Peer Mentor
Education: B.A. in Religious Studies, Yale University
Interests: Freud, Proust, Homer, the Hebrew Bible, mythology, tragedy, and dreams.
Dissertation title: "Symbolic substitution in dreams and the Homeric epics"
Dissertation committee: Jonathan Lear (chair), Laura Slatkin, David Wellbery
Education: B.A. in Comparative Literature, Kenyon College; M.A. in History of Art, Williams College Graduate Program at the Clark Art Institute
Interests: Nineteenth-century visual art & literature, art historiography, air and atmosphere, illustrated books & works on paper, history of sculpture, poetry & poetics, aesthetic effects, theories of imagination & experience
Editor-in-Chief of Venti Journal: Air, Experience, Aesthetics: venti-journal.com.
Education: B.A. in Religion and Black Studies, Swarthmore College, 2014
Interests: James Baldwin; Love Studies; Intellectual History; Religion, Literature, and Arts; African American Literature; Black Cultural Studies; Modern Religious Thought; Affect & Emotion; Audre Lorde; Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dissertation title: “Talk of Fire, Invisibility, and the Erotic: James Baldwin, African American Literature, and the Theological-Political Discourse of Active Love”
Committee: Joel Isaac (Chair), Richard Rosengarten, Sarah Hammerschlag, Kenneth Warren
Education: B.A. in English and History, Columbia University, 2015
Interests: History of political thought, political philosophy, educational theory, modern receptions of the ancients, American political thought, French and German Enlightenments.
Dissertation title: "Separated Powers in the Democratic Soul: The Liberal Arts and the Pursuit of Excellence in America."
Dissertation committee: Nathan Tarcov (chair), Joel Isaac, and Joshua Mitchell (Georgetown University).
Education: B.A. in History and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2017); M.A. in Social Sciences, University of Chicago (2019)
Interests: American intellectual history, religion & literature, loyalty & commitment, nature & wildness, philosophy of history
Education: BA in philosophy and English, University of California, Berkeley, 2015; MFA in poetry, Washington University in Saint Louis, 2018
Interests: Authorship; aesthetic experience; literary modernism; metaphysics & skepticism; Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Strauss, and the possibility of philosophy.
Education: B.A. in English, Tsinghua University, 2017
Interests: writing and/as technology; literary modernism, esp. Chinese, Irish, Japanese, French; STS; media studies; philology and modernity.
Education: M.A. (Hons) in Political Science, University of Edinburgh, 2014
Interests: Plato and Platonism in the history of political thought; the ethics and politics of psychoanalysis; Homer, Proust, and Ferrante; contemporary political economy; critical theory; Ambedkarite political thought; Black political thought.
Dissertation title: "Pedagogies of Freedom: Comparing W. E. B. Du Bois and B. R. Ambedkar"
Dissertation committee: Joel Isaac (Chair), Jennifer Pitts, Michael Dawson
Education: B.A. in Philosophy, Yale University, 2020
Interests: Plato, the Sophists, Idealism, problems of error, phenomenological philosophy
Joint degree student in Social Thought and Philosophy
Education: BA/MA in Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, 2020
Interests: Kant and German idealism, Kierkegaard, phenomenology, Wittgenstein, Jewish philosophy; perception and embodiment, language, intersubjectivity, aesthetic and religious experience; conceptions of first philosophy
Joint degree student in Social Thought and Germanic Studies
Education: B.A. in philosophy, literature, and intellectual history, Bard College Berlin (formerly European College of Liberal Arts); M.A. in Philosophy, École Normale Supérieure (Paris)
Interests: translation theory, 19th and 20th-century social and political thought, modernity, liberal education.
Education: B.A. in Classics, Yale University (2019)
Interests: Literary self-consciousness, English and German Romanticism, Greek tragedy & its reception, Kierkegaard
Joint degree student in Social Thought and Philosophy
Education: B.A. in Philosophy and English, Williams College, 2014; BPhil in Philosophy, University of Oxford, 2016
Interests: Psychoanalysis, Ethics, Kant, Modern Jewish Thought, Philosophy and Literature.
Dissertation title: "Autonomy and Anxiety."
Dissertation committee: Jonathan Lear (chair), Matthew Boyle (Philosophy), Candace Vogler (Philosophy)
Education: B.S. in Mathematics, Furman University (2018)
Interests: ancient politics, politics & literature, family, friendship, Plato, Machiavelli.
Education: BA in Economics and Philosophy, MA in Political Philosophy, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá; MA in the Social Sciences, The University of Chicago.
Interests: Political philosophy, philosophy of war, ethics
Dissertation: “Is War a World Apart? ‘Necessity’ in Walzer, Thucydides and Hobbes”
Dissertation Committee: Nathan Tarcov (chair), Christopher Lynch, Richard B. Miller
Joint degree student in Social Thought & the Department of English Language and Literature
Education: B.A. in Philosophy and English, Georgetown University, 2015; M.A. in English Language & Literature, 2021
Interests: American and Canadian 20th & 21st Century Poetry and Poetics, Indigenous Literature, Migration and Movement, Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology, Theories of Language and Law
Dissertation: "A Poetics of Apology"
Dissertation Committee: Sianne Ngai (co-chair, English); Andrei Pop (co-chair, Social Thought); Jonathan Lear (Social Thought); Tina Post (English, Theater & Performance Studies)
Joint degree student in Social Thought and Philosophy
Education: B.A. in History and Economics, Dartmouth College; J.D., Yale Law School; M.A. in Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Interests: Self-Deception, Ambivalence, Psychoanalysis, Skepticism, Social and Political Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy and the Arts, Disability.
