Amy Schmitter's
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Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta
2-70 Assiniboia
Hall
Edmonton, Alberta
CANADA T6G 2E7
Ph.D. (Philosophy), University of Pittsburgh.
Personal Email: amyDOTschmitterATualbertaDOTca
Office: Assiniboia Hall 2-70
Phone: (780) 492-3307
On
Sabbatical 2015-16
(Visiting
Scholar at New York University)
Upcoming
Teaching:
Fall 2016: Phil
270: “Political Philosophy” and Phil 442 & 546: “Seminar on Descartes”
Some
past seminars:
“Passions and
Sentiments among the British Moralists”
“Passions in
the 17th Century”
“Spinoza and
Leibniz”
“Topics in
Philosophy of Mind: Perception & Intentionality”
“Seminar on Hume”
“Women and
Early Modern Philosophy”
“Hume’s Ethics
& Aesthetics”
Fourth Year Honours Seminar: “The
Parting of the Ways: the origins of the split between analytic and
continental philosophy”
Fourth Year Honours Seminar: “Philosophy as a Way of Life & the Art
of Living”
Fourth Year Honours Seminar: “The Rationality of Emotions”
“Marx”
Professional:
Besides my position as Professor
of Philosophy, I am currently an Executive Editor and Board Secretary for the Canadian Journal of Philosophy. I am also involved
in the project “New
Narratives in the History of Philosophy,” supported by a Partnership
Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada. In April 2016, I will be a Visiting Professor in the Facultad de Filosofía, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in
Bogotá, where I will lecture and hold several seminar sessions. Before coming
to the University of Alberta, I taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Hamilton
College in New York state, and the University of New
Mexico in Albuquerque. I have also been a Visiting Scholar at the University of
California at Berkeley and at New York University, and during 2002-03, held a
Fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University. I have
received several awards for Summer Institutes and Seminars from the National
Endowment for the Humanities (U.S.A.) and two Standard Research Grants from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I also serve on
various committees, including the Religious Studies Advisory Council for the U
of A, the Program Committee for the Pacific Northwest-Western Canada Seminar in
Early Modern Philosophy, and review committees for several grant organizations.
Recently, I was also a member of the local and program organizing committee for
the Hume Society's Annual Conference in 2012 and of the program committee for the Central Division
Meetings of the American Philosophical Association in 2012 in Chicago. (I have
my fill of committees . . .)
My main
areas of research and writing are the history of early modern philosophy and
philosophy of art. But those are broad and eclectic areas that (necessarily)
take me into many different topics, historical periods and approaches to
philosophy. My teaching interests and educational history cover yet further
fields. The result is that I know (or "know") a little bit about many
different things. A summary of my current interests and recent work is below.
Some of my work can be found on-line: The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There are also links in my
profiles on philpapers.org
and academia.edu. A
recent book review is here: Notre Dame
Philosophical Reviews. There is also an interview where I express various
half-baked opinions about the philosophy of art here (p. 20): http://www.visualartsalberta.com/docs/vaaa_springnewsletter07.pdf The second half is
here (p.26): http://www.visualartsalberta.com/docs/vaaaVoice_1_2008.pdf
(Thanks
to the interviewer, Al Henderson, who did an excellent job, and deserves a much
better interview subject.)
Areas
of Specialization:
History of Early Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Art,
History of Metaphysics & Philosophy of Mind, History of the Emotions,
Feminist Approaches to the History of Philosophy
Areas
of Competence:
Feminist Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics, Political
Philosophy, 19th Century German Philosophy (Marx, Nietzsche), Ancient
Philosophy (Aristotle), Medieval Philosophy (Scholasticism), Post-structuralist French Thought (Derrida, Foucault), 20th
Century Continental Philosophy (“Existentialism,” parts of Heidegger, Gadamer)
Some
Other Areas of Interest:
Renaissance and 17th Century Art History, Methods and
Historiography in the History of Philosophy, Methodology of Art History,
Literary Criticism and Methodology, 17th & 18th Century Studies,
Non-Technical History of Mathematics and Logic
Some
Recent and Forthcoming Publications:
Edited
Volume
Hume in
Alberta: Selected Papers from the 39th Annual Hume Conference, with A. Levey, W. Robison, J. Welchman,
Supplementary Volume of the Canadian
Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 42, No. S1 2012 (Routledge: 2012, in print 2015). Editor’s
Introduction available on-line.
Linked Series of Articles
“Theories of the
Emotions in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” for The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (“Main
Document,” “Historical Background,” “Descartes,” “Hobbes,” “Spinoza,”
“Malebranche,” “Shaftesbury,” “Hutcheson,” “Hume”), ms.
~150 pp.
[May 2006; substantial revision 2010; substantial revision in progress for
2016]
Individual Papers
In
Press and Forthcoming (selected)
“Thomas Hobbes,” in Sourcebook
in the History of Philosophy of Language,
eds.
B. Hill, H. Lagerlund & R.J. Stainton
(Springer, 2016?)
