpretation of Ear-

ly Modern scientific writings. To im-

prove her French, she plans to take

courses from Alliance Française, en-

gaging with local people while sitting

in on some seminars at the École Nor-

male Supérieure and Sorbonne Uni-

versity.

Owen was awarded the Michael Mezey

Excellence in Teaching Award at the annual

department orientation held in early

September. Prof. Jason D. Hill, Teaching

Practicum Director, presented the award to

this “excellent” teacher.

Congratulations

Owen Glyn-Williams!

ANNUAL MICHAEL MEZEY EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING AWARD

Owen Glyn-Williams

2017

Page 16 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Jeta Mulaj, founded the Balkan Society for Theory and Practice. BSTP will hold its first workshop in Kosova, Prizren, in July 2018. The goal of the workshop is to orient current de-colonial and postcolonial discourses towards post-socialist Balkan countries. For more infor-mation, please visit: www.balkansocietytp.com.

UPCOMING EVENT: GRADUATE STUDENT

CRITICAL THEORIES WORKSHOP: FOUCAULT & ADORNO

Friday & Saturday, April 20-21, 2018, DePaul University

Keynote Speaker: Deborah Cook, University of Windsor

Prof. Cook’s new book is The Critical Matrix: Adorno and Foucault, forthcoming with Verso. Prof.

Cook received her doctorate from Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne in 1985. In Paris, she took courses with

Jacques Derrida at the École Normale, and with Michel Foucault at the Collège de France. To date, she

has published more than thirty articles on Adorno; five of them are reprinted in anthologies. A book she

edited, Theodor Adorno: Key Concepts, published by Acumen, appeared in 2008. Adorno on Na-

ture was also published by Acumen in 2011.

In addition to Prof. Cook’s keynote, there will be paper presentations by Chicago area graduate students

which aim to produce a dialogue between these two prominent twentieth-century social critics. There is also a year-long series of

reading groups on Adorno, Foucault, and secondary literature in conjunction with the workshop. For additional information, please

email: depaul.philosophy@gmail.com.

Retrospect: Evolution of the Philosophy Curriculum at DePaul DePaul bucked tradition when it added existentialist and phenomenology courses to the philosophy curricu-

lum in 1964. This departure marked the first major change to undergraduate programs offered by American

Catholic institutions in 200 years. It reflected an ideological struggle between Thomism, a type

of theology and philosophy typically taught in American Catholic schools, and existential phenomenology,

which was growing in popularity among Catholic scripture scholars. A doctoral program in philosophy was

launched three years later (1967), and it joined biological sciences and psychology as the first doctorates

offered at DePaul. That same year, the university introduced a

general education curriculum for all undergraduates. Students

took courses in humanities, natural sciences and mathematics,

philosophy-religion and social-behavioral sciences. These stu-

dents were an increasingly diverse group. During the 1960s, the

number of African-American students grew from approximately

150 to 500. The still-active Black Student Union was established

in 1968.

(DePaul Magazine, Spring 2017) Photo by DePaul University Special Collections and Archives

DUOS PARTICIPANTS 2017-2018

Page 17 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

DUOS Doctoral & Undergraduate Opportunities for Scholarship

Liberal Passions: On the Foundations of Social Con-

tract Theory and their Neoliberal Vicissitudes*

Graduate Student: Ashley Fleshman

Undergraduate Student: Margaret Nicosia

Faculty Advisor: Peg Birmingham, Ph.D.

Queerness as disruption of aesthetic realms: modern

and contemporary approaches to the beautiful and

compulsory heterosexualism.*

Graduate Student: Miguel Gualdrón

Undergraduate Student: Kelsey Cruz

Faculty Advisor: María Acosta, Ph.D.

Reason, Passion, and Alienation in Hegel and Sartre*

Graduate Student: Rachel Silverbloom

Undergraduate Student: Dominic Blanco

Faculty Advisor: Frédéric Seyler, Ph.D.

