Newsletter
* Paul Carelli (PhD. in Philosophy, University of Kentucky 2008, MA in Classical Studies, University of Kentucky 2001), joins the Department of Philosophy in Fall 2009 as Assistant Professor (tenure-track), following a one-year appointment at Berea College, Kentucky. Paul fills our position in Ancient Philosophy after the retirement of Associate Professor emeritus Ellen Wagner.
* Daniel Callcut was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Philosophy, and Andrew Buchwalter was promoted to Full Professor of Philosophy, starting August 2009.
* The Department of Philosophy has been approved to conduct searches in 2009/2010 for the following positions:
Search 1: AOS: Epistemology (teaching needs in logic, philosophy of science, pragmatism, and philosophy of mind);
Search 2: Gender and/or Race Theory; AOC: open.
* The MA in Practical Philosophy & Applied Ethics,now in its fifth year of operation, welcomed its new class, hailing from Florida and throughout the country.
The following students graduated with these projects:
- Sean Patrick Smith The Significance of Trust for Ethics Theoretical and Applied: a Critical Account of Watsuji’s Metaethics May 2008
- Linda H. Harris On Human Migration and the Moral Obligations of Business December 2008
- Dathan Kahn Auerbach Now I Am Become Internet, The Destroyer of Selves: The Destruction of Identity Coherence through Electronic Socialization April 2009 defense
- Cathleen Jensen-Gall UNF’s Institutional Review: An Internship Report April 2009
Linda Harris was admitted to the Ph.D. program in Political Science/International Relations, University of Florida, beginning Fall 2009; Dathan Auerbach received the graduate student paper prize with “A Defense of Restributivism through an Alternative Conception of Human Agency.”
Florida Philosophy Student Blog.
The Florida Student Philosophy Blog managed by Prof. Rico Vitz with the help of the UNF Philosophy Student Club is progressing well. The UNF Philosophy Club itself is taking the necessary steps towards establishing itself as an important source both of students’ community life and of their professional development. http://unfspb.wordpress.com/
Faculty News:
Andrew Buchwalter is completing for publication with Routledge Dialectics, Politics, and the Contemporary Value of Hegel’s Practical Philosophy. He is preparing for Springer Press the edited collection Hegel and Global Justice. His essay “Thompson, Participatory Parity and Self-Realization” was published in the most recent issue of The Good Society, as part of its symposium on “The Politics of Recognition.” He is organizing the Ethics Center’s November Symposium on Public Philosophy, whose topic is “Religion in the Public Sphere.”
Laura Ammon's monograph, Work Useful to Religion and the Humanities: A History of the Development of the Comparative Method in Religion from Bartolomé Las Casas to Edward Burnett Tylor has been accepted for publication by Pickwick Press. She is working on revisions to the manuscript and expects publication in early 2010. She is also waiting on an editorial decision from the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History for her article, Jose de Acosta and Bernardino de Sahagun and the Sixteenth-century theology of Sacrifice in New Spain, which is currently under consideration. She is the co-chair of the Theory and Method in the Study of Religion section of Southeast Society for the Study of Religion which will hold its annual conference in March 2010. Currently, she is balancing research and revision with building new courses for the UNF minor on Religious Studies.
Daniel Callcut's edited collection, Reading Bernard Williams, was published by Routledge in late 2008; he also had an article on Mill coming out in Utilitas in March 2009. He continues to teach a wide variety of courses at the undergraduate and graduate level.
Paul Carelli is adjusting to his new position as assistant professor. He is developing a course in Chinese philosophy for the spring semester, writing a book review for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, and preparing a section of his dissertation as a separate article on the nature of the city-soul analogy in Plato's Republic.
Mitch Haney (along with Dr. Kline) is finishing edits on a volume, The Value of Time and Leisure in a World of Work, for Lexington Press. This volume is based on papers delivered at the First Annual Symposium on Public Philosophy which he helped to organize and host last fall in Jacksonville. Included in this volume will be his essay which examines the axiological foundations of the Slow Movement. In addition to teaching regular sections of Intro to Philosophy and Business Ethics, Dr. Haney developed a senior seminar on the nature of happiness that he is leading this term.
Julie Ingersoll has returned from sabbatical having made significant progress on her manuscript Building God’s Kingdom: Christian Reconstructionists in America, in part thanks to a grant from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Center for Ethics, Public Policy and the Professions that funded her field work for a chapter on the creationist-evolution controversy. She will devote her research time this year to that project.A related essay, “Mobilizing Evangelicals: Christian Reconstruction and the Roots of the Religious Right” was published by the Russell Sage Foundation in Evangelicals and Democracy in America, edited by Steven Brint and Jean Reith Schroedel. She was selected to attend one of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminars, led by Alan Wolfe at Boston College, on “Religious Diversity and the Common Good.” She continues serving as the Religious Studies Program Coordinator, working to establish an endowed position in Religious Studies and moving to offer a Religious Studies Major at UNF
David Kline returned to teaching/research full-time in 2005 after a long stint in academic administration. For the last several years his research has focused on applied ethical issues coming out of his administrative experiences. With the publication of “On Telling Faculty the Truth” this fall, this research program will come to an end. Dr. Kline’s current interests return to what originally captivated him in philosophy—the philosophy of science. He plans to teach and write in this area over the next few years.
Bert Koegler devoted the bulk of his time to chairing the department. Center stage took getting two new positions approved for hire in 2010 (Epistemology and Race/Gender), co-facilitating an Endowed Professorship in Islamic Studies, the Gen Ed reform to emphasize reflective judgment and problem-solving, and supporting faculty in their multi-various teaching, research, and event-organizing efforts. His scholarly efforts focused on Gadamer’s and Rorty’s hermeneutics (an essay for Consequences of Hermeneutics, Northwestern U.P., forthcoming 2010, and talks at U of Frankfurt and Bielefeld) and the cosmopolitan public sphere (essay in Ashgate Companion to Cosmopolitanism, forthcoming 2010, and a talk at U of London).
Alissa Hurwitz Swota completed work on her monograph Culture, Ethics, and Advance Care Planning. The book came out early fall 2009 with Lexington Press. She also published an article on examining the issue of when State intervention is justified in pediatric medical care. She will continue her research in clinical ethics and will also continue her work as clinical bioethicist at Wolfson Children’s Hospital.
Rico Vitz had a monograph, Descartes’s Ethics of Belief, conditionally accepted for publication by Springer/Kluwer Academic. He will spend the majority of his research time in 2009-10 preparing the manuscript while he awaits editorial decisions on two of his papers on Hume’s account of virtuous belief formation, which are currently under review. In addition to his research and teaching duties, he is very much enjoying a productive year advising UNF’s Philosophy Club, leading UNF’s Ethics Bowl team, and coordinating the Northeast Florida Student Philosophy Conference – “Health Care, Conscience, and Property” – which took place Saturday, September 12th, 2009.