“Negotiating Pluralism in Taste and Character: Reading the Second Enquiry with “of the Standard of Taste,’” Reading Hume on the Principles of Morals: Essays on the Second Enquiry, ed. J. Taylor (Oxford U. Press, 2016?)
“‘I’ve Got a Little List:’ Classification, Explanation and the Focal Passions in Descartes and Hobbes,” Thinking about the Emotions: A Philosophical History, ed. R. Stern & A. Cohen (Oxford U. Press, 2016?)
“Where
is my Mind: Locating the Mind Metaphysically in Hobbes,?” Philosophy
of Mind in the Early Modern Age and in the Enlightenment, ed., R. Copenhaver (Volume IV of the series History
of the Philosophy of Mind) (Routledge,
2016 or 2017?)
2014
“The Third Meditation on Objective Being: Representation and Intentional Content,” The Cambridge Companion to Descartes’s Meditations, ed. D. Cunning (Cambridge U. Press, 2014), pp. 149-67
2013
“Passions, Affections and Sentiments: Taxonomy and Terminology,” The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, ed. J. Harris (Oxford U. Press, 2013), pp. 197-225
“Passions and Affections,” The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, ed. P. Anstley (Oxford U. Press, 2013), pp. 442-471
2012
“Responses to Vulnerability: Medicine, Politics and the Body in Descartes and Spinoza,” for Rhetoric and Medicine in Early Modern Europe, ed. S. Pender & N. Struever (Ashgate, 2012), pp. 147-71
“Family Trees: Sympathy,
Comparison and the Proliferation of the Passions in Hume & his
Predecessors,” in Emotion and Cognitive
Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, ed. L. Shapiro and M. Pickavé (Oxford U. Press, 2012), p. 255-278
2011
“Natural Passions, Reason and
Religious Emotion in Hobbes & Spinoza,” Passions and Passivity:
Claremont Studies in Religion 2009, ed. I. Dalferth & M. Rodgers, Mohr Siebeck, 2011, pp. 49-68
Review of P. Machamer
& G. Wolters, Interpretation: Ways of Thinking
about the Sciences and the Arts for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (July 2011)
2010
“Descartes’s
Peepshow: Critical Review of Deborah Brown, Descartes
and the Passionate Mind,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40, September 2010, pp. 485-508
2009
Review
of P. Hoffman, Essays on Descartes,
for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, September 2009.
“Making an Object of Yourself:
Hume on the Intentionality of the Passions”, Topics
in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind, ed. J. Miller, Springer, pp.
223-40
. . .
Under
Preparation (see also recent presentations)
“Malebranche on the Passions” (title TBD), The Oxford Handbook of Malebranche, ed. S. Greenberg (Oxford U. Press, 2017 or 2018)
“Passionate Attention: Embodiment and Epistemic Affect in Descartes” (working title), The Cartesian Mind, ed. C. Lim & J. Secada (Routledge Press, 2017)
Power, edited anthology in
the series Oxford Philosophical Concepts, Oxford University Press
(series editor, Christia Mercer; proposal in
preparation)
Mind, Sign and Representation: a Study of Descartes (working title for book)
Passions, Affects and Sentiments: a Genealogy of Early
Modern Theories of the Emotions (working title for book)
Conatus
in Early Modern Philosophy: Striving, Tendency, Power (working title for
an anthology)
“The Truth in Formalism;
Aesthetic Formalism as Tool and as End”
“Uniformity and
Universalizability in Hume’s Standard of Taste”
“Direct Realism and Representationalism: Can This Distinction Be Saved?”
“Descartes, Representation and
the Intelligibility of Sense-Perception”
“The View from Where We Are:
Descartes on the Eternal Truths, My Nature and its Sources”
“Neither Sex Nor Gender: on
Concept-Metaphors of 'Male' and 'Female'”
“Constitutive Conditions and
Having a Reason: Leibniz's Distinction Between Necessary and Contingent Truths”
Some Recent and
Upcoming Presentations:
Upcoming
“’Fiat, or . . . let us make man:’ Hobbes on artifice, persons and powers,” University of Delaware Department Colloquium, May 2016
“What do Women (and Others) Want in a Feminist History of Philosophy?” Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia, April 2016
“Cartesian Prejudice and the Critique of Gender in Poulain de la Barre,” Pacific Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association, San Francisco, April 2016
Commentator on Steven Wagner, “Reviving Gueroult's Descartes',” Central Division Meetings of the
American Philosophical Association, Chicago, March 2016
2015
“Hobbes’s
Mind,” NY/NJ Research Group
in Early Modern Philosophy, John Jay College, New York, NY, November
2015
Seminar Convener & Leader, “Affect and David
Hume” Seminar, “Affect: Memory, Aesthetics and Ethics” (part of “The Affect
Project”), Winnipeg, MB, September 2015
Commentator on Lorne Falkenstein, “Without Gallantry and Without Jealousy: The Development of Hume's account of Sexual Virtues and Vices.” Hume Society Conference, Stockholm, Sweden July 2015
“Cartesian Prejudice and the Critique of Gender in Poulain de la Barre,” Canadian Philosophical Association, Ottawa, ON, June 2015
