UO Philosophy Doctoral Candidates Bonnie Sheehey and Gus Skorburg have been awarded Oregon Humanities Center Dissertation Fellowships for 2017-2018, which will provide a term of support free from teaching and for working on their dissertations.

Following the contention of Bruno Latour that critique has “run out of steam,” Bonnie Sheehey‘s dissertation “Reparative Critique: Temporality, Action, and Transformation in James, Foucault, and Latour” offers a philosophical framework for renewing and redirecting the work of critique along reparative lines, and argues that three figures supply valuable resources and insights for critique’s much-needed reparative turn. Representing diverse philosophical styles, William James, Michel Foucault, and Bruno Latour offer methods of critical inquiry invested with a set of positive metaphors, affects, attitudes, and habits of thought. In a resonant fashion, James, Foucault, and Latour undertake the work of reparative critique by orienting their methods of inquiry around an ensemble of shared concepts – action, temporality, and transformation. After proposing and defending a methodology of reparative critique, Bonnie then maps this methodology to current debates in political philosophy and media ethics.

Gus Skorburg‘s dissertation “Extended Virtues” is being written under the direction of Dr. Mark Johnson, Philip H. Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The project draws on research in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of biology, social and personality psychology, feminist philosophy, and virtue ethics to develop a novel framework for examining the many ways in which context can promote or undermine human flourishing.

More information on 2017-18 Oregon Humanities Center Fellowship recipients can be found in the Spring 2017 OHC Newsletter at http://ohc.uoregon.edu/fellowships.html