Emory philosophy professors Noelle McAfee, John Stuhr, and Michael Sullivan spoke at the American Philosophies Forum on "The Nature of Justice: Development, Poverty, and the Environment" at Penn State University April 12-14. The 2013 APF will be held at Emory University on the topic of "The Ineffable: Singularity, Life, and the Limits of Language." See: www.americanphilosophiesforum.org

Professor Susan Bredlau is the newest member of our faculty:  We are very pleased to announce the appointment, effective with the 2012-2013 academic year, of Susan Bredlau as Assistant Professor of Philosophy.  Professor Bredlau, currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northern Arizona University, received her B.A. in philosophy with Honors from The Pennsylvania State University, and her Ph.D. in philosophy from The State University of New York, Stony Brook.  Her teaching and research interests are in phenomenology, twentieth century European philosophy, and philosophical psychology and philosophy of mind.  She brings a wide-ranging background in the history of philosophy to her work, along with reading abilities in German, French, and ancient Greek.  Her publications include articles on Merleau-Ponty, Dolezal, Simone de Beauvoir and topics such as vision, the experience of depth, responsiveness to others, and learning to see.  She writes:  “I am very happy to be joining Emory University's Philosophy Department, and I am excited by the opportunities it offers for both teaching and research.  My research is grounded in the phenomenological insight that perceiving is always perceiving as and is informed by the writings of Merleau-Ponty, the work of contemporary philosophers who take an enactive approach to perception, and recent studies in psychology and the cognitive sciences.  I have recently been working on several articles about the interpersonal character of perception, and I look forward to developing this work into a book.”

The Emory University Institute for the History of Philosophy (IHP) will host its fifth annual summer workshop on June 4-14, 2012, on the topic of “Peirce, James, and the Origins of Pragmatism.”

The Heidegger Circle will holds its 46th annual meeting May 4-6, 2012 at Emory University (convenor: Andrew J. Mitchell). Further information as well as a conference poster can be found here: www.heideggercircle.org/2012

Emory was well represented at the recent Georgia Philosophical Society meeting. The President of the society, Nathan Nobis, reported that competition was stiff this year with 35 entries vying for three spots all subjected to blind review. The happy result was that the papers selected for presentation were all from Emory graduate students. Congratulations to the successful presenters: Matthew Homan "Spinoza and the Problem of Representation," Jared Millson "What are Questions?" and Jacob Rump "The Possibility of a Logic of Experience."

Professor Melvin Rogers joins our department: We are delighted to report the appointment, effective with the 2012-13 academic year, of Melvin L. Rogers as Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Professor Rogers, now Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia and a visiting faculty member in the department of political science at Swarthmore College, received his B.A. from Amherst College, his M. Phil. in political thought and intellectual history from Cambridge University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. In addition he has held a Ford Foundation pre-doctoral fellowship, an Exchange Scholar position in the department of Religion at Princeton University, and a Scholar-in-Residence appointment in the department of Political Science at Carleton College. His teaching and research focus on political philosophy and democratic and republican theory, American and African-American political thought, classical and contemporary pragmatism, and issues of religion, race, and gender. He is the author of The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy (Columbia U. P., 2008) as well as many articles in Philosophy and Social Criticism, European Journal of Political Theory, Contemporary Political Theory, Contemporary Pragmatism, and Transactions of the Peirce Society, and other scholarly journals. He states:  “I am deeply humbled by the opportunity to join Emory's Philosophy department and become a member of the wider Emory community.  In addition to contributing to the development of the department, I will continue my current book project that examines the relationship between democracy and faith in the works of women and African-Americans in 19th and early 20th century American philosophy.”

Professor Rudolf Makkreel will be a Keynote Speaker at the First Biannual Meeting of the North American Kant Society to be held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from June 2-4, 2011. He will speak on “Schematizing With and Without Concepts: How the Aesthetic Judgment Recontextualizes the Object of Cognition.”

The 2010 Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association included presentations (despite the snowy weather) by four Emory philosophy department members:  Professor Tom Flynn (paper) and Andrew Mitchell (commentary); graduate student Michal Gleitman (paper); and visiting scholar Kipton Jensen (paper).

The American Academy of Religion held its annual meeting in Atlanta in October 2010. The program included a lecture by John Stuhr who spoke on "Pragmatism and Faith" at a session sponsored by the Pragmatism and Empiricism in American Religious Thought Group that focused on the recent book, "The Undiscovered Dewey" by Melvin Rogers (U. Virginia).

Andrew Mitchell's book, Heidegger Among the Sculptors: Body, Space, and the Art of Dwelling, has been published by Stanford University Press.  And Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works, Volume II: Understanding the Human World, co-edited by Rudi Makkreel (with Frithjof Rodi) and published by Princeton University Press also appeared in summer 2010.