PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT3 30
Duquesne GraDuate PhilosoPhy news2010 • Volume 2, Issue 2
Faculty scholarshiPhiGhliGhts
DePartment newsDuquesne University will host a talk by Alasdair
MacIntyre on December 4, 2010. This event is a partnership of the
Health Care Ethics Program and the Philosophy Department.
The Philosophy Department will host the Canadian and American
Hegelians annual meeting Friday March 19 and 20th. The theme of the
conference is the interrelatedness of art, religion, and
philosophy. For more information, contact Dr. Jennifer Bates,
[email protected].
Duquesne will be hosting the Critical Theory Roundtable (CTR) on
October 23-24, 2010. The CTR has been in existence since 1993 and
is the only annual conference dedicated to critical theory in North
America.
The department in the last year has inaugurated two graduate
student awards: one for scholarship and one for teaching. The
recipients of the Graduate Student Scholarship Award were Hamad
Mohamed and Adam Hutchinson, and the recipient of the Graduate
Student Teaching Award was Joy Simmons.
Department of philosophyDuquesne university600 forbes
avenuepittsburgh, pa 15282
Change serviCe requesteD
Hegel’s Connections Between Art, Religion and Philosophy
Absolute Spirit
An Annual Meeting of Canadian and American Hegelians
SAtuRdAy, MARCh 209 a.m.“the Most Elementary School of
Wisdom”—Greek Religion, Oriental Pantheism and the Emergence of the
hegelian Conception of the Absolute as SpiritBrady Bowman,
Pennsylvania State UniversityCommentary: Kamal Shlbei, Duquesne
University
10 a.m.Antigone: the Supreme uncannyVictoria I. Burke,
University of Toronto at ScarboroughCommentary: Fred Erdman,
Duquesne University
11 a.m.Sovereign Gratitude: hegel on Religion and the GiftChris
Lauer, Pennsylvania State UniversityCommentary: Adam Hutchinson,
Duquesne University
2 p.m.Liberation theology: Why Philosophy takes Sides in
Religious ConflictsJim Vernon, York UniversityCommentary: Nathan
Eckstrand, Duquesne University
Friday, March 19–Sunday, March 21duquesne university105 College
hall
FRidAy, MARCh 19 7 p.m. Religion and Philosophy: Same Content,
different Form— What does hegel Mean?Jay Lampert, University of
Guelph and Duquesne University
3 p.m.Religion and Philosophy in hegel’s Mature Political
PhilosophyTim Brownlee, Xavier UniversityCommentary: Nahum Brown,
University of Guelph
4 p.m.the Sensuous Limitation of Art and the infinity of
Absolute SpiritDonald Burke, York UniversityCommentary: Natalia
Rudychev, Duquesne University
SundAy, MARCh 2110 a.m.Kierkegaard and hegel on the Movement of
the MomentJennifer Bates, Duquesne UniversityCommentary: Becky
Vartabedian, Duquesne University
11 a.m.the determinate Religions in Part two of the Philosophy
of Religion Lectures: A CritiqueGraeme Nicholson, University of
TorontoCommentary: Ryan Krahn, University of Guelph
Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Duquesne
University, The National Endowment of the Humanities through the
McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne
University, and Duquesne University Graduate Students in
Philosophy.
For information contact dr. Jennifer Bates: [email protected]
Photo courtesy of Marie-Lan N
guyen, Museum
of Fine Arts, Lyon, France.
Dr. Tom Rockmore has been invited to give a series of lectures
in Hanoi, Vietnam, while he is teaching at the University of
Beijing in the spring of 2010.
Dr. James Swindal, along with David Rasmussen, has recently
edited and published Habermas II: The SAGE Masters in Social
Thought, which comprises four volumes of articles on Habermas’s
thought published since 2000.
Dr. George Yancy’s Black Bodies/ White Gazes was featured in an
Author’s Session at the American Philosophy Association-Eastern
Division annual meeting in December 2009.
Dr. Fred Evans gave presentations on his recently published
book, The Multi-Voiced Body: Society and Communication in the Age
of Diversity, at Stony Brook University and the University of
Montreal in the fall of 2009. He also presented the keynote address
for the Sixteenth Annual Graduate Philosophy Conference at Kent
State University.