“‘Fiat, or . . . let us make man:’ Hobbes on artifice, persons and powers" (revised and longer version of "Hobbes and the Really Big Stick: Representation, Incorporation and "Artifice" in the Construction of Social Power") for the panel “Fiction, the Body and Early Modern Political Philosophy,” Conference on the Roles of Fiction in Early Modern Philosophy, University of Washington, Seattle, April 2015
“Stirring the Pot, or rather . . . Muddying the Waters,” for “‘Confusion Confounded?:’ Descartes on Material Falsity,” Panel for the Descartes Society, American Philosophical Association, Vancouver, BC, April 2015
“Hobbes,” Conceptions of Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy Conference, Mont Tremblant, Quebec, January 2015
2014
“Cartesian Prejudice and the Critique of Gender in Poulain de la Barre,” Panel on Gender and Race in Early Modern Philosophy, Western Canadian Philosophical Association, Vancouver, BC, October 2014
“The Sentiments: Skeptical Cure
or Skeptical Cause?,” Hume Society Meeting in
conjunction with the Canadian Philosophical Association Annual Congress, St. Catharines, Ontario, May 2014
“Hume on
the Sentiments: Skeptical Cure or Skeptical Cause?,” NY/NJ Research Group in Early Modern
Philosophy, John Jay College, New York, NY,
April 2014
2013
“Negotiating Diversity of Tastes in the Second Enquiry and ‘Of the Standard of Taste,’” Hume Society Group Meeting, American Philosophical Association, Baltimore, MD, December 2013
“What Do Women Want in a Feminist History of Philosophy?,” Memorial Conference for Annette Baier, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 12 October 2013
“What Do Women Want in a Feminist History of Philosophy?,” University of South Carolina department colloquium, 27 September 2013
“The Sentiments: Skeptical Cure or Skeptical Cause?,” Early Modern Workshop, University of South Carolina, 27 September 2013
“The Sentiments: Skeptical Cure or Skeptical Cause?,” plenary panel for “Skepticism and Sentiments,” 40th International Hume Society Conference, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, July 2013
“Evaluating Beauty and Character: Reading the Second Enquiry through ‘of the Standard of Taste,’” Boston University department colloquium, April 2013
“How to Read the Third Meditation on Objective Being, Representation and non-Mental Content” (working version of “The Third Meditation on Objective Being: Representation and Intentional Content”), The Early Modern Circle, California Institute of Technology, March 2013
“Order, Intentionality and Possibility: How To Understand Objective Reality in Descartes's Third Meditation” (working version of “The Third Meditation on Objective Being: Representation and Intentional Content”), University of Calgary department colloquium, March 2013
“Order, Intentionality and Possibility: How To Understand Objective Reality in Descartes's Third Meditation” (working version of “The Third Meditation on Objective Being: Representation and Intentional Content”), Scientia Workshop, University of California-Irvine, February 2013
2012
“’I’ve Got a Little List:’ the
Classification of the Passions and Forms of Explanation in 17th
Century Philosophy,” Symposium on Early Modern Theories of the Passions,
American Philosophical Association – Eastern Division, Atlanta, GA, December
2012
“’I've
Got a Little List:’ the Classification of the Passions and Forms of Explanation
in 17th Century Philosophy,” Philosophy
in Assos, Assos (Behramkale), Turkey, July 2012
“Responses to Vulneerability: Medicine, Politics and the Body in
Descartes and Spinoza, (with a Dash of Hobbes),” Spinoza Symposium, University
of Washington, Seattle, March 2-3, 2011
2011
“Evaluating Beauty and
Character: Reading the Second Enquiry
through 'of the Standard of Taste,'” for panel on "Aspects of Hume at
300,” Western Canadian Philosophical
Association,
Lethbridge, AB, October 2011
“Who’s Afraid of the Rare, Good
Judge?,” Panel on “Feminist Interpretations of Hume’s
Aesthetics: Problems and Projects,” American Society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting, Tampa, FL, October
2011
Commentator on Ryu Susato, “The Association of
Ideas in Hume’s Social Philosophy,” Hume Society Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, July
2011
“Evaluating Character and
Beauty,” Workshop on Reading Hume on the Principles
of Morals, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA, Spring 2011
2010
“The Truth in Formalism: Interpretation and Expanding the
Scope of Perception,” Western Canadian Philosophical Association, Calgary, AB,
October 2010
“Why
Should Feminists Deal with the Man (Hume, that is)?,” Hume and Feminist
Philosophy (plenary panel), Hume Society Conference, Antwerp, Belgium, July 2010
"Natural Passions, Reason
& Religious Emotion in Hobbes and Spinoza," Mid-Atlantic Seminar in
Early Modern Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, April
2010
"The Truth in Formalism:
Interpretation and Expanding the Scope of Perception," Eastern Division
Meetings of the American Society for Aesthetics, Philadelphia, PA, April 2010
Links:
Department
of Philosophy, University of Alberta