FRANCEY A. RUSSELL. Yale University, Humanities Program 53 Wall Street, Room 307 (347)

Transcription

1 FRANCEY A. RUSSELL Yale University, Humanities Program 53 Wall Street, Room 307 (347) EMPLOYMENT Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in the Humanities, Yale University EDUCATION Ph.D Philosophy M.A. Philosophy. New School for Social Research B.A. Philosophy, Cinema Studies. University of Toronto AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION: Ethics, Moral Psychology, Freud, Kant s Moral Philosophy. AREAS OF COMPETENCE: 19 th and 20 th Century European Philosophy, Aesthetics. DISSERTATION: Self-Opacity, Human Agency, and Ethics Committee: Candace Vogler, Daniel Brudney, Jonathan Lear, Kyla Ebels-Duggan (Northwestern) In my dissertation, I argue that self-opacity not knowing why we do what we do is actually an essential feature of human agency that can contribute to moral development. This often-disorienting experience is familiar from ordinary life and is a frequent theme of literature and film, yet it has not received adequate philosophical attention. My work challenges dominant approaches to moral philosophy that privilege self-transparency and reflection as essential to human agency (especially thinkers following rationalist or deliberative endorsement conceptions of agency). Such theories tend to conceive of self-opacity merely negatively, as a contingent failure of agency and thereby as an ethical failure. Against this, I argue, first, that self-opacity is essential to human agency, thanks to two mutually informing dimensions of human life: our animality and our sociality. Second, I argue that self-opacity can contribute productively to ethical life, such that it is possible not just to tolerate self-opacity, but to live well with it. I show that cultivating a non-defensive relationship with selfopacity is crucial to moral growth. PUBLICATIONS I. Articles in Refereed Journals Unity and Synthesis in the Ego Ideal: Reading Freud s Concept Through Kant s Philosophy. American Imago Centenary Issue, Fall

2 II. Articles in Edited Collections I Want to Know More About You: Knowing and Acknowledging in Cavell and Chinatown. Cavell and Aesthetic Understanding. Ed. Garry Hagberg. Palgrave Macmillan The Space of Pathos: Meaning, Anxiety, and Ethics in Heidegger s Being and Time. Existential Philosophy and Ethics. Eds. Hans Feger and Manuela Hackel. De Gruyter, Papers in Preparation Opacity and Indeterminacy. (under review) Kant on Self-Conceit and Respect for Others. The Paradox of Apology. PUBLICATIONS IN ART CRITICISM Feeling as a Kind of Knowing: Rankine, Fanon, and the Lived Experience of Racism. Open Set (invited), forthcoming. On the Movement for Lynching Memorials. Lenny, republished August. The Spirit of Things: On Personal Shopper. Los Angeles Review of Books, April. Roh, nicht medium. Translation of Unspeakable Appetites in German. Der Freitag, March. Unspeakable Appetites: On Raw and Female Cannibals in the Movies. Lenny, March An Education: On Barry Jenkin s Moonlight. Los Angeles Review of Books, forthcoming. The Politics of Self-Knowledge in Jason Bourne. Los Angeles Review of Books, August. Precarious Paintings, Precarious Lives: On Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. Los Angeles Review of Books, June. On the Movement for Lynching Memorials. Lenny, June. Images to Work With: On the Ethics of Representation in Son of Saul. Los Angeles Review of Books, February. Kubrick s Paths of Glory. The Films of Stanley Kubrick, exhibition catalogue. Museum of Fine Arts Boston, January How to Be Together: Andrew Haigh s 45 Years. Los Angeles Review of Books, December. The Quietly Revolutionary Carol. Lenny, November Repetition and Difference in Two Days One Night. Los Angeles Review of Books, December. Kara Walker s A Subtlety. Los Angeles Review of Books, June. The Unknown Inside: On Stranger by the Lake. Los Angeles Review of Books, February Places of Remembrance. The Millions, September. AWARDS & SCHOLARSHIPS Graduate Council Travel Fund Award Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship. National fellowship awarded for research on ethical values in the humanities and social sciences Mellon Humanities Dissertation Completion Fellowship,. Dissertation completion fellowship in the Humanities Division APA Graduate Student Travel Award Graduate Council Travel Grant. 2

