Academic Year 2016-2017 Highlights

Prof. George Shields (Philosophy) receives special invitation from Edinburgh University Press. In addition to the recent acceptance of a paper by the American Philosophical Association (Pacific) related to the history of science, Prof. Shields has been invited by the editors to contribute a paper to the celebratory volume of the Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead to be submitted to Edinburgh University Press. All Edinburgh University Press volumes are jointly marketed and distributed by Oxford University Press. Says Prof. Shields about the opportunity, "I am so excited about this recognition and opportunity to publish with such a prestigious list of Whitehead scholars. I have my work cut out for me, although this will surely be a labor of love."

Nancy Potter presented “Practical reason and ecological thinking: Toward a service-user-centered epistemology” on November 2 to the Advanced Seminar on Norms of Belief and Norms of Action in Clinical Practice” at Catherine’s College, University of Oxford.

Nancy Potter is giving a talk entitled '"Difficult people": A theory of defiance and the role of the social imaginary' to the Royal Institute of Philosophy at the University of Kent on March 1, 2017.

Julianne Chung has been appointed to the APA Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies, beginning July 1, 2017.

Julianne Chung will be presenting "Why Chinese Philosophy is Indispensable" and "Working with Asian Texts: A Guide for Non-Specialists "at the American Philosophical Association (Central Division).

Julianne Chung will be presenting "Form and Content in the Zhuangzi" and "Skill, Know-How, and the Arts" at the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division).

Brian Barnes is the co-author of "Teaching for Critical Thinking: Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit" which will appear in The National Teaching and Learning Forum.

Nancy Potter will be giving a talk in Canterbury (University of Kent) on March 1, entitled "'Difficult People': A Theory of Defiance and the Role of the Social Imaginary."

Andreas Elpidorou has just published "The Moral Dimensions of Boredom: A Call for Research" in Review of General Psychology.

Congratulations to our Ethics Bowl Team. Jeremy Jackson, Bethani Massey, Sadie Phillips, Keitan Stacks, and Alex Tacket competed in Indianapolis on Nov. 12th and had only one loss--to the eventual winners of the competition--placing 13th out of 36 teams.

Andreas Elpidorou book (co-edited with Daniel O. Dahlstrom and Walter Hopp), Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology: Conceptual and Empirical Approaches (Routledge, 2016), has received a glowing review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, with the reviewer saying "[t]he volume as a whole makes a compelling case for integrating more phenomenology into mainstream work on the mind and cognitive science."

George Shields is co-author of "Analytical Critiques of Whitehead's Metaphysics," which has just been published in the October 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.

Lauren Freeman has been interviewed, with Saray Ayala, in Nature on the dangers of oversimplifying microbiome studies.

Avery Kolers has just published "Social Movements" in Philosophy Compass 11/10 (2016): 580-590.

Our students continue to achieve academic distinction: Jacquelyn Ha (AS'16) was awarded the Richard Campbell Smith Award; Hannah Wilson (AS'16) won a prestigious Truman Scholarship; Lashawn Ford (AS'15) earned an MA from the University of Kent on a Fulbright Scholarship; and Allie Funk (AS'15) spent the year studying at the London School of Economics. In the spring, we inducted five new members into Phi Sigma Tau, and Avery Kolers is coaching a team that will compete at the Ethics Bowl in November.

NEW BOOKS! Guy Dove (Beyond the Body? The Future of Embodied Cognition), Avery Kolers (A Theory of Moral Solidarity), and Nancy Potter (The Virtue of Defiance and Psychiatric Engagement) all have new books that have been recently published.

We are happy to announce that Guy Dove has been awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor.

Lauren Freeman and Andreas Elpidorou have been named Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society Fellows this year.

John Gibson has been appointed as Commonwealth Center for Humanities and Society.