Education: B.A. in Philosophy, Université Laval (2015); M.A. in Philosophy, University of Ottawa (2017)
Interests: Ancient Greek philosophy, German philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, history of political philosophy, appropriations of Plato and Aristotle in German and Continental philosophy
Dissertation title: "A German Second Sailing: The Dialogical Platonism of Leo Strauss, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Gerhard Krüger"
Dissertation Committee: Robert B. Pippin (Chair), Glenn W. Most, David E. Wellbery, Francisco J. Gonzalez (University of Ottawa)
Joint degree candidate in Social Thought and Classics
Education: B.A. in Philosophy and Classics, University of Amsterdam, 2011/2012; M.A. in Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, 2014; M.A. in Classics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2014
Interests: Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy (esp. ethics and aesthetics); History of Science and History of Knowledge; History and Philosophy of Emotions; Hellenistic Literature; Modern European Philosophy (esp. Kant, Heidegger, Foucault); Lucretius.
Dissertation title: "The History of Wonder in Hellenistic Philosophy"
Dissertation committee: Elizabeth Asmis and Gabriel Richardson Lear (co-chairs), Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer, Lorraine Daston
Education: B.A. in History, Pomona College; M.A. in Social Sciences, University of Chicago
Interests: German Idealism, early modern philosophy, and history of philosophy.
Dissertation: "Reasoning Over Time: Hegel's Critique of Spinoza and the Possibilities of History"
Dissertation Committee: Robert Pippin; Susan James (Birkbeck, University of London); Lorraine Daston
Education: B.A. (Highest Distinction) in English, University of Virginia; M.F.A. in Poetry, University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop; M.A. in the Humanities, University of Chicago
Interests: intentionality, conceptuality, and musicality in 19th and 20th century lyric poetry; hermeneutics; phenomenology.
Dissertation title: "An Expressivist Account of Poetic Sound."
Dissertation Committee: Rosanna Warren (chair), David Wellbery, Joshua Scodel (English Department), Richard Strier (English Department)
A founding editor of The Winter Anthology (www.winteranthology.com), a collection of 21st century literature and thought published annually.
Education: B.A. in Music and the Joint Major in Philosophy & Religious Studies, Stanford University (2018); M.M. in Music Composition, The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University (2021)
Interests: Greek philosophy (especially Plato and Neoplatonism); German philosophy (especially Fichte, Hegel, and Heidegger); the history and philosophy of logic; aesthetics; philosophy of music
Education: B.A. in History & Government, University of Sydney; M.A. in Social Sciences, University of Chicago
Interests: French political philosophy; American political thought; political theory.
Dissertation Title: "Unorthodox Adversaries: Tocqueville, Gobineau & the Meaning of Modernity"
Dissertation Committee: Ralph Lerner, Nathan Tarcov (co-chairs), Pierre Manent
Education: B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, University of Chicago, 2014
Interests: moral education, philosophy of law, regime preservation and constitutionalism, philosophy of labor, Aristotle.
Joint degree student in Social Thought and Philosophy
Education: B.A. in Philosophy, University of Chicago
Interests: Ancient Greek philosophy, especially Plato & Aristotle; the problem of being.
Dissertation title: "Being Manifest: Aristotle on Perception."
Dissertation committee: Gabriel Lear (chair), Agnes Callard, Martha Nussbaum.
Education: M.A. in Political Theory and Design, University of Sydney (2017); MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History, University of Cambridge (2019)
Interests: 20th-century German-Jewish thought, the Anthropocene, philosophical accounts of human nature, the sacred, meta-ethics, moral imagination, and worldmaking
Education: B.A. in Liberal Arts, St. John's College, Santa Fe
Interests: Ancient Greek philosophy, Kant and German Idealism, Nietzsche and Heidegger, conceptions of modernity, theories of normativity and justification, political philosophy, religion and secularization
Education: B.A. in Humanities, Yale University; M.A. in the Humanities, University of Chicago
Interests: 19th-century British, German, Russian literature; the essay and the novel; translation; ekphrasis; aesthetics; modernity and imperial collapse
Education: B.A., Boya (Liberal Arts) College, Sun Yat-sen University; M.A. in Classics, University of St Andrews; M.A. in the Humanities, University of Chicago
Interests: Homer, Aristophanes, Plato, Lucian, The Dream of the Red Chamber, landscape and idyllic poetry, mimesis and fiction, philosophy of language and art
Joint degree student in Social Thought and Classics
Education: B.A. in Classics and the Program of Liberal Studies, University of Notre Dame
Interests: Homer, Sophocles, similes & metaphors, prosocial behavior & non-competitive attitudes
Education: B.A. in Social Studies, M.A. in East Asian Regional Studies, Harvard University
Interests: Aesthetics in the Age of Goethe, 19th- and 20th-Century German Literature, Ancient Greek Literature and Philosophy, Critical Theory and Phenomenology
Dissertation Title: "After Schiller: Naïve Modernism from Nietzsche to the New Left”
Dissertation Committee: David E. Wellbery (Chair), Robert B. Pippin, Catriona MacLeod (Germanic Department)
Joint degree student in Social Thought and History
Education: BSc Social Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science; MA History of Political Thought and Intellectual History, Queen Mary University of London and University College London
Interests: the British empire, the American Revolution, the making of the constitution, the early American republic, and international perceptions of America
Education: B.A., Bard College Berlin (formerly European College of Liberal Arts), 2018
Interests: Homer, Greek tragedy, Greek philosophy (the sophists and Plato), representations of Socrates, Greek classics in French philosophy, deconstruction and its reception (Jacques Derrida and Sarah Kofman), wonder in philosophy
Education: B.A. in Computer Science, Columbia University, 2019
Interests: American literature & philosophy; rhetoric; political trust; migration; Switzerland; and the history of journalism