Duquesne women in PhilosoPhyMembers of Duquesne Women in
Philosophy have been volunteering with Gwen’s Girls, a local
organization whose mission is to empower young girls. And, at the
beginning of the spring semester, they will begin volunteering with
the Thomas Merton Center’s Book-It program, which helps provide
books to inmates.
The group will sponsor a conference titled Emotion and Gender,
which is slated for April 23, 2010.
Visit www.duq.edu/philosophy for the latest information about
the Philosophy Department.
Graduate Dissertation Defenses, Fall 2009
Melanie Walton. Expressing the Inexpressible: Bearing Witness in
Jean-Francois Lyotard and Pseudo-Dionysius. Director: Lanei
Rodemeyer.
Douglas Peduti, S.J. Sprache als Be-wëgen: The Unfolding of
Language and Being in Heidegger’s Later Work, 1949-1976. Director:
James Swindal
Tom Sparrow. Sensation Rebuilt: Carnal Ontology in Levinas and
Merleau-Ponty. Director: Fred Evans
GraDuate news
Chelsea Harry reports on her work in the undergraduate Judicium
Learning Community this past fall:
“I taught this fall in the newly formed Judicium learning
community. (An integral component of learning communities at
Duquesne University is a service-learning project.) For our part,
two of us brought our 34 Duquesne freshmen to the Allegheny County
Jail and taught a six-week portion of our classes to an integrated
class of Duquesne students and approximately 20 male inmates. The
other instructor, Dr. Norman Conti who teaches criminal justice in
the Sociology Department, is affiliated with the nationwide
Inside/Outside program.
“This proved to be a productive and beneficial experience for
all involved. In reflections they wrote after the experience, some
of my students felt that the experienced had changed their lives
and that learning philosophy in the jail helped them to see its
real world relevance. I think that the latter type of comment arose
because the incarcerated students took the material quite
seriously. After our first class on books 1–4 of Saint Augustine’s
Confessions, one student let me know that some of the inmates had
begun a reading group to discuss the readings outside of class. In
class, this extra work was apparent, not only to me but to the
Duquesne students. The inmates had a lot to offer in class
discussions and in their in-class essays. They had not only read
and digested the assigned readings, but had clearly given a lot of
thought to them as well.
“It only got better as the semester proceeded. A few
incarcerated students wrote essays ‘for fun,’ considering the
material from experiential perspectives. When we worked on
Descartes’s Discourse on Method, I had one inmate-student who took
on an active role in defeating all of the other students’ attempts
at deriving an ‘absolute truth.’ This turned into a heated
epistemological debate, about which a couple of my Duquesne
students later described as thrilling. I could not have agreed
more. At the end of our time at the Jail, a number of incarcerated
students said they felt learning philosophy had changed their
outlook on life and the way they understood the possibilities open
to them.
“It is this aspect of philosophy that first excited me about the
discipline, and it was both humbling and gratifying to see these
men affected by it as well. Needless to say, I am grateful for this
experience. I enjoyed teaching so much in an environment where
students were eager to learn, the incarcerated students were
appreciative for the educational opportunity, and the Duquesne
students felt empowered for seeing these men as equals, people from
whom they could learn not only about philosophy, but about
life.”
Kelsey Ward was awarded the Strasser Award for 2009-2010.
James Bahoh and Nalan Sarac attended the Collegium
Phenomenologicum in Citta di Castello, Italy, in July 2009.
Chelsea Harry attended the phenomenology colloquium, taught by
Prof. Dieter Lohmar, in Köln, Germany, this past summer. It is
sponsored jointly by the Husserl archives at Leuven and Köln. Each
year the summer school is based on a different theme. This past
summer, the theme was Husserl’s phenomenology. The texts read were
the Crisis, The Cartesian Meditations, some of his writings on
Internal Time Consciousness, Ideas I, and the Logical
Investigations. Approximately 25 students from various countries,
including China, Germany, the United States and Ireland, were in
attendance. For further information, visit
www.husserl.uni-koeln.de/.
Brock Bahler gave a paper titled, “Jacques and Jesus: Derridean
Hospitality in an Age of Political Xenophobia,” at the West Chester
Graduate Conference. The paper won the Best Paper in Philosophy
Award.
