Spring 2023 Faculty News & Accomplishments

Professor Yuri Balashov gave a talk on "Harnessing the Power of Domain Adaptation" at the Annual Conference of the American Translators Association in Los Angeles, CA in October.

Associate professor Melissa Fahmy’s paper, “Never Merely as a Means: Rethinking the Role and Relevance of Consent” was published in the March 2023 issue of Kantian Review. Dr. Fahmy presented her recent work on obligatory ends in the Biennial Meeting of the North American Kant Society in Mexico City in March, and in late April she will deliver a keynote address at the Southern Study Group of the North American Kant Society hosted by Florida State University. This summer, Dr. Fahmy will participate in the Center for Teaching and Learning’s Active Learning Summer Institute as part of their 2023 cohort. 

Associate professor Elizabeth Brient gave keynote lecture, “All Likenesses Must Shatter: Exploding Metaphors, Exploding Texts in Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa,” at the international conference, Contradiction and Truth in Christian Neo-Platonism, at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, November.

Distinguished Research Professor & Josiah Meigs Teaching Professor Edward Halper's paper “On the Principles of Reality,” has been accepted by the Italian online journal: Thaumàzein: Revisita di Filosofia, due for publication in June 2023. He also wrote the introduction to Common and Particular Sensibles: The Dialectic of Aristotle's Discussion of Substance, recently published by University of Toronto Press. Dr. Halper also has been busy traveling to present papers including: “Metaphysics and the Problem of the One and the Many,” at the Metaphysical Society of America conference in Atlanta, GA; “Is Freedom Good?” at the Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies, at the University of South Florida; and “Plotinus on Knowledge” at the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies in Catania, Sicily. He is also staying very busy editing a volume of papers from the International Plato Society Symposium, which he hosted at UGA last summer in his recent role as president of IPS.

Associate professor Rene Jagnow published the paper, “The Particularity of Photographic Experience” in the journal Theoria. He also gave four presentations: “Multisensory Experience of Paintings” at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in Portland in November, “Experiencing Atmospheres in Painting: Vilhelm Hammershøi’s Interiors” at the Southern Aesthetics Workshop in Charleston in October, “Vilhelm Hammershøi’s Interiors: How Do We Experience Atmosphere in Paintings?” at the Expanded Aesthetics Workshop at UGA in May, and “Strong Representationalism and the Experience of Afterimages” at the annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in March.

Part-time instructor Marianna Koshkaryan presented a paper, "The Influence of Greek Tragedy on the Works of Plato" at the conference on "Truth, Fiction, and Literature" at the University of Rijeka, Croatia in December.

Department Head and Professor Aaron Meskin has delivered a series of papers at various venues over the past few months. In October, he spoke about the aesthetic value of food at the Southern Aesthetics Workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. In November, he spoke about bad movies at the American Society of Aesthetics 80th Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon. In January, he delivered a paper about the philosophical content of comic books at the American Philosophical Association's Eastern Division Meeting in Montreal. He returned to Charleston in February to deliver an invited paper on the aesthetics of place at the College of Charleston.

Dr. Piers Stephens has just been officially promoted to the rank of Full Professor, effective as of the 2023/24 academic year. He has also recently completed a book review of Mark Coeckelbergh’s book Green Leviathan or the Poetics of Political Liberty, which is now forthcoming in the journal Environmental Values. In April he will present a new paper “True and False Individualism Revisited: J.S. Mill, F.A. Hayek, and the Defense of Green Liberalism,” to the Environmental Political Theory section of the Western Political Science Association.

Professor Sarah Wright gave a talk entitled “Natural and Artificial Epistemic Virtues” at Northwestern University as part of "The NU Philosophy Colloquium Series” in March.

Distinguished Research Professor Richard Dien Winfield’s latest book, Rethinking the Arts After Hegel: From Architecture to Motion Pictures, has been accepted for publication by Palgrave Macmillan (Springer), and should appear in print later in 2023. In December and January, he gave three academic talks in India: "How Nature Has Room for Knowers of Nature" at the Physics Department of Ambedkar University, Lucknow; "The Normativity of Modernity and the Ethical Challenges of Modernization" at the Philosophy Department of Lucknow University, Lucknow; and "The Annihilation of Caste, Religious Reform, and Democracy: Ambedkar's Challenge to the Twenty-First Century" at the International Conference on Morality, Spirituality, Culture and Society: East and West, at Adamas University, Barasat.