Faculty
Michael Blake was promoted to full professor.
Stephen Gardiner was on sabbatical leave this year as a visiting fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (Fall 2011), as a H.L.A. Hart Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Ethics and Philosophy of Law at Oxford University (Winter 2012), and as a Visiting Fellow at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University (Spring 2012).
Arthur Fine's contributions to the field of Philosophy of Science were celebrated at this year's meeting of the Pacific Division of the APA. See our cover story!
John Manchak was chosen to serve on the program committee for the 2012 meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association.
Michael Rosenthal was promoted to full professor.
William Talbott's book Which Rights Should Be Universal? (the Korean translation) was selected as the Human Rights Book of the Year by the Korea Human Rights Foundation (www.humanrights.or.kr).
Bill was also one of the primary organizers of an international conference, "Cosmopolitan Rights and Responsibilities" held at the UW in May 2012. The conference was the second in an ongoing series of joint conferences between the UW and the University of Frankfurt. Bill is looking forward to co-teaching a new lecture course, "Issues of Global Justice" with Michael Blake (UW, Philosophy) and Jamie Mayerfeld (UW, Political Science) in winter 2013.
Alison Wylie gave the Presidential Address at the Seattle-based meetings of the American Philosophical Association (APA) in April 2012. Her presentation, "Standpoint Matters, in Feminist Philosophy of Science" is available on podcast. Please visit her website for the link.
http://faculty.washington.edu/aw26/index.htm
In fall 2012, Alison will be a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Durham (UK). She was invited to join a diverse interdisciplinary group working on topics related to the annual theme of "Time" ranging from mathematical physics - "the nature and geometry of time" - to humanistic questions about "time and the present." The subthemes Wylie will engage will focus on the narration of time and the strategies by which we reconstruct time.
Graduate Students
Asia Ferrin and Benjamin Hole received the Annual Philosophy Department Teaching Awards.
P. Joshua Griffin (UW, Anthropology) won the $750 POV Ethics Exploration prize, which rewards work that combines empirical study with normative philosophical reflection. His work - "Resilience, Resistance, and Risk: articulating climate justice at the front lines" - involves interviewing and fieldwork with the indigenous inhabitants of Kivalina, a village in Alaska facing the effects of climate change. Griffin's work combines ethnography and cultural anthropology with a serious commitment to philosophical analysis about the justice of climate change. He will use this grant to accompany the inhabitants of Kivalina to a gathering of native stewards dealing with climate change, where he will conduct further interviews about the effects of climate change on native lives.
Joan-Antoine Mallet, our French exchange student, passed the "CAPES" exam which qualifies him to teach high school philosophy in his native France, which is a tenure track position!
Amy Reed-Sandoval won the second place award for the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE)/Squire Family Foundation Formal Paper Competition on Pre-college Ethics for 2012.
Patrick Smith had two publications, "Domination and the Ethics of Solar Radiation Management" in Engineering the Climate (edited by Christopher Preston), Rowman and Littlefield Press (2012), and "International Justice" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (forthcoming 2012), with Michael Blake.
Congratulations 2011-2012 Ph.D. and M.A. Recipients
Ph.D.
Jason D. Benchimol - "The Significance of Unintentional Omission: Moral Responsibility for the Failure to Act" (Angela Smith, Chair) Karen Emmerman - "Beyond the Basic/Nonbasic Interests Distinction: A feminist Approach to Inter-Species Moral Conflict and Repair" (Sara Goering, Chair) Jeremy M. Fischer - "Feeling Proud, Being Proud: An Inquiry into the Moral Psychology of Personal Ideals" (Angela Smith, Chair)
M. A.
Amy J. Reed-Sandoval - winter 2012 Dustyn Addington - spring 2012 Christopher G. Partridge - spring 2012
Undergraduate Students
The department named Jacob Baudin and Kseniya Husakthe 2012 Outstanding Graduating Seniors.
Carly Lord was awarded Outstanding Continuing Scholar.
Cody Fritts received the Kenneth R. Parker Award.
Kelci Mumford was awarded the George and Barbara Akers Scholarship (a UW Humanities Scholarship).
Ian Chase was the recipient of a Mary Gates Research Scholarship. His research project, "Concerning History in the Philosophy of Science" was supervised by Professor Andrea Woody.
Special thanks to the New Major's Seminar leaders, Elle Kim and Charles Tilander; to our 2011-2012 Writing Center tutors, Sam Hopkins and Kseniya Husak; and to the leaders of the undergraduate philosophy club, Lyceum,Chris Rodriguez and J. Eckard.
Congratulations to philosophy major Kelsey Kamitomo, BA '13! Kelsey's paper entitled "Duty, Sentience, and Morally Culpable: An Argument for the Rights of Animals" was awarded first place in the undergraduate division at the Appalachian Regional Colloquium. Kelsey was also invited to present her paper at four other conferences! Kelsey's paper focused on Peter Singer's view of sentience and moral consideration, Michelle Moody-Adams' argument for culture and individual responsibility, and J.O. Urmson's discussion of supererogation.
Congratulations B.A. Recipients
The department is pleased to announce that 82 Bachelor degrees were awarded in 2011-2012: 79 were Philosophy majors and three were History and Philosophy of Science majors. All were invited to our departmental graduation reception where Kseniya Husak was the undergraduate guest speaker. Congratulations majors!