On the Relationship between Kant's Groundwork for

the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical

Reason

Graduate Student: Khafiz Kerimov

Undergraduate Student: Nathaniel Leonhardt

Faculty Advisor: Avery Goldman, Ph.D.

Laughing Matters: Philosophy's Other Bodies

Graduate Student: María Salvador

Undergraduate Student: Jude Lee

Faculty Advisor: Fanny Söderbäck, Ph.D.

Positive Law and Sovereignty

Graduate Student: Jeta Mulaj

Undergraduate Student: J Maxwell

Faculty Advisor: Frédéric Seyler, Ph.D.

"World" in Laozi's Daodejing: A Heideggerian Ap-

proach

Undergraduate Student: Kelly Cunningham

Graduate Student: Paul Turner

Faculty Advisor: Sean D. Kirkland, Ph.D.

Deconstruction of the Subject in Heidegger and Derrida

Graduate Student: David Maruzzella

Undergraduate Student: Léna Pican

Faculty Advisor: Elizabeth Rottenberg, Ph.D.

Politics as Peace, Politics as Conflict: Civility as a Politi-

cal Norm

Graduate Student: Owen Glyn-Williams

Undergraduate Student: Akiva Mattenson

Faculty Advisor: Kevin Thompson, Ph.D.

On behalf of the Philosophy DUOS Committee, Frédéric Seyler, María Acosta, and Sean Kirkland, we are very pleased to announce the

2017-2018 DUOS Awards.

The DUOS awards are funded by two sources: The Maimonides Endowment in Philosophy, the result of an anonymous grant; and the

College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. We sincerely appreciate the support of both the Maimonides donor and Dean Guillermo

Vasquez de Velasco for their continued support of the DUOS program.

* Funded by Maimonides Endowment

Page 18 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Graduate Program - Continued

Fall Winter Spring

Beyond Pleasure

PHL 400 – Special Topics in Traditional Philosophers Pleasure Unlimited: Plato’s Philebus, Derrida’s “Double Ses-sion” Michael Naas M 3:00-6:15 [H-I]

PHL 661 - Topics in Feminist Theory Judith Butler: Gender, Desire, Vulnerability Fanny Söderbäck W 3:00-6:15 [NP]

PHL 557 – Topics in Continental Philosophy Cruelty and Its Vicissitudes: Kant, Nietzsche, Freud Elizabeth Rottenberg M 3:00-6:15 [CE]

Nature and Knowledge

PHL 500 - Special Topics in the History of Philosophy Continental Philosophy of Sci-ence: Natural Laws Peter Steeves T 6:00-9:15 [H-II]

PHL 445 - Hume David Hume: Relation, Affect, Law Peg Birmingham TH 3:00-6:15 [H-II]

PHL 511 – Kant II Immanuel Kant: Critique of Practical Reason Avery Goldman TH 3:00-6:15 [H-II]

History, Genealogy

PHL 525 - Nietzsche Nietzsche and the Thinking of History Sean Kirkland W 3:00-6:15 [H-II]

PHL 559 – Foucault Foucault and the Question of Truth I Kevin Thompson T 3:00-6:15 [CE]

PHL 522 – Social and Political Philosophy Foucault and the Question of Truth II Kevin Thompson T 3:00-6:15 [NP]

Phenomenology, Perception, Aesthetics

PHL 415 – Aristotle I Aristotle’s De Anima: A Phenomenological Reading Will McNeill TH 3:00-6:15 [H-I]

PHL 565 - Merleau-Ponty I Desire and Distance: Renaud Barbaras’s reading of Merleau-Ponty Frédéric Seyler M 3:00-6:15 [CE]

PHL 601 – Seminar on Aesthetics Poetry and Philosophy in the German Romantics and Schopenhauer Elizabeth Millan W 4:00-7:15 [NP]

