The Philosophy Department carries on a long and proud tradition of highly acclaimed teaching and research in core areas of philosophy—especially in the philosophy of science and ethics, but also in metaphysics, epistemology, and the history of philosophy.
The Department attracts over a hundred undergraduate majors, and its outstanding Ph.D. program boasts a record of placing its graduates in the some of best departments in the country.
Along with its colloquium program, the department also regularly hosts conferences and is the home of the annual Metaethics Workshop.
The Institute for Research in the Humanities has announced its 2013-17 Senior Fellows. They are: Leslie Bow (English and Asian American Studies), Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Senior Fellow Tomislav Longinović (Slavic Languages and Literature), Senior Fellow Steven Nadler (Philosophy), Senior Fellow Ron Radano (Music), Senior Fellow Louise Young (History), Senior Fellow The Institute offers up [...]
In her forty-six years as a philosophy professor at UW-Madison, Claudia Card has not only defined feminist theory, but forged paths through the troubled forests of homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexism, and environmental degradation. Her recent lectures on torture, evil, and inexcusable wrongs have become as popular as her 1980s talks on gender, moral luck, and “what [...]
Growing up on Long Island, Steven Nadler played basketball, baseball, and street hockey, listened to Led Zeppelin, and rode his bicycle—a Schwinn Sting-Ray, and later, a 10-speed Peugeot—from one end of the island to the other. Nobody, including Nadler, would have guessed he’d become a distinguished scholar of philosophy and Jewish studies with a long [...]
Assistant Professor James Messina comes to the Department of Philosophy after a year on the faculty at Southern Utah University. The Horseheads, New York, native is an expert in all things Kant. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego (where he says he spent most of his time snorkeling and lying [...]
Assistant Professor of Philosophy Emily Fletcher comes to the University of Wisconsin-Madison thanks to the 2010 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Core Humanities Grant, which is helping Dean Gary Sandefur strengthen the University’s offerings in ancient studies. Fletcher, who just completed her Ph.D. in Classics at the University of Toronto after obtaining her bachelor’s degree from [...]
The College of Letters & Science has more than 800 faculty, a group that includes brilliant researchers, noteworthy authors, and inspiring teachers. This year, the College welcomes more than 50 new faculty members. From Classics to Chemistry and from English to Economics, departments across L&S recruited emerging experts who bring impressive breadth and depth of [...]
While Bradley Wiggins of Britain captured the 2012 Tour de France title on Sunday, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has its own award-winning cyclists, including Cary Forest (Physics), Ullrich Langer (French and Italian), Steve Nadler (Philosophy), and Mark Craven (Biostatistics and Medical Informatics/Computer Science). True, their national and international awards are for research and teaching rather [...]
The College of Letters & Science is proud to announce that to the seven L&S professors received 2012 Kellett Mid-Career Awards. The Kellett award, supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), recognizes outstanding mid-career faculty members who are five to 20 years past the first promotion to a tenured position. Each winner, chosen by [...]
Spinoza’s Vision of Freedom, and Ours The New York Times – Opinionator Featuring Professor Steven Nadler (Philosophy) - Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Dutch thinker, may be among the more enigmatic (and mythologized) philosophers in Western thought, but he also remains one of the most relevant, to his time and to ours. Read more…
Coming Soon to an Agora Near You: Philosophical Progress? (Chronicle of Higher Education) Featuring Philosophy Professor John Bengson who participated in a public conference at Harvard earlier this fall. Read more…
Eleven distinguished faculty members have received named professorships, some of the highest honors for established faculty. L&S is proud to count eight of the faculty members in the L&S community: Susan Coppersmith, Steven Durlauf, Gregg Mitman and Karen Strier have been named Vilas Professors Stephen Carpenter, Steve J. Stern, Dan Hausman were named Hilldale Professors. [...]
Elliot Sober, Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor of Philosophy, was recently elected President of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science at its General Assembly held in Nancy, France.
In an effort to mark the many accomplishments of outstanding students, faculty and staff, the Philosophy Department convened on a lovely day in May for its Inaugural Honors and Awards Banquet.
Two L&S undergraduates – Patrick Kirk and David Osmalov — were part of the winning team for the Grand Prize in the Climate Leadership Challenge at Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies’ Earth Day Conference.
Four professors from across campus will receive this year’s Hilldale Award, the university’s top honor for faculty members. Two faculty hail from the College of Letters & Science.
The 2010 Romanell Phi Beta Kappa Professorship Lecture Series will feature Daniel M. Hausman, the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy. Hausman is the recipient of the 2010 Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Professorship, a prestigious award given annual to scholars in the field of philosophy. The professorship is intended to recognize not only distinguished achievement but [...]
An extraordinary public-private partnership will allow the University of Wisconsin-Madison to enhance education and research in the humanities. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the university a $10 million grant as part of an effort to preserve and enhance the humanities at public research universities that have records of scholarly and educational excellence.
The College of Letters & Science is pleased to announce the following individuals received a 2010-2011 College of Letters & Science Classified Staff Excellence Award. David Harring, Center for Limnology Kristi Heming, Department of Chemistry Christy Horstmeyer, Department of Philosophy Angela Powell, Languages and Cultures of Asia Vicki Sekel, Social Science Research Services Congratulations to [...]
The Onion, a magazine cooked up by undergrads at UW Madison in the late 1980s, is now famous throughout the world for its satirical take on politics, the media and culture. Connoisseurs have long suspected that, like its vegetable namesake, The Onion can be peeled layer by layer to reveal deep philosophical truths.
The Philosophy Department again celebrated a successful year of the Annual Metaethics Workshop at UW-Madison. The workshop has become one of the most prestigious ethics conferences in the United States and brings philosophers from around the country to Madison.
This fall, the UW-Madison Philosophy Department will host the 2010 meeting of the Midwest Division of the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP). Event Details: October 22-24 in Helen C. White Hall (College Library) Room 7191 600 N. Park Street, Madison WI Events and talks will run from 7:00pm to 9:00 pmFriday evening, from 8:00am [...]
Four graduate students in the UW-Madison Philosophy doctoral program recently launched Philosophy TV, a website devoted to philosophical discussion. John Basl, David Killoren, Jonathan Lang, and Brynn Welch have lined up a world-class roster of talent to talk about a wide variety of topics of current philosophical interest. Philosophy TV offers anyone interested in these [...]
Claudia Card, Emma Goldman Professor Philosophy, recently published the second in a volume on evil: Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide (July 2010 by Cambridge University Press) Card is among the most prominent feminist philosophers in the country and has created a new niche as one of the world’s pre-eminent scholars of evil. This is the [...]
Dan Hausman, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy, has been elected to the 2010-2011 Phi Beta Kappa-Romanell Professorship of Philosophy, a prestigious national award.
The Department of Philosophy will be the new home of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, the world’s leading journal for scholarship in the history of philosophy.
On Saturday, October 9, three faculty members from the University of Wisconsin-Madison — two from the College of Letters & Science — were inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Philosopher’s Annual has cited a paper by Assistant Professor Michael Titelbaum…
Philosophy Ph.D student Jaime Ahlberg (Philosophy, MA’07) has been awarded a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for her dissertation entitled “Ideal and Nonideal Theory in the Realm of the Political”.
Dan Hausman, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
