Note from the Chair

As the days lengthen, trees green, and lilacs scent the air on the Arts Quad, Sage School of Philosophy students have been taking their final exams and submitting term papers. Some are posing for graduation photos and getting ready to move to a new phase of life.  Faculty and graduate students are grading and getting ready for a summer of reading, writing, traveling again.

Spring semester has been busy and exciting, with the introduction of a new proseminar on the history of philosophy led by Professors Michelle Kosch and Scott MacDonald, Professor Karolina Hübner and Justin Steinberg’s research seminar “Mind and Action: Then and Now”, and Professor Karolina Hübner’s recently announced New Frontiers Grant, “Reinventing Sentience”. You can read about some of our historians of philosophy in our undergraduate writers’ interviews below.  We put funds unused due to Covid in 2020-21 to use by creating a two-year postdoctoral fellowship and we will welcome Qiu Lin (PhD Duke 2022), philosopher of science and historian of early modern science and Chinese philosophy, in 2022-23. Below you can also find news about our graduating PhD students and recent PhDs who found new positions, about our undergraduate club Logos’ activities, about faculty and graduate student projects and accomplishments, and about the long term support the Sage School of Philosophy has received from the Karp fund.

Philosophy undergraduates Zelai Xu '22 and Jae Rhee '23 recently interviewed three Sage School faculty who are historians of philosophy. Their stories: Karolina Hübner, Human, All Too Human, Scott MacDonald, Philosophize Like Jazz, and Tad Brennan, Dead men tell no tales.

The Sage School's Ancient Philosophy program includes faculty and graduate students from the Philosophy and Classics Departments. Jack Karp '58 established the Joseph and Eva Karp Fund in Ancient Philosophy to support this program. In Who was Jack Karp? Behind the Karp Fund for the Study of Ancient Philosophy at Cornell Pamela Hanna, the Sage School's Graduate Field Assistant and Undergraduate Coordinator, writes about Jack Karp and what inspired him to establish this important endowment.

Next year the department will begin another chapter of the Karp Fund, the Karp Fellow Program. We are excited to have Dr. Monima Chadha from Monash University join us for the fall semester.

Philosophy undergraduates

At the invitation of Logos, the Undergraduate Philosophy Club, NYU philosopher Dave Chalmers gave the Norman Kretzmann Lecture, “Sentience and Status” in February.  Informally, the club watched “Inception”, in the Klarman auditorium.  They have been hard at work on the next issue of the journal Logos—look out for it this summer!

The incoming board for AY 2022-23 is:

Jacqueline Allen, President; Sophia Gottfried, Vice President; Ben Dever-Mendenhall, Editor in Chief; Alkis Boukas, Treasurer; and Ben Knepper, Secretary

New and recent PhD graduates

Many of our recent PhDs have been hired by a variety of prestigious institutions ~ including coming back to Cornell:

• Brandon Conley (PhD ‘18) was hired as a lecturer at Clemson University
• Yuna Won (PhD ‘18) will be the Philosophical Review Postdoctoral Fellow at the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell, in 2022-23
• Kim Brewer (PhD ‘18) will be Visiting Assistant Professor at the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell, in Spring 2023
• Fran Fairbairn (PhD ‘19) was hired to a tenure track position at Cal State Bakersfield
• Augie Faller (PhD ‘20) was hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr
• Dean DaVee (PhD ’21) will be lecturer at the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell, in 2022-23
• Matt Paskell (PhD '22) will be lecturer at the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell, in 2022-23
• Amy Ramirez (PhD '22) will  be a lecturer at National University Singapore, in the Fall 2022

Faculty and Graduate Student Notes

Members of the Sage School have been conducting research, writing, and presenting - please enjoy reading through the Faculty Notes and Graduate Student Notes.

Produced by Dorothy Vanderbilt, Administrative Manager for the Sage School of Philosophy