Teaching

Practicum

PHL 697 – Teaching Practicum 2nd Year Student Enrollment Requirement Jason Hill Tue. By Arrangement

PHL 697 – Teaching Practicum 3rd Year Student Enrollment Re-quirement Jason Hill Fri. By Arrangement

Distribution Requirement Key:

H-I = History of Western PHL (Ancient or Medieval) NP = Normative Philosophy H-II = History of Western PHL (Modern or 19th Century) CE = Contemporary European Philosophy

Graduate Courses 2017-2018

Page 19 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Alumni

Dr. Sina Kramer, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at Loyola Marymount University, dis-

cussed her book Excluded Within at University of Arkansas, Little Rock, in October 2017. The book

examines what was called America’s first multiracial riot, the 1992 Los Angeles Riot, 25 years later.

If a riot is the language of the unheard, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. argued, Dr. Kramer

asks what lessons the 1992 riots have for what we have been trained not to hear.

Dr. Kramer will also lead Loyola Marymount University’s study abroad program to London, Eng-

land, this coming Spring!

Excluded Within: The (Un)Intelligibility of Radical Political Actors Sina Kramer

Expands on feminist theories of intersectionality and develops the concept of constitutive exclusion

Contributes to political interpretations of riots and political action

Uses critical theory as a tool for interpreting politics

Sina Kramer (PhD 2011) Book Publication Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Loyola Marymount University.

Ann Hetzel Gunkel (PhD 1994) is the 2017 Excellence in Teaching Award winner of

Columbia College, Chicago where she is Associate Professor of Humanities & Cul-

tural Studies and serves as Humanities Coordinator.

Page 20 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Alumni

James Griffith, PhD 2014 In October, James gave a paper titled "The Ma-ternal Legacy of the Leviathan" at the Institute of European Studies and International Relations at Comenius University in Bratislava and another paper titled "Descartes' Choral Ode: On Rhetoric and Logic" at the "I Think Therefore I Teach: Evolutions in Early Modern Education" conference at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In September, he gave a paper titled "Contrecoeur, contretemps: The Dis-course on Method" at the "European Liberal Arts Education: Renewal and Reformation" conference and another paper titled "Hobbes's Maternal Legacy" at the Society for European Philosophy-Forum for European Phi-losophy Joint Annual Conference, both at the University of Winchester.

James also help to organize a successful conference at in Bratislava, Slovakia where he is an Assistant Professor of the History of Political Thought at Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts. The con-ference was sponsored by the Liberal Herald, an interdisciplinary academic platform founded in late 2012 by a group of undergraduate students at the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts (BISLA). The 2017 Academic Conference title was “(Dis)continuous Identities: Globalisation, Trauma,

David Gunkel (PhD 1996), Professor of Media Studies at Northern Illinois Uni-

versity, has just published a pair of essays on the moral opportunities and chal-

lenges of robots in the journal Ethics and Information Technology: "Mind the gap: re-

sponsible robotics and the problem of responsibility" and "The other question:

can and should robots have rights?" Both essays are available at https://

link.springer.com/journal/10676

Undergrad Alumni News

Page 21 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Terry Vaughan III (Philosophy 2012) completed his PhD in Education Policy Studies at the Univer-

sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Spring 2017. He joined DePaul in Spring 2017 as the Assis-

tant Director of the Arnold Mitchem Fellowship Program at DePaul.

The Mitchem Fellows program is open to high-performing students from populations underrepre-

sented in their fields in doctoral studies and the professoriate. The program extends McNair's ca-

pacity primarily by serving two categories of students not eligible for McNair: those who do not

meet TRIO's stringent income and first-generation status eligibility criteria, and those who aspire

to faculty careers in medicine and other STEM fields where the PhD may not be the terminal de-

gree.

