Faculty News

Steve Vogel, Brickman-Shannon Professor

Dr. Vogel was awarded the inaugural Nancy Eshelman Brickman Endowed Professorship in Memory of Dr. Ellenor Shannon at the Denison Academic Awards Convocation on April 24, 2009. Dr. Vogel presented his paper entitled, "Alienation and the Commons," at the conference on "Human Flourishing and Restoration in the Age of Global Warming," at Clemson University on September 6, 2008. He also presented this paper to a workshop on "New Thinking on Alienation," at KWI Essen in Germany on January 14, 2009.  Dr. Vogel also participated in a panel, "The Turn to Green: A Left Turn?" at the Program on the Global Environment at the University of Chicago on May 9, 2009.  Dr. Vogel will be taking part in a workshop on "Alienation and the Environment" at the University of Liverpool on Feb. 26/27.  He will also be presenting a paper on "Alienation and the Commons" at the Western Political Science Association meetings in San Francisco on April 3, and participating in a workshop on "Environmentalism and the Philosophy of Technology" at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX on May 20 and 21.  Recently, Dr. Vogel's "On Environmental Philosophy and Continental Thought" was published in an anthology, Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions, edited by David R. Keller (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

Barbara Fultner, Associate Professor 

Dr. Fultner is back on campus after spending the 08/09 school year on a  Faculty Research Fellowship at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, Storrs, CT. She was also granted Denison’s R.C. Good Fellowship. Dr. Fultner’s conference presentations and invited lectures: “Re-Imagining Normativity: Meaning, Rules, and the Imagination,” American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division), Vancouver, Canada, April 2009; “Why Philosophers of Language Need a Social Theory,” University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, March 2009 (an earlier version presented to the Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, January 2009); “Heidegger’s Existential-Pragmatic Conception of Language: Utterance and Assertion,” Department of Philosophy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, February 2009 (also presented to Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut, February 2009); “Meaning, Norms, and Imagination,” Critical Theory Roundtable, New York, NY, September 2008; “Normativity: From Language to Social Practice and Back Again,” Language, Culture, and Mind III, Odense, Denmark, July 2008; “Lifeworld, Meaning, and Intersubjectivity,” LCM III, Odense, Denmark, July 2008. “A Non-Essentialist Approach to Discourse and Gender,” Canadian Philosophical Association Meeting, Vancouver, Canada, June 2008; “Intersubjectivity: The Lifeworld and Child Development,” CPA, Vancouver, Canada, June 2008; “Meaning, Norms, and Creativity,” Colloquium on Philosophy and Social Theory, Prague, Czech Republic, May 2008.

Jonathan Maskit, Assistant Professor 

Dr. Maskit published “The Aesthetics of Elsewhere: An Everyday Environmentalist Aesthetic” in Aesthetic Pathways (2011); “Continental Philosophy and the Environment” in The History of Continental Philosophy Volume 8: New Developments (2010); and “On the Recuperation of Postindustrial Sites: An Aesthetic Anaylsis” in The European Journal of Geography/Revue européene de géographie (2009).  His earlier article “‘Line of Wreckage’: Towards a Postindustrial Environmental Aesthetics” was re-published in a four volume collection entitled Post-Industrial Society (2010).  Dr. Maskit was invited to present “Technical and Cultural Challenges in the Renovation of Postindustrial Sites” at the Society for Ecological Restoration (Mérida, Mexico, August 2011).  He also presented “On Universalism and Cultural Historicism in Environmental Aesthetics” at the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (Philadelphia, October 2011) as well as an earlier version with the title “European and American Approaches to Environmental Aesthetics” at the International Society for Environmental Ethics (Nijmegen, Netherlands, June 2011).  Dr. Maskit gave a colloquium entitled “The Aesthetics of Elsewhere: An Everyday Environmentalist Aesthetic” at Eesti Kunstiakadeemia (the Estonian Art Academy) in Tallinn, Estonia in June 2010.

Alexandra Bradner, Assistant Professor

Dr. Bradner and Seth Chin-Parker, assistant professor of psychology, presented a poster entitled "Empirical Support for the Pragmatic Approach to Explanation" at the 34th annual conference of the Society of Philosophy and Psychology, in Philadelphia (June 2008).  In July, they presented "The Pragmatics of Explanation" at the 30th annual Cognitive Science Society conference in Washington, D.C., and the accompanying paper was published in the conference proceedings. Dr. Bradner will present "On the Very Idea of a Style of Reasoning," at The Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice, Minneapolis, MN, June 2009. She also published a paper, Teaching Modernity in Appalachia." Teaching Philosophy 31, no. 3 (2008): 229-247.  Dr. Bradner was awarded a grant and attended the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Experimental Philosophy, University of Utah, June-July 2009.

Tony Lisska, Maria Theresa Barney Professor

Maria Theresa Barney professor of philosophy, Dr. Lisska presented "Scotus, Ockham and the Rise of Voluntarism" at the Ohio Medieval Colloquium, Bowling Green State University, October 2009.  He also presented "The Convergence of Analytic Philosophy and Thomistic Philosophy of Nature: The Example of Everett J. Nelson" at The Society for Thomistic Natural Philosophy meetings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, New Orleans, LA, November 2009.  He read an invited paper, "The Common Good and Legal Theory in Thomas Aquinas,"  at the session on Revealed Religion and Politics," at the Northeastern Political Science Association meetings, Philadelphia, PA, November 2009--along with comment papers on two presentations for the session, "Ancients and Moderns in Dialogue."  He also presented "God, Aquinas and Revisionist Natural Law Theory" at a special session of the American Philosophical Association:  Eastern Division Meetings, New York City, December 2009.  An earlier version was presented at a Philosophy Colloquium at the University of Kentucky, March 2009.  His review of Nature as a Reason: A Thomistic Theory of Natural Law, Jean Porter (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.), appeared in The Scottish Journal of Theology, Volume 62, issue 3 (August 2009), pp. 374-376.

Ron Santoni, Professor Emeritus

Dr. Santoni’s essay, “Camus on Sartre’s ‘Freedom’: Another Misunderstanding,” was published in the Review of Metaphysics, June 2008 issue. His essay, “Is Bad Faith Necessarily Social?” was accepted for the Sartre Studies International issue due out in 2009. Dr. Santoni also has an essay, “Späte Reue,” in Lebendiger Sartre, edited by Vincent Von Wroblewsky (Berlin: Basisdruck, 2009). Dr. Santoni presented a paper, “Is Bad Faith Necessarily Social?” at the Sartre Circle at the American Philosophical Association meetings in Chicago in February 2009. Dr. Santoni was also a panelist for Sartre Explained: From Bad Faith to Authenticity at the American Philosophical Association Meeting in Philadelphia in December 2008. Dr. Santoni attended the meeting of the International Sartre scholars at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris between June 18-20, and a book containing one of his contributions will be launched at an Art Studio/Librairie in the Latin quarter of Paris.

Mark Moller, Associate Professor

Dr. Moller received tenure and was promoted to associate professor in January 2009. He also published a paper, “Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Justice and the Problem of Unequal Biological Access,” in Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine (2008), 3:22 doi:10.1186/1747-5341-3-22. Dr. Moller’s paper, “The “Many and the One” and the Problem of Two Minds Knowing the Same Thing,” was published in the William James Studies (2008), 3. Dr. Moller published another paper, “Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and the Discarded Embryo Argument,” in the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. (2009) 30, 2, pp. 131-145.