The Long Road

SUNDANCE, UT - Today I participated on a panel for the honors program at the Utah Valley University, whose director, Michael Shaw, invited Marina McCoy and me to present papers for a panel dedicated to Women in Sophocles. My paper entitled, A Father's Touch, A Daughter's Voice: Antigone, Oedipus and Ismene at Colonus, traces three moments of touching in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus that mark the emergence of a politics other than that of patriarchal domination. (read more)

Adriel Trott, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Pan American joins me for episode 19 of the Digital Dialogue. Adriel received her PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University in 2008 with a dissertation entitled "The Challenge of Physis: Reconciling Nature and Reason in Aristotle's Politics." Her areas of specialization are Ancient Greek Thought and Social and Political Philosophy. Her work is informed by the continental and feminist traditions. She has come to the Digital Dialogue to talk about the recent paper she delivered at SPEP entitled: "The Wrongs of Rights: The Onto-Political Logic of Human Rights from... (read more)

Noëlle McAfee, Research Professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, joins me for episode 18 of the Digital Dialogue which is another special SPEP edition. Noëlle has numerous publications in the area of democratic political theory, social/political philosophy, feminist theory and American pragmatism including three books, Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship by Cornell University Press, 2000, Julia Kristeva, publish by Routledge in 2003, and a text that Shannon Sullivan and I discussed in episode 8 of the Digital Dialogue entitled Democracy and the Political Unconsious. She is here today to talk further about her book and to explore the transformative possibilities digital media opens for politics. (read more)

SUNDANCE, UT - Here is a little video I made for Val, Hannah and Chloe.  I miss you all very much and wanted to share a bit of the beauty of this place with you.Sorry about the shaking, but it was cold!  Of particular humor is the little bramble on my hat in the last part.  Enjoy and I can't wait to see you all tomorrow.... (read more)

OREM, UT - At the Utah Valley University, there is a strong commitment to engaged learning. In what follows, I try to offer a model by which social media technology can be used to cultivate the active engagement of students in their own education. This is a presentation I gave to a group of faculty and staff about how to use social media technology to cultivate communities of engaged learning in the classroom. (read more)

Dear Hannah:Today is the day we have been talking about since the summer - finally, it's your birthday! Today we celebrate you and the way you have celebrated us everyday since you arrived four years ago. I have always admired the way you inhabit the world. You bring a sense of joy to everything you do and to everyone you meet. You have your own way of moving through the world that makes me smile.And when you dance, it is something to behold... So on this day of celebration, I have produced a little recording base on our discussion about... (read more)

Rose Cherubin, Associate Professor of Philosophy at George Mason University, joins me and a special panel of colleagues from the Ancient Philosophy Society for a special SPEP edition of the Digital Dialogue. We gathered together in Arlington, VA to discuss the paper Rose Cherubin gave at the APS panel at SPEP entitled "Parmenides: Another Way." Also on the panel are Jill Gordon and Sara Brill. (read more)

Last week Professor McCoy posted a picture of her class at Boston College, so we thought it only appropriate to take a picture of our own and post it here on the blog too.So, here we are after today's class, the last on Plato's Phaedrus.  Thursday we begin the Symposium. From left to right, in the back row are: Olivia Raimonde, Sky Hippo, Anthony Zirpoli, Tony Arnold, Pam Dorian, John Koznecki, Anna Torres Cacoullos, Jack Kelly, Daniel Mininger, Drew Bullard, Christa Spinelli, Mike Yourchak, Taylor Ferber, Jingting Zhao, Bhavya Kaushal, Andrew Starks, Sean Tabatcher, Betty Walker and Joni Noggle. From... (read more)

One of the most difficult things for new Graduate Students to manage effectively is their time. This is in large part because graduate study has built into it large segments of unstructured time that can easily be wasted. One of the most important skills graduate students can learn early in their career is how to structure their time effectively. I have gathered here some suggestions that might help students take control of their time so that it can be used most productively. (read more)

Twenty years ago today, I can remember the buzz that spread among my American student colleagues at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna when we learned that the Berlin Wall had fallen.Just two weeks before, a group of us had been in Prague where we met a number of students from Czechoslovakia, as it was then called. They told us in no uncertain terms that something momentous was happening. At the time they and we did not know whether this was something to welcome or fear.  Upon our return to Vienna, we discussed the question in our European History... (read more)

John Lysaker, Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, joins me for the first of three special SPEP 2009 editions of the Digital Dialogue recorded in Arlington, VA at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existentialist Philosophy.John's research focuses on philosophical psychology, aesthetics, social and political philosophy, and 19th and 20 century continental and American philosophy. He has numerous publications in these areas, including two monographs, his first, You Must Change Your Life: Poetry and the Birth of Sense, was published in 2002 by Penn State University Press, and his second, Emerson and Self-Culture, was published... (read more)