Austin Woodruff (Philosophy 2017) graduated last Spring and started a

Chicago-based literary magazine called Motley with some fellow students

and young artists. It is a quarterly literary magazine and creative commu-

nity based out of Chicago that strives to bring together artists of every

discipline. The name “Motley” represents the multifaceted and various

art forms that we hope to encourage and disseminate. It is this assorted

and technicolor collection of artists, from all backgrounds, whether they

be poets, musicians, anarchists, lost souls, or anything in between, that

Motley will bring together in hopes of promoting a more diverse commu-

nity. They also coordinate live house shows for touring bands, writing

workshops, poetry slams/readings, and other sorts of events.

Austin founded the group with a fellow DePaul Philosophy Major,

Kelly Cunningham, who graduates in 2018.

Brooklynn Leonhardt (Philosophy 2017) addressed her fel-

low students at graduation and asked what they would do

when faced with injustice. Brooklynn dedicated her student

address to those without degrees who labored long so that

the graduates in the audience could receive a diploma.

Brooklyn completed her bachelor’s degree in philosophy in

2017 and was awarded fully funded admission to dual doc-

toral programs in philosophy and women, gender, and sexu-

ality studies at Penn State University. Brooklyn was also part

of DePaul’s nationally respected McNair Scholars Program, a

federally funded initiative to help first-generation or under-

represented students prepare for and pursue graduate study.

She minored in English literature and Spanish.

Page 22 Phi losophy@DePaul Fa l l 2017

Autumn Winter Spring

H I S T O R Y S E Q U E N C E PHL 293 – Ancient Philosophy MW 9:40-11:10 White, David

PHL 293 – Ancient Philosophy TTH 11:20-12:50 Kirkland, Sean

PHL 295 – Early Modern Philosophy TTH 1:00-2:30 Goldman, Avery

PHL 296 – Kant and the 19th Century TTH 9:40-11:10 Goldman, Avery

PHL 297 – 20th Century Philosophy MW 1:00-2:30 Söderbäck, Fanny

PHL 297 – 20th Century Philosophy MW 11:20-12:50 Acosta, María

C O G N I T I V E S K I L L S PHL 280 – Critical Thinking TTH 2:40-4:10 Singer, J.D.

PHL 280 – Critical Thinking MW 2:40-4:10 Singer, J.D.

PHL 281 – Basic Logic Online Larrabee, Mary Jeanne

S Y S T E M A T I C T H E M E S PHL 315 – Survey of Political Philosophy TTH 11:20-12:50 Hill, Jason

PHL 321 – Epistemology MW 11:20-12:50 Rottenberg, Elizabeth

PHL 314 – Survey of Ethics TTH 11:20-12:50 Koehn, Daryl

3 0 0 L E V E L C O U R S E S PHL 361 – Plato MW 11:20-12:50 Naas, Michael

PHL 342 – Philosophy of Law TTH 1:00-2:30 Birmingham, Peg

PHL 370 – Hegel T 6:00-9:15 Acosta, María

PHL 375 – Sartre TTH 1:00-2:30 Seyler, Frédéric

PHL 389 – Latin American Philosophy MW 11:20-12:50 Acosta, María

CPL 319 – Selected Topics and Contro-versies TTH 2:40-4:10 Birmingham, Peg (Counts as PHL 390)

CPL 319 – Topics in Psychoanalysis: Cruelty and Psychoanalysis MW 2:40-4:10 Elizabeth Rottenberg (Counts as PHL 357)

CPL 319 – Philosophical Themes in Lit-erature: Don Delillo and the Philosophy of Disaster MW 11:20-12:50 Naas, Michael (Counts as PHL 383)

PHL 381 – Dramatic Theory: Tragedy TTH 9:40-11:10 McNeill, Will

S E N I O R C A P S T O N E PHL 391 – Capstone W 6:00-9:15 Peg Birmingham

PHL 391 – Capstone MW 1:00-2:30 Söderbäck, Fanny

Philosophy Core Undergraduate Offerings 2017-2018