Hamad Mohamed and Nathan Eckstrand presented papers at the
Concerned Philosophers for Peace Conference. Hamad Mohamed also
presented a paper on Human Rights and Islam at the University of
Leicester, United Kingdom. Ryan Pfahl, Mélanie Walton, and Clancy
Smith attended the International Association of Philosophy and
Literature this past summer in London. Dr. Selcer was also in
attendance. There was a session on Wilhelm Wurzer, with papers
about his work and anecdotes about his life. Eric Mohr’s work on
Max Scheler earned him presentations at the Society for
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and the upcoming American
Philosophy Association-Central Division conventions.
Polansky scholarshiP FunDs
Clayton Bohnet was a recipient of a McAnulty Dissertation Grant
for the year 2009-2010.
Gradaute philosophy student Chelsea Harry teaching a class made
up of Duquesne University undergraduates and inmates
of the Allegheny County Jail.
Clayton Bohnet
GRADUATE STUDENTS IN PHILOSOPHY
The Graduate Students in Philosophy (GSIP) will sponsor its
fourth annual highly successful Graduate Philosophy Conference,
April 10, 2010. Babette Babich from Fordham University will be the
invited speaker. Graduate students from several different
universities will present papers. For information, visit
http://sites.google.com/site/duqgradconf2010/
The GSIP has also organized an American philosophy reading group
for the spring.
Last years recipients were Stephen Krogh, Patrick Craig, Ryan
Pfahl, H.A. Nethery and Chelsea Harry.
We are pleased to be in the third year of the Ronald M. Polansky
Graduate Student Scholarship awards. Recipients for summer 2010
will be:
Deirdre Black, for study of Danish at the University of
Copenhagen, and for study in the Kierkegaard archive in the Royal
Library.
Christopher Haley, for study of French at Institut Catholique de
Paris.
Scott Sparrow, to enroll in a Goethe Institute.
Nalan Sarac, to study French at Alliance Française de Paris.
Christopher Mountenay, to enroll in a Goethe Institute in
Dresden.
Contributions to the Polansky Graduate Student Scholarship can
be sent to:
Philosophy Departmentc/o Dr. James SwindalDuquesne University600
Forbes Ave.Pittsburgh, PA 15282
scholars in resiDence
Dr. Francoise Monnoyear is in her second year working in the
Center.
Dr. Christopher Lauer is a post doctorate student from Penn
State.
Dr. Habip Türker is a post-doctoral student from Fatih
University in Istanbul. The recipient of a scholarship from the
TUBITAK, a Turkish council, Habip is originally from Ankara, but
has done most of his philosophical work in Istanbul. While a
graduate student, he spent two years in Vienna studying the works
of Nicolai Hartmann, and since then, he has branched into
phenomenology, philosophy of religion and aesthetics. Currently, he
is working on a project that compares Christian and Islamic views
of aesthetics. In addition, he
is interested in first-generation critical theory, and he is a
published poet. Habip resides in Pittsburgh with his wife, Meliha,
and son, Aybars.
Yuan Jun-ya is a visiting scholar from the University of
Beijing. She received funding to study alienation in the writings
of Karl Marx and other Marxists. This is her first time outside of
China, and she had been experiencing the joys and adjustments in
living outside of her native country. She is currently writing her
dissertation and working in collaboration with Dr. Rockmore.
silverman centerPhenomenology, Cognition, and Neuroscience, the
Center’s annual symposium, will take place February 18–19, 2010.
Among the speakers will Evan Thompson (University of Toronto) Shaun
Gallagher (University of Central Florida), Dan Zahavi, and
Catherine Malabou (University of Buffalo).
Jeff McCurry, the director of the Center, received an National
Endowment for the Humanities grant to develop a course, The Meaning
of Life: Ancient Perspectives, which will be taught this coming
fall.
The Undergraduate Philosophy Society will host its second annual
Undergraduate Philosophy Conference on April 10, 2010.
unDerGraDuate news
We would welcome any news from alumni. Contact us at
[email protected].
For news on other events, visit www.duq.edu/philosophy.
Scholar in Residence Habip Türker