Crispin Sartwell

Employment

Chair of Humanities and Sciences, Maryland Institute College of Art

1997-2000: Associate Professor of Humanities and Communication, Penn State University, the Capital College.

1993-1997: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, The University of Alabama..

1989-1993: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University. This was a four-year Mellon Foundation post-doc.

Education

Ph.D. (Philosophy), The University of Virginia: 1989.

M.A. (Philosophy), The Johns Hopkins University: 1985.

B.A. (English), The University of Maryland: 1980.

Magna Cum Laude, with High Honors.

Fellowships

Annenberg Scholar, 1995-96, Annenberg School for Communication, The University of Pennsylvania. This was an interdisciplinary scholar's program on the theme of "the future of fact." The scholars were selected by competition through proposed book projects.

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 1989-1993, Vanderbilt.

Areas of Specialization

Aesthetics; Cultural Studies; Media Studies

Areas of Competence

Logic; Literary Theory; African-American Thought; American Philosophy; Feminism; Ethics; Art Criticism; Postmodern Philosophy; Philosophy of Religion; Communication; Epistemology; Eastern Philosophy; Journalism

Courses Taught

Maryland Institute: Critical Inquiry, Anarchism, Existentialism

Penn State: Ethics (many times: UA, VU); African-American Philosophy (also taught at Millersville and UA); Feminist Theory; Media Theory and Criticism; Media Law and Ethics Journalistic Writing, Nature of Media, graduate seminar in autobiography.

Millersville University (visitor, 1996-97): Ancient Greek Philosophy; British Empiricism; Modern Philosophy; Introduction to Symbolic Logic.

University of Alabama: Introduction to Philosophy (many times, MU, UA, VU); Science, Technology, and Society (Environmental Ethics); Epistemology; Chinese Art and Thought (interdisciplinary seminar, with Catherine Pagani, Art History); Symbolic Logic; Aesthetics (many times, UA, VU).

Vanderbilt: Non-Western Aesthetics; Interpretation in the Arts; Freedom and Authority (seminar in political philosophy); Classical Chinese Philosophy; Reference and Representation (interdisciplinary graduate seminar, with Frantisek Galan, Comparative Literature); Faith and Reason; Introduction to Logic (critical thinking).

University of Virginia: Reason, Faith, and Humanism.

Randolph-Macon College (Adjunct 1988-89): Philosophy of Religion; American Philosophy. Johns Hopkins: English Composition.

I've also supervised independent studies with graduate and undergraduate students on such themes as Native American thought, philosophy of language, and literary theory.

Publications

Books

Extreme Virtue: Leadership and Truth in Five Great American Lives, complete and under contract with the University of Chicago Press. Tackles issues in civic virtue through biographical sketches of Emma Goldman, Barry Goldwater, Lame Deer, and Malcolm X.

End of Story: Toward an Annihilation of Language, State University of New York Press (2000). This is an argument against the obsession with language and narrative that have dominated the academy in the twentieth century. Figures discussed include Deleuze, Job, Wodehouse, Alisdair MacIntyre, Paul Ricoeur, and Thoreau.

Act Like You Know: African-American Autobiography and White Identity, The University of Chicago Press (1998). The five chapters are centered, respectively, around slave narratives, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Zora Neale Hurston, and rap music. The fundamental issue taken up in the book concerns what it means to be white; my claim is that this can only be understood by hearing black voices.

Obscenity, Anarchy, Reality, State University of New York Press (1996). This book explores the prospects for a metaphysics and an ethics (or an anti-metaphysics and an anti-ethics) of world-affirmation. The central figures are Nietzsche, Emerson, Vaclav Havel, and Lakota and Asian religions.

The Art of Living: Aesthetics of the Ordinary in World Spiritual Traditions, State University of New York Press (1995). I give my theory of art and a multicultural aesthetics, and discuss how we can live more artfully. Themes include the Japanese tea ceremony, the Bhagavad-Gita, the aesthetics of Taoism and Confucianism, the place of art in education, and the aesthetic implications of technology.

Editor (with Naomi Zack and Laurie Shrage), Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality: The Big Questions (Blackwell, 1998). This is a collection of classic and contemporary readings.

Advisory Editor (with Peter Lamarque), Classic Readings in Aesthetics, Blackwell, 1997.

Advisory Editor (with Joseph Margolis), The Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics, Blackwell, 1992.

Articles

"Satanic Beauty," Harper's (December 1999).

