• Humorwork, Feminist Philosophy, and Unstable Politics 

  Billingsley, Amy (University of Oregon, 2019-04-30)

  This dissertation examines humor as a situated practice of reappropriation and transformation undertaken by a subject within a social world. I bring together insights from humor studies, philosophy of humor, and feminist ...
• Democracy in Spite of the Demos: Arendt, the Democratic Turn, and Critical Theory 

  Busk, Larry (University of Oregon, 2019-04-30)

  This dissertation examines the limits of the figure of democracy as a critical category in contemporary political philosophy. I frame the analysis around a structural tension in the work of several authors who rely on ...
• Unable to Hear: Settler Ignorance and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission 

  Cook, Anna (University of Oregon, 2019-01-11)

  My dissertation provides an epistemic evaluation of settler colonialism in terms of settlers’ disavowal of past and ongoing settler colonial violence. I seek to explain how settlers can fail to hear Indigenous testimonies ...
• Genealogy Through the Decolonial Turn: Cultivating Critical Attitudes 

  Nigh, Amy (University of Oregon, 2018-09-06)

  This thesis offers a reconsideration of the contentious relationship between Michel Foucault and postcolonial thought through the decolonial turn, by interpreting critique as attitude. The discussion of continuity in ...
• The Love of Nike: On the Denials of Racialized Patriarchy and the Philosophy of Courageous Overcoming 

  Rognlie, Dana (University of Oregon, 2018-09-06)

  Motivated by student survivors of sexual violence at the ‘University of Nike,’ this dissertation claims the denial of trauma is a central motor to the temporal operation of racialized patriarchy and its philonikian, or ...
• Extended Virtues 

  Skorburg, Joshua (University of Oregon, 2018-04-10)

  The central argument of this dissertation is that virtue ethics is overly individualistic. In response, I develop and defend a more relational, ecological account - what I call extended virtues. First, following Andy Clark, ...
• From Individuality to Ecological Attunement in Whitehead and Deleuze 

  Duvernoy, Russell (University of Oregon, 2018-04-10)

  My dissertation explores the ecological implications of a process metaphysics, focusing in particular on subjectivity. Primarily using the work of Whitehead and Deleuze, I explore how taking a process metaphysics seriously ...
• Kant on the Human Animal: Anthropology, Ethics, Nature 

  Baumeister, David (University of Oregon, 2017-05-01)

  This dissertation gives an account of Kant’s understanding of the human animal through examination of a range of published works and lecture transcripts from the 1770s through the 1790s, with particular attention paid to ...
• What is Ethics without Justice? Reframing Environmental Ethics for Social Justice 

  Torres, Christopher (University of Oregon, 2016-11-21)

  The field of environmental ethics has been in discussion and debate the past 40 years over how to best expand the circle of moral consideration away from a privileged human perspective to encompass the rest of the non-human ...
• The Politics of Paranoia: Affect, Temporality, and the Epistemology of Securitization 

  Ibrahimhakkioglu, Fulden (University of Oregon, 2016-11-21)

  The concept of “national security” has been an essential part of the political lexicon of the United States since the aftermath of World War II. Although it could be said that security in one way or another has always been ...
• Academics No Longer Think: How the Neoliberalization of Academia Leads to Thoughtlessness 

  Pack, Justin (University of Oregon, 2016-02-23)

  In my dissertation, I argue that the neoliberalization of higher education results in the university becoming less and less a place of wonder, self-cultivation and thinking and instead more and more a place to specialize, ...
• The Enchantment of Ethics: Empathy, Character, and the Art of Moral Living 

  Parzuchowski, Kimberley (University of Oregon, 2016-02-23)

  My dissertation explores the role of narrative in the cultivation of empathy for ethical attitudes and behaviors. I begin by exploring an uncommon view of human nature, concluding that we are not autonomously individualistic ...
• Situating Vine Deloria, Jr.'s Philosophy of Science 

  Southall, Joel (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  This thesis provides a view of Deloria's thoughts on science and metaphysics, presenting his criticism of Western science and of his proposed alternative to what he presents as a historically evidenced epistemic attitude ...
• Regulation of Bodies as Gendered Nationalistic Ideology: Physically Wounded Veterans as Political Props 

  Reese, David (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  Using the 2014 State of the Union Address as an example, I show that the public honoring of physically wounded veterans hides the emotional, psychological, social, and moral wounds of military service, creating a normative ...
• Poetry and Ecstasy: Thinking Bodily with Heidegger and Bataille 

  Brewer, Benjamin (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  This essay explores the possibilities for thinking of the body as a site of exposure to and commingling with the world. I begin with Martin Heidegger’s engagement with the question of poetry as an encounter with the ...
• The Perils of Pluralism: An Exploration of the Nature of Political Disagreements about Economic Justice 

  Reynolds, Alan (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  Much of contemporary mainstream political philosophy operates under the assumption that if reasonable people deliberate about matters of basic justice in the right conditions, agreement will emerge. This assumption implies ...
• Gender and Time 

  Burke, Megan (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)

  This dissertation examines how gender and temporality are co-constitutive of one another and what temporalities underlie the actuality of gendered life. I weave together the insights of feminist phenomenology and feminist ...
• Justice As Reconciliation: Political Theory in a World of Difference 

  Fourlas, George (University of Oregon, 2014-10-17)

  Divisiveness routinely turns violent, thus making research into alternative means of dealing with conflict an urgent necessity. This dissertation focuses on the politics of divisiveness and the techniques of conflict ...
• The Vulnerability of the Relational Self: G. W. F. Hegel, Simone de Beauvoir, and Nishida Kitarō Meet Patty Hearst 

  Grosz, Elizabeth (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  This dissertation examines relational models of selfhood cross-culturally through the work of G. W. F. Hegel, Simone de Beauvoir, and Nishida Kitarō. In the master-slave section of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel states ...
• Creative Climate: East-West Perspectives on Art, Nature, and the Expressive Body 

  Schultz, Lucy (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29)

  This dissertation defends the need for a renewed conception of nature as seen through the lens of an artist. By exploring how the relationship between art and nature has been conceived by 19th and 20th century European and ...

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