Faculty

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Garry L. Hagberg, Director

B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of Oregon. Postdoctoral research, Cambridge University. Author, Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory and Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary Knowledge; contributions to Historical Reflections, Henry James Review, Philosophy, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Mind, New Novel Review, Philosophical Quarterly, Ethics, Perspectives of New Music, Encyclopedia of the Essay, and Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships and grants: Dartmouth College; Cambridge University Library; British Library, London; St. John's College, Cambridge University. At Bard since 1990.

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Jay R Elliott

B.A., New York University; Ph.D., University of Chicago. Recipient, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, Yale University. Has previously taught at Yale, The New School for Social Research, and Iona College. His first book, Character, was published by Bloomsbury Press in 2017. His articles and reviews have been published in many leading journals, including Ancient Philosophy, Augustinian Studies, The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Film and Philosophy,and Philosophy and Literature. He is coeditor, with James Conant, of the Norton Anthology of Western Philosophy, After Kant: The Analytic Tradition. He is also a consulting editor of Diogenes Laertius: Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, which is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. At Bard since 2013.

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Seth David Halvorson

 www.sethhalvorson.com
BA, Macalester College; MA, Stanford University; Ph.D. Columbia University.  Halvorson's interests include Political, Ethical, and Social Philosophy, Policy Analysis, Legal Studies, and Philosophy of Technology. He has presented at national and international conferences on diverse topics.  After college, Seth spent 3 years at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University. 
Prior to joining the Bard College Annandale faculty, he was a teacher and Academic Dean at a grade 7-12 museum-based school in Toronto.  On return to the US, Seth rejoined the Philosophy department at Columbia, teaching and serving as the project manager for Digital Humanities and the Core Curriculum.  In 2011 he founded Bard High School Early College, in Newark, NJ, where he was Associate Professor of Philosophy, History, and Political Studies, Department Chair, and head coach of the debate team.  Halvorson has taught in the Language and Thinking program for many years. 
Seth’s research and teaching sits at the intersection of ethics, politics, and education.  One project, justice across the generations addresses the moral and political status of children and youth in late stage disaster capitalism.  A second project, formative (in)justices, explores how politics and ethics can be understood pedagogically. He is interested in environmental ethics, discourse ethics, philosophy of the emotions, classical and contemporary theories of citizenship, and ethics in society.

Seth is a part of the Maintainers network, a global research network interested in the concepts of maintenance, infrastructure, repair, and the myriad forms of labor and expertise that sustain our human-built world.


Fall 2022 Courses:

Philosophy and/of Education
Freedom
First Year Seminar
 

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Yarran Hominh

Yarran Hominh's research sits at the intersection of moral psychology and social and political philosophy, drawing on, among other traditions, the global pragmatist tradition in John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and B. R. Ambedkar. He is interested in how modern social and political institutions shape human agency, and how human agency can in turn be used to change those institutions. His current book project is entitled The Problem of Unfreedom. It examines the fundamental practical political question: Can those who are unfree free themselves? His other research interests include philosophy of law, ethics, colonialism, early modern European philosophy, Asian philosophy, particularly Buddhism and Confucianism, critical Asian American philosophy, and the philosophy of the social sciences. He is Associate Editor of The APA Studies on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies. Recent published work can be found in the Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture, Comparative Philosophy, The Philosopher, The Pluralist, and Res Publica. You can find out more about his work here: https://yarranhominh.com/.

Prior to joining Bard, Yarran was Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Leslie Center for the Humanities and Lecturer in Philosophy at Dartmouth College. He has also taught philosophy and law at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University. In other lives, he has also been a journalist, martial arts teacher, musician, and lawyer.

B.A., University of Sydney; L.L.B., University of Sydney; L.L.M., University of Sydney; M.Phil., and Ph.D., Columbia University.

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David Shein

B.A., State University of New York at Oswego; M.Phil., Ph.D., Graduate Center, City University of New York. Has taught at Lehman College. Areas of interest: realism and antirealism, relativism, metaphysics, and epistemology. Developed Bard’s Academic Services Center and Disability Services. Numerous presentations at professional conferences. At Bard since 1999 (faculty member since 2008).

Interests:

• Research Interests: epistemology and metaphysics; naturalism; normativity
• Other Interests: sociology of science; history of science

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Kathryn Tabb

www.kathryntabb.com

Since receiving her doctorate in history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh, Kathryn Tabb has earned a master’s degree in bioethics and health law and served as assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. Her interests include philosophy of science and medicine, bioethics, psychopathology, American pragmatism, and the history of philosophy, especially early modern philosophy. At Columbia, she taught courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including Science and Values, The Normal and the Pathological, Darwin, and Contemporary Civilization. Professor Tabb is currently working on a monograph on John Locke, Agents and Patients: Locke’s Ethics of Thinking, that explores his theory of psychopathology and its implications for his philosophical theories. Recent peer-reviewed publications include the articles “Behavioral Genetics and Attributions of Moral Responsibility,” Behavioral Genetics; “Philosophy of Psychiatry after Diagnostic Kinds,” Synthese; “Locke on Enthusiasm and the Association of Ideas,” Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Vol. 9; and “Darwin at Orchis Bank: Selection after the Origin,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2016). Her published work also includes reviews and commentary in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Psychological Medicine, and Evolutionary Education and Outreach; and book chapters in Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry IV: Psychiatric Nosology; Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry III: The Nature and Sources of Historical Change; and Brain, Mind, and Consciousness in the History of Neuroscience. She is an investigator for the National Endowment for the Humanities grant project, “Humanities Connections Curriculum for Medicine, Literature, and Society” (2017–20); and was coprincipal investigator for the Genetics and Human Agency Project, “Intuitions about Genetics and Virtuous Behavior.”

BA, University of Chicago; MPhil, University of Cambridge; MA, PhD, University of Pittsburgh. At Bard since 2019.

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Ruth Zisman

Area of Specialization: German Philosophy

Ruth Zisman’s areas of specialization include the German philosophical tradition (Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger), political philosophy, psychoanalysis, and philosophy and literature. In addition to teaching courses in Philosophy, Human Rights, and German Studies, she also serves as the Director of the Bard Debate Union and the OSUN Global Debate Network. Since founding the Bard Debate Union in 2004, she has worked to build a world-renowned debate program on campus—expanding the program from an extracurricular activity to a centerpiece of liberal arts education—while also working to build and support the growth of debate programs in Bard's surrounding school districts and throughout Bard's national and international networks.  BA, Vassar College; MA and PhD, New York University. At Bard since 2004.