"Addiction and Authorship" (with commentaries by Bela Szabados and Alan Buell)," AE (an electronic journal of aesthetics, vol. 4: Summer 1999 (www.uqtr.uquebec.ca/AE)

"Rap Music and the Uses of Stereotype," Reflections: An Anthology of African-American Philosophy, James Montmarquet, ed., Wadsworth, forthcoming (invited).

"Community at the Margin," Diversity and Community: A Critical Reader, Phillip Alperson, ed., Blackwell, forthcoming (invited).

"Everyday Aesthetics," Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, forthcoming (invited).

"Written in Stone: Architectural Communication and Disintegration," Architecture and Civilization, Michael Mitias, ed., Editions Rodopi (Netherlands), 1999 (invited).

"Venus/Intravenus: Art as and Against the Body," Reclaiming the Spiritual in Art, ed. Dawn Perlmutter, SUNY Press, 1999 (invited).

"How to Assault Yourself: Pragmatism and Multiculturalism," Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Spring 1998 (invited).

"Bits of Broken Glass: Zora Neale Hurston's Philosophy," Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, Spring 1996 (invited).

"Wildness, Language, and Solitude in Thoreau" Reason Papers, Fall 1996 (invited).

"Self-Knowledge and Self-Destruction," The End of Art and Beyond, ed. Jerrold Levinson, Humanities Press, forthcoming (invited).

"Art for Art's Sake" and "Appropriation," The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Oxford University Press, forthcoming (invited).

With Judith Bradford: "Voiced Bodies/Embodied Voices: Authoring Race and Gender", Sex/Race, ed. Naomi Zack, Routledge, 1997 (invited).

With Judith Bradford: "Addiction and Knowledge: Epistemic Disease and the Hegemonic Family", Feminism and the Family, Hilde and Jim Nelson, eds., Routledge, 1997.

"Radical Externalism With Regard to Experience," Philosophical Studies, vol. 78 (1995).

"What Pictorial Realism Is," The British Journal of Aesthetics, January 1994.

"Appropriation and Interpretation," The Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 28, 1994.

"Art and War: Paradox of the Bhagavad-Gita," Asian Philosophy, Fall 1993.

"Confucius and Country Music," Philosophy East and West, vol. 43, #2, 1993.

"Why Knowledge is Merely True Belief," The Journal of Philosophy, April 1992.

"Process and Product: A Theory of Art," The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 6, #4, 1992.

"Abstraction," "Realism," and "Representation," The Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics, 1992.

"Substance and Significance: A Theory of Poetry," Philosophy and Literature, October 1991.

"Knowledge is Merely True Belief," American Philosophical Quarterly, April 1991.

"Doubt and Faith: Santayana and Kierkegaard on Fundamental Belief," Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, Spring 1991.

"Natural Generativity and Imitation," The British Journal of Aesthetics, January 1991.

"Representation and Repetition," (Kierkegaard, Baudrillard, and Peirce), Philosophy Today, Fall 1989.

"The Analytic Turn: An Institutional Account," Metaphilosophy, July/October 1989.

"Aesthetics of the Spurious," The British Journal of Aesthetics, Fall 1988.

"Aesthetic Dualism and the Transfiguration of the Commonplace," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Summer 1988.

Many of my writings appear on various websites, notably the astonishing chairetmetal.com

Notes and Reviews

Review of Ellen Handler Spitz, Museums of the Mind: Magritte's Labyrinth and Other Essays in the Arts, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Summer 1997.

"Teaching Non-Western Aesthetics/Teaching Popular Art," American Society for Aesthetics Newsletter, Summer 1996.

Review of Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley, Philosophy of Art and Arguing About Art, Teaching Philosophy, December 1995.

Review of Arnold Berleant, Art and Engagement, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1993.

Review of Giles Gunn, Thinking Across the American Grain: Ideology, Intellect, and the New Pragmatism, Philosophy and Literature, April 1993.

Review of Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community, edited by George B. Connell and C. Stephen Evans, Canadian Philosophical Reviews, April 1992.

Review of David Freedberg's The Power of Images, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Winter 1991.

"A Counter-Example to Levinson's Historical Theory of Art" (discussion note), The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Spring 1990.

Scripts for Audio Tapes

"Chinese Philosophy: The Heritage of Confucius and Lao Tzu," ninety-minute audio presentation on the history of Chinese Philosophy, from Knowledge Products. The tapes were produced late in 1996, with Lynn Redgrave narrating.

"Punishment," ninety-minute audio presentation in the "Moral Problems" series, Knowledge Products. The tapes were produced in January 1995, with Cliff Robertson narrating.