3 2013. DAAD Language Scholarship Harold Sterling Vanderbilt University Scholarship. Given to one student annually based on outstanding academic record Vanderbilt University Fellowship New School University Dean s Fellowship. Given to one student annually based on outstanding academic record New School University Travel Fund New School Tuition Scholarship. SELECTED PRESENTATIONS The Paradox of Apology. Annual Meeting, Central Division of the American Philosophical Association (refereed). Cavell on the Reality of the Psyche. Wittgenstein Workshop, New School for Social Research (invited) The Paradox of Apology. Humanistic Ethics Conference. Rice University (invited) Self-Opacity and Bodily Being (with Picasso s Half-Length Female Nude) Expose Yourself. A talk series at the Art Institute of Chicago in which academics use the permanent collection to present their research to the public. A Perverse Nature: Freud s Drive Theory and the Idea of Second Nature. Die Kunst der zweiten Natur. Goethe University Frankfurt. Kant on Self-Opacity and Self-Conceit. Annual Meeting, Central Division of the American Philosophical Association (refereed; response by Ryan Kemp). Opacity is the Rule: On Nomy Arpaly s Account of Agency. Opacity, Fragility, Responsibility Workshop at the Phenomenology Research Group, Loyola University Chicago (invited) Kant on Self-Conceit and Respect for Persons. The Form of Practical Knowledge (Conference in Honor of Stephen Engstrom). Leipzig Universität. Repetition and Difference in Film. Vanderbilt University (invited) Morality and Victimhood: Nietzschean Objections, Nietzschean Possibilities. Annual Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (refereed). Moral Self-Opacity and Moral Authority. Society of Fellows Conference, (refereed). Chinatown s Two Worlds: Knowing and Acknowledging, Noir and Melodrama. Troubled Worlds, Troubled Genres: Cavell on Film. New School Wittgenstein Workshop (invited) Life in Truth: On Parrhesia in Late Foucault. Annual Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (refereed). I Want to Know More About You: Knowing and Acknowledging in Polanski s Chinatown. 3

4 Experience, Intimacy and Authority Workshop. IV Research Workshop of Identity, Memory and Experience. Universidad Carlos III, Madrid (refereed) The Struggle of Sense: Wittgenstein, Suffering, and Nonsense. IV Research Workshop of Identity, Memory and Experience. Pratt Institute (refereed). What We Talk About When We Talk About Pain: Wittgenstein on Pain and Language. North American Wittgenstein Society Annual Meeting, Central Division of the American Philosophical Association (refereed). The Space of Pathos: Meaning, Anxiety, and Ethics in Being and Time. Existenzphilosophie und Ethik. Freie Universität Berlin (refereed) What We Talk About When We Talk About Pain: Wittgenstein, Suffering, and Language. Bonn University Philosophy Department Colloquium. Unity and Organization in Freud s Ego Ideal. New School for Social Research, Psychoanalytic Theory Workshop (invited) Active Interpretation in Kristeva and Nietzsche. Kristeva in Process: The Fertility of Thought. Humboldt University in Berlin (refereed) Subjects of Loss: Sublimation, Loss, and Modern Subjectivity in Kristeva. Re-Thinking Subjectivity. New School for Social Research Graduate Student Philosophy Conference (refereed; response by Fanny Söderback). COMMENTARIES Response to Jack Samuel s What Would Alienation Be? Chicagoland Graduate Student Conference, University of Illinois at Chicago (invited) Response to Rachel Zuckert s Herder and Ossian: Aesthetics and (In)authenticity. German Philosophical Aesthetics Conference ay the Chicago Area German Philosophy Consortium, DePaul University (invited) Response to D.N. Rodowick s book Philosophy s Artful Conversation. 3CT New Book Salon, (invited). UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO WORKSHOP PRESENTATIONS What Dreams Do to Film. Literature and Philosophy Workshop Agency and Dependency. Practical Philosophy Workshop Opacity is the Rule: On Nomy Arpaly s Account of Agency. Practical Philosophy Workshop Moral Self-Opacity and Self-Knowledge in Kant. German Philosophy Workshop I Want to Know More About You: Knowing and Acknowledging in Polanski s Chinatown. Wittgenstein Workshop Bringing the Good into View: a Kantian-Freudian Account of the Guise of the Good Thesis. German Philosophy Workshop. TEACHING 4

