Bill FisherFebruary 20, 20131min
In this video, Lori Gruen, professor of philosophy; professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies; professor of environmental studies, talks about the ethics of caring for chimpanzees who have been subjected to invasive biomedical research. She discusses recent positive developments in the movement to retire to sanctuaries the last 1,000 federally-supported research chimpanzees in the United States. Professor Gruen maintains the website www.last1000chimps.com to track the movement of the remaining research chimps in the U.S. from labs to retirement. Find more information about Chimp Haven, the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary where many research chimps live in retirement, at www.chimphaven.org. #THISISWHY [youtube width="640" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3HEdXEc95s[/youtube]

David LowJanuary 25, 20132min
Stephen Angle is the author of Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy, published by Polity in 2012. Angle is professor of philosophy, professor of East Asian studies, and tutor in the College of Social Studies. Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students of political theory or contemporary politics will learn that far from being confined to a museum, contemporary Confucianism is both responding to current…

Olivia DrakeDecember 19, 20113min
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, philosopher, psychoanalyst and public intellectual, died suddenly on Dec. 1 at the age of 65. She served on the Wesleyan faculty for nearly two decades, joining the College of Letters in 1974, after earning her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the New School, where she studied closely with Hannah Arendt. In 1982, Young-Bruehl published what is still considered the definitive biography of Arendt, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (Yale University Press, 1982; Second Edition, 2004), a text for which she received the Harcourt Literary Prize in Biography and Memoirs. Six years later, in 1988, she published an intellectual…

Olivia DrakeJuly 25, 20112min
Wesleyan's Animal Studies hosted the Animals and Society Institute-Wesleyan Animal Studies Fellowship Program Conference June 27-30 in Usdan University Center. The conference is the culminating event in the first annual ASI-WAS Fellowship Program, which brings to campus a broad range of scholars studying human-animal relations. Lori Gruen, chair and professor of philosophy, and Kari Weil, university professor of letters, co-organized the conference. Photos of the conference faculty, guests and ASI fellows are below: (more…)

Olivia DrakeJune 22, 20111min
Steven Horst, professor of philosophy, attended several conferences on Cognitive Science of Religion during the 2010-11 academic year.  In July, he attended a summer workshop on "Cognition, Religion, and Theology" at Oxford University. In August, he attended the International Association for Cognitive Science of Religion, meeting in Toronto. At both conferences, he presented his paper titled, "Whose Intuitions? Which Dualism?" Horst also presented a paper titled, “What is Unity of Knowledge, and Are We Really Missing Anything Without It?” at the Ian Ramsey Conference held at St. Anne's College, Oxford, in July.

Olivia DrakeJune 22, 20111min
Stephen Angle, professor of philosophy, professor of East Asian studies, tutor in the College of Social Studies, participated in a one-day Book Symposium on his book, Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy (Oxford, 2009), at the Institute for Chinese Philosophy and Culture, Academia Sinica, in Taipei, Taiwan, in early June. Altogether, nine papers were delivered by Taiwan-based philosophers, roughly half in English and half in Chinese. Angle had an opportunity to respond and participated in a general discussion. The symposium was timed to coincide with an intensive, two-week class that he's been teaching at Taipei's Soochow University, also on the…

Olivia DrakeJune 22, 20113min
Steven Horst, professor of philosophy, is the author of Laws, Mind and Free Will, published by MIT Press in March 2011. This is his third book. In Laws, Mind, and Free Will, Horst addresses the apparent dissonance between the picture of the natural world that arises from the sciences and our understanding of ourselves as agents who think and act. If the mind and the world are entirely governed by natural laws, there seems to be no room left for free will to operate. Moreover, although the laws of physical science are clear and verifiable, the sciences of the mind seem to…

Olivia DrakeApril 13, 20112min
Lori Gruen, chair of the Philosophy Department, associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, associate professor of environmental studies, is the author of Ethics and Animals: An Introduction, published by Cambridge University Press in March 2011. In this comprehensive introduction to animal ethics, Gruen weaves together poignant and provocative case studies with discussions of ethical theory, urging readers to engage critically and empathetically reflect on their treatment of other animals. She provides a survey of the issues central to human-animal relations and a reasoned new perspective on current key debates in the field. She analyzes and explains a range of theoretical positions…

Olivia DrakeMarch 1, 20111min
Wesleyan’s College of the Environment has appointed faculty members Johan “Joop” Varekamp, Clark Maines, Vijay Pinch and Elise Springer as 2011-12 fellows. The fellows will gather with other Wesleyan scholars and undergraduate students for a year-long academic "Think Tank" on a critical environmental issue. The 2011-12 topic is "Water’s Past, Water’s Future." The aim of the Think Tank is not only to generate a deeper understanding of the thematic issue, but also to produce scholarly works that will influence national and international thinking and action on the issue. Scholars and students in the think tank are expected to produce scholarly (more…)

Cynthia RockwellMarch 1, 20113min
Spiral, a CD by the Dave Wilson [’78] Quartet received a three-and-a-half star review in the November issue of Downbeat magazine. Released last June on Summit Records, Spiral features six original compositions by Wilson and arrangements of three contemporary classics, including the Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil. ” “With a crack band in pianist Phil Markowitz, bassist Tony Marino and Adam Nussbaum on drums, saxophonist Dave Wilson knows how to pick them and the music,” writes critic John Ephland of Downbeat. Additionally, in a review in the December issue of JazzTimes Magazine, critic Bill Milkowski observed that “Pennsylvania-based saxophonist-educator…

Olivia DrakeDecember 16, 20101min
Ethan Kleinberg, associate professor of history, associate professor of letters is spending the year as director of the Vassar-Wesleyan Paris Program and an invited scholar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. During the Fall 2010 semester, Kleinberg delivered two lectures based on his current book project, The Myth of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is a French Jewish philosopher who turned to the use of Jewish (more…)