Journalism

I have been a working journalist since I was twenty, and currently write frequently for the op-ed page the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Perspective section of the Baltimore Sun. I have also contributed opinion columns to the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Harper's . I have appeared several times on C-SPAN's Washington Journal. I write a column on country music for the NYPress.

Presentations

"Beauty, Sex, and the Banality of Pleasure," International Association for Philosophy and Literature, May 2000 (invited).

"Thinking Without Discipline," Midwest Modern Language Association, November 1999 (invited), and Conference on the Human Sciences, George Washington University, April 2000.

"Mutilation as Art: Tattooing, Piercing, S/M," Utah State University Visiting Artists Program, September 1999.

"Technology and the Future of Beauty," Religious and Philosophical Forum, Penn State University Schuylkill, April 1999 (invited), and at the Utah State University Visiting Artists Program, September 1999.

"Addiction and Authorship," Canadian Philosophical Association, May 1998 (invited).

"Communicating with the Environment: Thoreau and the Immanence of Transcendentalism," Northeast Modern Language Association, April 1998 (invited).

"The Aesthetics and Politics of Tattooing and Piercing," Millikan University, April 1998 (invited).

"Genealogy, Practice, and Prospects for Pragmatism," Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP), March 1998.

"Ecstasies of Communication," Ithaca College Colloquium, November 1997 (invited).

"Communication and Mutilation," American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), October 1997..

"Art Has No History," Smith College Aesthetics Conference, April 1996; Kansas City Art Institute April 1997 (invited).

"Against Narrative," University of Calgary, March 1997 (invited).

"The Crystalline Moment: Temporality and Still Life Painting," The University of Alberta, March 1997 (invited).

"Truth Without Objectivity: Communication, Philosophy, and Social Constructionism," conference on "The Future of Fact," Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, February 1997 (invited) .

"Zora Neale Hurston, American Philosopher," SAAP, March 1996.

"Pragmatism and Multiculturalism" (invited), conference on Pragmatism and the Future of Philosophy, Penn State University, March 1996.

"Philosophy of Rap" (invited), colloquium at Auburn University, May 1995.

"Science and Race in W.E.B. Du Bois" (invited) colloquium at The University of Maryland, October 1995, and at Renssalaer Polytechnic, December 1995.

"Venus and Hannah Wilke: Art As and Against the Body," College Art Association, January 1995.

"Teaching Primary Sources in Chinese and Indian Aesthetics" (invited), American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), October 1994.

"Bluegrass and Place," International Country Music Conference, May 1994.

"Paradox of the Bhagavad-Gita," American Philosophical Association (APA), Eastern Division, December 1993; and ASA, October 1993.

"Loose Type Materialism," APA Central Division, April 1993.

"Authenticity and Country Music" (with Douglas Anderson, Penn State), SAAP meeting at APA Central Division, April 1992.

"Process and Product: A Pragmatist Theory of Art," SAAP, March 1992.

"Why Knowledge is Merely True Belief," APA Eastern Division, December 1991.

"Dewey's Aesthetics and the Blues" (paper and performance with Doug Anderson), SAAP, March 1991.

"The Art of Murder," ASA, October 1990.

"Animal and Spiritual Faith," SAAP, March 1990.

"Appropriation and Interpretation," ASA Eastern Division, April 1990.

"Natural Generativity and Imitation," ASA Eastern Division, April 1989.

"Faith and the Free Spirit: Nietzsche and James on Epistemology," SAAP, March 1989.

In addition, I've read numerous papers and given numerous talks to local meetings (Mid-South Conference, Virginia Philosophical Association, Tennessee Philosophical Association, Alabama Philosophical Association), philosophy club meetings, and so forth. I've also commented on a number of papers at APA, ASA, and SAAP meetings--including a session on my own work in epistemology at the 1996 Eastern Division of the APA--and chaired sessions.

Dissertation

Art and Articulation (pictorial representation in Dewey, Heidegger, Goodman, Gadamer). Supervisor: Richard Rorty.

Affiliations

American Philosophical Association, International Communication Association, Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, American Society for Aesthetics

Professional Activities

I have reviewed articles for The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, Synthese, and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and book manuscripts for Cambridge University Press, Blackwell, and SUNY.

I serve on the Advisory Committee to the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division. I have served on the program committees for the SAAP and Alabama Philosophical Association annual meetings, and on the nominating committee for SAAP.

I serve on the honors board at Penn State Harrisburg and have served on a variety of committees at the schools where I've worked.