PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT3 30

Duquesne GraDuate PhilosoPhy news2010 • Volume 2, Issue 2

Faculty scholarshiPhiGhliGhts

DePartment news

Duquesne 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, batesj@duq.edu.

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 philosophy

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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: batesj@duq.edu

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 PhilosoPhy

Members 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 center

Phenomenology, 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 thompson@duq.edu.

For news on other events, visit www.duq.edu/philosophy.

Scholar in Residence Habip Türker