Philosophy and Literature
Graduates of the Program
Matthew Abraham
Assistant Professor in Rhetoric and Composition (Civic/Political Rhetoric)
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Areas of interest: Critical race theory; Marxist theory; semiotics; contemporary literary criticism; rhetoric and composition; critical legal studies; Foucault; critical theory (Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse); phenomenology.
Dissertation: The Rhetoric of Resistance and the Resistance of Theory: Controversial Academic Scholarship in the American Public Sphere (2003).
Jeanie Crain
Special Assistant to the President and Professor of English
Missouri Western State College
Dissertation: Aesthetic Structures in Eighteenth Century Thought (1974).
Richard Dubiel
Professor of Communication
University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
Dissertation: Disquietude, Existence, and Endurance: Aspects of Paul Tillich's Thought in Selected Works of Ernest Hemingway (1974).
Chielozona Eze
Assistant Professor in English
Northeastern University, Chicago
Areas of interest: Aesthetics; 20th Century continental philosophy; pragmatism; African and African American literature; creative writing
Dissertation: Literature as an Ethical Challenge: Alain Locke and the Responsibility of the Negro Artists (2003).
Todd Hoffman
Dissertation: Postmodern Aesthetics and Political Dissent: Strategies of Resistance in American Postmodern Fiction
Ada Jaarsma
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Sonoma State University, Sonoma
Areas of interest: Poststructural thought; feminist theory and theology; contemporary literary theory; gender and sexual difference theory
Dissertation: Troubling the Normal: Encounters with Kierkegaard (2005).
Nathan Jun
Philosophy Program Coordinator
Midwestern State University, Witchita Falls, TX
Areas of interest: Social & Political Philosophy, 19th & 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Ethics
Dissertation: Anarchism and Contemporary Political Philosophy (May 2008).
Timothy Lord
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Heartland Community College
Dissertation: Narratives of Degeneration: Polemical History and the Critique of Modern Philosophy (1995).
Darrin Madis
Dissertation: Heidegger and Appropriating Nihilism: Reconstructing Dasein from Moral Relativism to Supererogatory Obligation
Kee Ying Thomas Ming
SPACE Community College of Hong Kong University
Dissertation: Philosophy of Language and the Language of Philosophy (1999).
L. Ryan Musgrave
Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Rollins College
Dissertation: Critical Aesthetics: Explorations in Contemporary Aesthetics and Politics (2002).
E. Imafedia Okhamafe
Professor of Philosophy and English
University of Nebraska, Omaha
Dissertation: The Politics of Pharmakon (1984).
Ruth Porritt
Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies
West Chester University
Dissertation: A Textual Dialogue: Bakhtin and Derrida on Meaning in Philosophic and Poetic Texts (1989).
Jennifer Purvis
Assistant Professor of Women's Studies
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Dissertation: The Engagement and Intervention: Feminism's Exchange with 19th Century Master Thinkers (2002).
Tadd Ruetenik
Part-Time Instructor in Philosophy and English
Pennsylvania State University Altoona
Areas of interest: American and 19th and 20th Century Continental European philosophy/literature; world literature; religious studies; psychoanalytic theory.
Dissertation: The Significance of the Sick Soul in the Religious Pragmatism of William James (2003).
Jennifer Purvis
Assistant Professor of Women's Studies
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Dissertation: The Engagement and Intervention: Feminism's Exchange with 19th Century Master Thinkers (2002).
Carol Sebastian-Curiel
Part-Time Instructor
Cuesta College
Dissertation: The Dialectics of Andrew Marvell: A Look at Marvell's Three Dialogue Poems, The Garden, ' and 'An Horatian Ode' in the Context of the History of Dialectic (2000).