There are so many terrific things happening in this department! As the new chair of the Philosophy Department, most of my time is spent facilitating all the great things members of this community are doing, many of which are discussed in this newsletter. Indeed, being more aware of all the things we do has been a joy of my first few months. Another aspect of my job is to think about our mission and how I can help this community thrive now and in the future.
The Philosophy Department is… Read more
This autumn quarter graduate students Blake Hereth and Paul Tubig taught Introduction to Philosophy at the Washington Women’s Correctional Facility (WCCW) in Gig Harbor, WA. The course is college-accredited and supported by Tacoma Community College and the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEEPS), which is a nonprofit organization that provides college education for incarcerated women. We asked Blake and Paul to share with us some of their experiences and reflections on teaching in prison… Read more
Please join us to explore how the tools of philosophy can help us to grapple in productive ways with important social issues that have gained renewed attention following the 2016 national election cycle.
Each session will start with a short introduction by faculty and/or graduate students, with the aim of initiating open discussion of the issues and will be held outside of Savery 361 at the large table on Fridays from 1:30 to 2:30 PM.
Series Schedule:
January 20thHate Speech and SlursLuvell… Read more
Bill Talbott, Michael Rosenthal, and Amos Nascimento, of UW-Tacoma, organized the “Immigration, Toleration, and Human Rights” conference and “Immigration, Religion, and Human Rights” panel discussion that were held at UW on October 27-28, 2016. The conference was part of an ongoing collaboration between the tri-campus UW interdisciplinary research cluster on Human Interaction—Normative Innovation (HI-NORM) and the Cluster of Excellence on the Formation of Normative Orders at the Goethe… Read more
The Department of Philosophy is thrilled to welcome our newest faculty member, Benjamin Feintzeig, who joins us as an assistant professor in 2016-2017.
Feintzeig is a philosopher of physics who recently completed his PhD in the Logic & Philosophy of Science program at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on the philosophy of modern physics, in particular the implications of algebraic formulations of… Read more
Professor Michael Blake took part a panel discussion at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto on “Reflections on Global Affairs: Is the world really falling apart?” along with Radall Hansen, Director of the Center of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Professor of Political Science, Janice Stein, Founding Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and an internationally renowned expert on international conflict and global… Read more
We are proud to announce that Professor Steve Gardiner and Research Associate Augustin Fragniere have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to further their work on Geoengineering, Political Legitimacy and Justice. This two year grant will enable Steve and Augustin to develop an international research community that focuses on the ethical and political issues concerning geo-engineering.
Geoengineering, commonly defined as “the deliberate large-scale manipulation of… Read more
Congratulations to senior Philosophy (and Psychology) double Major Kaitlyn McGlothlen, whose essay "Oops, There Goes My Childhood: Identity and Ethical Issues in the Selective Erasing of Memories" was recently named the winner of not one, but two separate bioethics essay contests! With her essay, she won the "Clinical Ethics" essay contest competition hosted by Voice in Bioethics, an online journal in… Read more
Congratulations to philosophy graduate student Tim Brown, who has been selected as one of the inaugural National Humanities Without Walls PreDoctoral Fellows. The fellows receive a generous stipend to attend the 2017 Humanities Without Walls PreDoctoral Summer Workshop which will take place in Chicago for three weeks this summer.
Humanities Without Walls (HWW) is an initiative by a consortium of humanities centers based in 15 research universities throughout the Midwest, which was launched with… Read more
Doctoral candidate Michelle Pham has been awarded a prestigious year-long dissertation fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. This nationally-competitive award will cover a full year of dissertation research from September 2016 to August 2017. Michelle's dissertation… Read more
We are thrilled to announce that Professor Alison Wylie has been selected to deliver the Dewey Lecture at the Pacific division meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA), right here in Seattle! For those less familiar with John Dewey or the prestigious Dewey Lecture series, the APA provides the following description.
"John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist… Read more
We are proud to announce that Andrea Woody, Department of Philosophy Chair & Associate Professor, has been selected to be the next editor-in-chief of Philosophy of Science, the premier philosophy of science journal. She will begin her five-year term on July 1, 2017. President of the Philosophy of Science Association… Read more
Prof. Elena Erosheva (Statistics and Social Work) and Prof. Carole Lee (Philosophy) have been awarded a contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore possible racial disparities in the NIH grant review process. Recent studies (Ginther et al., 2011; 2012) have shown that Black researchers are less likely than White researchers to receive NIH R01 grant funding by at least 10 percentage points. NIH uses a peer review grant process that requires each reviewer to provide… Read more
This article was first published by the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the Univeristy of Washington.
This past February I read an article on the BBC website reporting that some onlookers had cheered as a fire burned down a shelter for migrants in Bautzen, Germany. While this incident was appalling in itself, it also had special resonance… Read more
In Winter 2015 Professor of Philosophy Stephen Gardiner undertook a pioneering and ambitious academic task: to co-teach a course on the ethics and science of climate engineering with Prof Thomas Ackerman from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. In a recent commentary for the Forum for Climate and… Read more
Professor Sara Goering's work as neuroethics research leader for the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering was recently featured in the August edition of the College of Arts and Sciences' Perspectives newsletter.
Neuroscience raises a wide range of ethical concerns. One is agency, or ownership of our actions. If a neural device is stimulating the brain while someone decides on an… Read more
Doctoral student Julio Covarrubias-Cabeza has been awarded The IESUS (Institute for Ethnic Studies in the United States) Publication Fellowship by the Graduate School's Graduate Opportunities & Minority Achievement Program (GO-MAP). This highly competitive award supports publication opportunities for graduate students who are in-progress with a paper that will be submitted to a journal within the 2016-2017 academic year.
Julio's ongoing… Read more
Amy Reed-Sandoval (PhD 2014) has been chosen for one of seven awards from the APA Small Grant Fund for her Philosophy for Children project at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), where she is now an Assistant Professor. Dr. Reed-Sandoval … Read more
Andrea Sullivan-Clarke (PhD 2015) has been awarded one of two APA Diversity and Inclusiveness grants for 2016-2017 to start a summer institute for historically underrepresented high school students at DePauw University. Dr. Sullivan-Clarke's project -- Inclusive Summer High School Institute for Philosophy (ISHIP) at the Prindle Institute for Ethics -- is a… Read more