5 Yale University Ethics and Self-Knowledge in the History of Philosophy. Yale University. (seminar) Philosophy section in Directed Studies Program Kant and Existentialism: Autonomy and Morality. (seminar) Introduction to Political Philosophy. (Teaching Assistant for Prof. Ben Laurence) Introduction to Ancient Philosophy. (Teaching Assistant for Prof. Agnes Callard) Critique of Humanism. (Teaching Assistant for Prof. Candace Vogler) Vanderbilt University Introduction to Ethics. Vanderbilt University. (Teaching Assistant for Prof. Larry May) Pace University Philosophical Perspectives on Feminism. Pace University. (seminar) Pedagogy Instructor Diversity Outreach Coordinator, Philosophy,. In this position I acted as a liaison for undergraduate women and students from underrepresented groups, provided diversity pedagogy training for graduate students, and worked with the department chair (Gabriel Lear) and the director of undergraduate studies (Anton Ford) on climate issues in the department Creating an Enabling Classroom. Chicago Center for Teaching,. Along with other members of the Gender and Academia Working Group, I designed a pedagogy training workshop for the Chicago Center for Teaching, which is now held twice annually. I have been facilitating this workshop since its inception. The aim of the workshop is to help instructors create an inclusive classroom Diversity in the Classroom. Philosophy Department Pedagogy Program,. Using as a template the workshop I designed for the Chicago Center for Teaching, in this workshop I help graduate student instructors devise ways to make their classes, including their syllabi, more diverse and inclusive. PEDAGOGICAL TRAINING Teach-In on Race and Pedagogy. Center for Race, Politics, and Culture, Creating an Enabling Classroom. Chicago Center for Teaching, Diversity in the Classroom. Philosophy Department Pedagogy Program,. ACADEMIC SERVICE 5

6 Diversity Outreach Coordinator.. In this position I acted as a liaison for undergraduate women and students from underrepresented groups, provided diversity pedagogy training for graduate students, and worked with the department chair (Gabriel Lear) and the director of undergraduate studies (Anton Ford) on climate issues. PRISM Coordinator for Philosophy.. Planning Resources and Involvement for Students in Majors. Organize and coordinate philosophy-related activities outside the classroom for current and prospective majors. Wittgenstein Workshop Coordinator. Invite speakers, maintain website, facilitate workshop. Women in Philosophy, Organizer.. Organize and facilitate meetings, organize dinner with prospective visiting graduate students, meet and organize with faculty present present present present. Gender and Academia Working Group, Organized International Women s Day workshop; designed a pedagogy training workshop for the Chicago Center for Teaching. Contemporary European Philosophy Workshop Coordinator Invited speakers, maintained website, facilitated workshop. Elucidations Podcast, Interviewer.. Bryce Huebner (Georgetown): Race and Cognition Stephen Engstrom (Pittsburgh): Kant s Categorical Imperative Christel Fricke (Oslo): Adam Smith s Theory of Moral Sentiments Rafeeq Hasan (Amherst): Rousseau on Freedom and Happiness 2013-present. Women in Philosophy, Organizer. New School for Social Research REFERENCES Prof. Candace Vogler 1115 E. 58th St vogue@uchicago.edu Prof. Daniel Brudney 1115 E. 58th St David B. and Clara E. Stern Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy 6

7 Prof. Jonathan Lear Department of Social Thought 1130 East 59th Street Prof. Kyla Ebels-Duggan Northwestern University 1880 Campus Drive Evanston, IL Prof. Ben Laurence (teaching reference) 1115 E. 58th St John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor Associate Professor of Philosophy Assistant Professor of Philosophy 7