Here is some information from, for, and about Lawrence students who are either professional philosophers or doing graduate work in Philosophy (or both). This is not an all inclusive page; it does not, for example, contain information about students who graduated from Lawrence before I arrived.

This page is designed to serve two purposes:

1. To help former Lawrence students in Philosophy to stay in touch with one another through a single, common source of information. All of the email addresses are, I think, up to date. If you want to see who is doing what or to get in touch with someone, this is the place.

2. To provide anyone interested in Philosophy, Philosophy at Lawrence, or Lawrence with additional sources of information about Philosophy, Philosophy at Lawrence, and Lawrence. These people have "been there and done that," and they are willing to answer your questions.

Comments or contributions? Email me at thomas.c.ryckman@lawrence.edu

• Ben Bayer LU '98

From Ben's Homepage at Loyola LU '98:Ph.D., Philosophy, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Loyola University New Orleans.

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• Brett Bevers. LU '03. M.A. in Philosophy, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee '05. Brett is in the PhD program at the University of California at Irvine. Brett reports, "I passed the "portfolio" examination earlier this year and I am now searching for a dissertation topic." (email 3/1/08)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That was Brett during his last week at Lawrence (Philosophy Department Picnic). (I think he was preparing for a future flipping burgers; I am confident that he will be doing something else--unless he discovers that he has a passion for the grill.) Here is a more recent photo of Brett and his daughter:

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• Ben Bradley LU '93 Ph.D. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst '99. Ben is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. Here is his website http://thecollege.syr.edu/profiles/pages/bradley-ben.html.

• Jason Hanna LU'03 Ph.D. Colorado '09. Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University. http://www.niu.edu/phil/people/faculty.shtml

Areas of Specialization: Normative Ethics and Applied Ethics

Jason will begin his third year working at NIU this fall. He has two papers which will be coming out in the next few months. And, perhaps most importantly, Jason and his wife, Courtney Hanna-McNamara ('03), just had a baby girl named Lorelei on May 24th.

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• Brendan Jackson LU '94 PhD Cornell University in New York '04. Co-leader of the Emmy Noether Research Group “Understanding and the A Priori” at the University of Cologne in Germany.

http://fromthearmchair.net/researchers/brendan

I am one of the co-leaders of the Emmy Noether Research Group “Understanding and the A Priori” at the University of Cologne in Germany. I did my undergraduate study at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, and I got my PhD from Cornell University in New York. While finishing my degree I worked as a lecturer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and afterwards I worked as a research fellow at the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. I then worked as an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis for two years. I then returned to the Australian National University for another short stint as a research fellow, prior to moving to Cologne to be part of the Emmy Noether Project. (Brendan always seems to be doing something that sounds very interesting.)

 

 

 

 

 

• Greg Janssen LU '90 Visting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UNLV. http://liberalarts.unlv.edu/Philosophy/faculty.html

• Diane Jeske LU '88 Ph.D. MIT '92. Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Iowa.

  Here is the link to Diane's website: Diane Jeske's Homepage

The Lawrence University Philosophy Club recently (April 08) brought Diane back to campus for a lecture and discussions. Kudos to the Club and Diane.

• Jayme Johnson LU '04 Graduate work at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

  Jayme writes (2/15/05) After finishing up my first semester in graduate school at UMass and now beginning my second, I have realized what some of my main philosophical interests are. While in undergrad Ryckman put forth much effort to enlighten me to the world of the philosophy of language. I resisted. Now I realize that he was right. It is a very interesting and thought provoking area, and one to which I feel myself drawn. I took a survey course in Phil Language last semester, am currently taking a Formal Semantics course, and plan next year to do some Semantics courses in the Linguistics Dept. While I still have a focused interest in metaphysics,  I now count philosophy of language as one of my core philosophical interests. I blame this on Tom Ryckman.    

  

  Link to Jayme's Website.

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• Mark Lukas LU '93 Ph.D. University of Massachusetts at Amherst, '05.Mark is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy, at Longwood University.

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Gerald Marsh LU '02 Graduate Study Arizona State University

I am a newly (Spring 2010) minted Doctor of Philosophy, just having passed my
dissertation defense in mid-April.  My dissertation, Disputes and
Defective Disputes, is on the nature of philosophical disagreements
and disputes.  In the dissertation I distinguish a number of ways that
a philosophical dispute can be wrongheaded or misguided and argue that
two target disputes in philosophy.

I recently traveled to Cambridge, England where I attended a
conference called Fiction on Fiction: Metafictions and Reflexive
Representation: Philosophy, Film, Art, Literature (conference website:
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1446/).  At the conference, I gave
my recent paper "Fiction in Fiction".  In this paper I explore the
nature of 'embedded fictions', that is stories within stories (e.g.
the play within the play in Shakespeare's Hamlet).  I argue that some
embedded fictions contribute characters to their overarching stories
while some do not.  In the paper, I articulate conditions under which
an embedded fiction suffices to contribute characters to the
overarching story.

I can be found on the web at http://www.public.asu.edu/~ghmarsh/

Congratulations Gerald!

• Scott Senn LU '92 Ph.D. University of Massachusetts at Amherst '04. Scott is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy, at Longwood University.

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Andy Specht LU '09 Graduate Study Syracuse University. I've finished my first year of coursework, and I've been spending the summer dabbling in various philosophical topics. I'm part of a Heidegger reading group here at Syracuse, and we're currently working through Division I of Being and Time. In addition, I've been reading about various topics in modality (especially counterfactuals), and I've been looking at the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" This fall I begin TAing and will kick it off with two sections of logic. (This is nearly a year old. Andy has, by now, almost finished his second year. My apologies for not updating this page. tcr 4/15/11)

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• Andy White LU '03 Graduate work at Arizona State University. Email address coming soon.

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• Christine M Weigel LU '93 Ph.D. Temple University '99, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Utah Valley State College. Here is a link to her website: http://www.uvu.edu/profpages/profiles/show/user_id/4749 and you can contact her via this email address: weigelch@uvsc.edu

• Erik Wielenberg LU '94 Ph.D. University of Massachusetts at Amherst '00. Assistant Professor of Philosophy at DePauw. I just (2/3/05)(received a copy of Erik's first book, Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe, Cambridge University Press. Congratulations Erik. Here is Erik's website: http://fs6.depauw.edu:50080/~ewielenberg/

This just in (courtesy of Ben Bayer); Erik's "My Turn" article in Newsweek.