For the inaugural issue of “Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies”, we solicited papers discussing Stanley’s autobiographical writings. To mirror types of conversations, we asked for both short and long (though we received mostly the latter).

Annotations on V. N. Voloshinov’s study “Marxism and the Philosophy of Language” (1929), on topics such as reflexion vs. refraction, consciousness and signs, language and ideology, Saussurean structuralism, verbal interaction, and theme vs. meaning.

This is a note on Walter Benjamin’s essay on collecting, “Unpacking My Library” (orig. published in German in 1931). Benjamin’s reflections on collecting are analyzed with reference to Modernist themes in Baudelaire and Proust, and to the Modernist concern with memory in the structuring of the self. The essay is held to be a half-ironic…[Read more]

Book of Abstracts of the International Conference “Words, Images and Ideology of Populism 3.0”

This article gives an overview of the conditional and its functions in the
South Siberian Turkic languages Altay Turkic, Shor, Khakas, Tuvan and Tofan.

This article deals with the global copy of a bound morpheme in Gagauz. The feminine marker -(y)ka, copied from Slavic, is used to build female forms of denominations for persons.

Slides for an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. These give an introduction to Mill’s utilitarianism as well as to consequentialism generally. Then they discuss intellectual and sensual pleasures, the argument Mill gives for why the Greatest Happiness Principle should be how we…[Read more]

Preprint to appear in a special issue of Cultural Analytics on “Identity.” The article explores the paradox that the representation of gender in fiction became more flexible while the sheer balance of attention between fictional men and women was growing more unequal. We measure the rigidity of gendered roles by asking how easy it is to infer…[Read more]

The Public Philosophy Journal’s 2018 New Engaged Scholars Digital Pilot Program, which officially kicks off on February 7th, is designed for doctoral students seeking guided, collaborative opportunities to develop early drafts into publishable content. This is the program agenda.

Slides for an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. These are about Thomas Nagel’s text called “Death,” which is a chapter in his book called Mortal Questions. They connect Nagel’s view to Epicurus’ view of death, and discuss some of the main points about Nagel’s view.

A set of slides introducing the Chinese philosopher Mozi and his view of “impartial caring.” These are for an introduction to philosophy course at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. They were created in January 2018.

Reading is a complex and difficult skill. The main difficulty beginning readers face is learning which letters represent which sounds—and then getting used to those patterns by reading them, again and again, in different combinations and contexts. It takes practice to learn how to read. Research also shows that the easier reading is, the more l…[Read more]

These slides are for Introduction to Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

There are also two videos that students watched, to accompany the class on this material:

Slides for an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC, Canada.

These slides are about Epicureanism, focusing on texts by Epicurus and Cicero.

It is commonly assumed that Aristotle thinks that his claim that being exhibits a category-based pros hen structure, which he introduces to obviate the problem of categorial heterogeneity, is sufficient to defend the possibility of a science of being qua being. We, on the contrary, argue that Aristotle thinks that the pros hen structure is…[Read more]

Introduction to The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music.

Popular music artists, as performers in the public eye, offer a privileged site for the witnessing and analysis of ageing and its mediation. The Late Voice undertakes such an analysis by considering issues of time, age, memory, innocence and experience in modern popular…[Read more]

In today’s academic philosophy, we have “philosophy of biology,” which deals with creatures’ biological phenomena, “philosophy of
death,” which concentrates on the concept of human death, and “philosophy of meaning of life,” which investigates difficult problems concerning the meaning of life and living, but we do not have “philosophy of…[Read more]

“Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher’s Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men’s Sexuality” is the translation of a Japanese 2005 bestseller. Soon after the publication, this book stirred controversy over the nature of male sexuality, male “frigidity,” and its connection to the “Lolita complex.” Today, this work is considered a classic in…[Read more]

This paper presents an introductory overview of Plato’s poetics, aesthetics, and literary theory, with particular reference to his notion of mimesis, and grounding the discussion on his Theory of Ideas. It is part of a lecture series on the history of literary criticism, partly available online as HYPERCRITICA: A HYPERTEXTUAL HISTORY OF LITERARY…[Read more]

Although now largely forgotten, the international language movement was, from the 1880s to the end of the Second World War, a matter of widespread public interest, as well as a concern of numerous scientists and scholars. The primary goal was to establish a language for international communication, but in the early twentieth century an increasing…[Read more]