Bryn Mawr College is on the search for new professors to join their Literatures in English and Philosophy departments. Candidate talks organized by the respective departments were organized throughout the first few weeks of the spring semester where potential new professors were able to present their research topics to students and professors alike.
The English department hosted lectures for candidates for a professorship with a concentration on African American literature. Alex Alton, a postdoctoral associate from Rutgers University, kicked off the series with a compelling lecture titled “Beyond ‘Mere Use: Charles Chesnutt’s Conjure Tales and the Political Ecologies of African American Literature”. Presented at English House, the lecture delved into the ideologies of Charles Chesnutt as well as exploring the fusion of natural elements and societal dynamics within African American literature.
Jas Riley, a graduate student at Yale, gave a fascinating talk titled “For Her Own Good: On the Translocation of Black Girlhood” on January 29 which was an exploration of the ways in which Black girlhood is portrayed in literature with a specific focus on the adultification of Black children especially in catastrophe. They spoke in detail about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in relation to dislocation and Black maternity and girlhood.
The final talk of the series was given by Belinda Wallace who is an associate professor of English Language and Literature at the University of New Mexico. Titled “Afrofuturism and Adaptation: Imagining Blackness Beyond Precarity,” her though-provoking work explores the potential of the Black experiences by disrupting canonical representations of it. She spoke specifically about Lovecraft Country, a horror drama series, and how horror elements are use to critique white supremacy.
Philosophy
The Philosophy Department also hosted several candidate talks in January and February, the first of which was given by Alexander Quanbeck who is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University and a Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His lecture titled “Kierkegaard on the Relationship between Practical and Epistemic Reasons for Belief” takes into account how practical consideration impact what we are supposed to believe by “affecting whether a belief is epistemically justified, or constitute distinctively practical reasons for belief which can only affect what we ought to believe by conflicting with epistemic rationality”
Following Quanbeck, Joshua Fox, a visiting assistant professor at Idaho State University lectured on “Boredom, Motivation and the Value of Life”. He tackled the problem of pessimism and examines how 19th century philosophers such as Nietzsche, Mill and Schopenhauer confront the worry that life is worthless by questioning the structure of human desire for purpose.
Lawrence Dallman from the University of Chicago then presented on “Marx’s Epiphenomenalism Reconsidered” where he reconstructs the early arguments of Marx. Instead, Dallman suggest that “they sketch a sophisticated form of methodological naturalism with important relevance for contemporary metaphilosophical debates”.
On February 2nd, Katherine J. Deaven at Univesiry of Wisconsin-Madison delivered the penultimate lecture on “A tale of Two Propensities: Evolvability and Fitness”. At UoWM Deaven specialises in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology and her research is centred around the metaphysical, epistemological and methodological questions in the field of evolutionary biology. More specifically, she is concerned with the role that variation plays in evolution.
The final talk was presented by E. Hande Tuna, an assistant affiliate faculty of Philosophy and Feminist Studies at the University of California – Santa Cruz. It was titled “Disgust, Contempt and Imagination”. Currently working on a book called “Imaginative Resistance”, they have written extensively on Kants aesthetic theory particularly on his opinions on art, music and beauty.
