DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
FACULTY PROFILES
PERMANENT
Roger Bell
Professor of Philosophy (1995)
email: roger.bell@sonoma.edu
Born Oakland, CA grew up in Berkeley and Honolulu
B.A. 1966, UC Berkeley, Physics
M.A. 1971, San Francisco State University, Philosophy
Ph.D. 1990, SUNY Stony Brook, Philosophy
First taught at SSU in 1975
Areas of speciality include contemporary Continental: phenomenology and post-structuralism; ordinary language philosophy; 19th century American; philosophy of art: including architecture, film, and literature, postmodernism; cultural criticism and post-colonial studies.
Professor Bell has published on topics in deconstruction, cultural criticism, and architecture, Sounding the Abyss: Readings between Cavell and Derrida was published by Lexington Press in 2004.
Ada Jaarsma
Assistant Professor of Philosophy (2005)
email: ada.jaarsma@sonoma.edu
Ada Jaarsma received her PhD in Philosophy with a concentration in English and Philosophy and a graduate minor certificate in Women's Studies from Purdue University in May, 2005. She received her MA from Trent University in Peterborough, ON, Canada in 2000 and her BA from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON, Canada.
Her research interests include feminist philosophy and feminist theory, queer theory, and 19th and 20th century continental philosophy.
Her dissertation is entitled Troubling the Normal: Contemporary Encounters with Kierkegaard. It places Søren Kierkegaard in conversation with four later thinkers-Harriet Jacobs, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, and Jürgen Habermas-in order to demonstrate the political stakes of existential inwardness and the concomitant spiritual stakes of identity politics. Dr. Jaarsma is currently revising the dissertation for publication. By queering Kierkegaard, she seeks to develop resources for a feminist and queer critique of religious discourse.
Publications:
"Irigaray's To Be Two: The Problem of Evil and the Plasticity of
Incarnation," Hypatia special issue "Feminism and the Problem of Evil." 18.1 (2003): 44-63.
"Encountering Hegel and Deleuze: Towards a Feminist Pedagogy of the Concept," theory@buffalo special issue "Deleuze and Feminism." 8 (2003): 124-43.
Forthcoming:
"Irigaray's To Be Two: The Problem of Evil and the Plasticity of
Incarnation," republication forthcoming in Feminism and the Problem of Evil, ed. Robin May Schott (Indiana University Press)
"Word and Flesh: Reading Luce Irigaray," forthcoming in The Strategic Smorgasbord of Post-Modernity, ed. Deborah Bowen. (Cambridge Scholars
Press)
In Progress:
"Queering Kierkegaard: Sin, Sex, and Critical Theory"
"Kierkegaard, Discourse Ethics, and the Case of Homophobia"
"Feminist Theory, Queer Rights, and the Question of Adoption"
Courses:
Phil 390 Feminist Philosophy: The Three Waves of Feminism
Phil 378 Feminist Philosophy: Philosophies of Desire (cross-listed with Women's and Gender Studies)
Phil 305 Existentialism: Kierkegaard, Sartre, Beauvoir
Phil 315 Truth: Jurgen Habermas
Phil 200 Philosophy in Pop Culture
Phil 120 Introduction to Philosophy
Gillian Parker
Associate Professor of Philosophy (1995)
email: parkerg@sonoma.edu
Born in Singapore, raised there and in England
B.A. Hons, Philosophy and Politics, Manchester University, U.K., 1986
Ph.D. Philosophy (Literary Theory minor), Indiana University, Bloomington, 1994
Gillian's research and teaching interests are in aesthetics, in particular the philosophy of literature; and, in environmental philosophy, in particular, environmental aesthetics. She recently taught an experimental class in philosophy and literature where students were asked not to write your typical philosophy paper but, instead, a philosophical short story. Gillian's currently writing a collection of short stories, some of which are philosophically inclined. However, her time is currently consumed, not in writing, but in looking after her fifteen month old son, Julian, who thankfully does not seem like he will be a philosopher, rather, a linebacker for the 49ers.
John Sullins
Assistant Professor of Philosophy (2003)
email: john.sullins@sonoma.edu
Dr. Sullins, (Ph.D., Binghamton University (SUNY), 2002) is an assistant professor at Sonoma State University. His specializations are: philosophy of technology, philosophical issues of artificial intelligence/robotics, cognitive science, philosophy of science, engineering ethics, and computer ethics.
His recent research interests are found in the technologies of Robotics, AI and Artificial Life and how they inform traditional philosophical topics on the questions of life and mind as well as its impact on society and the ethical design of successful autonomous machines. His work also crosses into the fields of computer and information technology ethics as well as the use of computer simulations in studying the evolution of morality.
Andy Wallace
Associate Professor of Philosophy (2003)
email: andy.wallace@sonoma.edu
TEMPORARY FACULTY
Denny Bozman-Moss
Lecturer (1999)
email: denny.bozman-moss@sonoma.edu
Deirdre Frontczak
Lecturer (2006)
email:
Sophia Leahy
Lecturer (2006)
email: saleahy@ucsfca.edu
Sophia teaches critical thinking based on reading great books, student discussion, lecture and story telling. She agrees with Plato in his statement from the Republic, “Education isn’t what some people declare it to be, namely, putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes…. the power to learn is present in everyone’s soul and that the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body.” Consequently, there is lots of student activity in her classes. Her policy on attendance is that it counts, and it counts for a lot, because every class matters. This is her second semester at Sonoma State University.
Sophia received her master’s degree in philosophy at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology and received her bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. Her thesis on Plato is available at the G.T.U. Library titled, “The Good, the True, and the Funny: Plato and his Philosophy of Humor.” She is the founder of the philosophy group the OWL of Minerva which is in its fourth year of existence. For information on the OWL see www.owlofminerva.com.
Currently Sophia is writing a paper on Dostoevsky and Camus regarding the bad faith in the man from underground and Jean-Baptiste in “The Notes from Underground” and “The Fall.” She just submitted a short paper on Immanuel Kant on his concept of Duty to AMINTAPHIL, the American Association of Legal and Social Philosophy which she is a member of. She is working on her never ending novel The Silver Bullet Story and is planning for a text book for young people called The Good Ball.
Sophia is an avid chess player and is always up for a game. Plato, Complete Works, ed. by Cooper, Republic, tr. by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1997, 1135-1136.
Dwayne Mulder
Lecturer (1999)
email: dwayne.mulder@sonoma.edu
Teed Rockwell
Lecturer (2002)
email: mcmf@california.com
Although Teed Rockwell began his philosophical studies with a strong
interest in Continental philosophy, especially Heidegger, Nietzsche and Hegel, he now studies how philosophical presuppositions about mind and reality affect the practices of scientific researchers, especially in biology, psychology and the cognitive sciences. Much to his own surprise, he has become a philosopher of science in the Anglo-American Analytic tradition. He sees the American pragmatists, especially John Dewey, as the root that connects these two allegedly conflicting traditions.
Teed has had articles published in Behavior and Philosophy, Philosophical Psychology, Minds and Machines, the Journal of Consciousness Studies, The Journal of the John Dewey Society, and in the Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind. He has presented papers at meetings of the American Philosophical Association, The Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and the Southern Society of Philosophy and Psychology, among others. His MIT Press Book
Neither Brain nor Ghost (2005) rejects both dualism and the mind/brain identity theory, and argues that the mind is a ³behavioral field² that fluctuates within the brain/body/world nexus.
Teed was an invited speaker at a conference on Mind and Reality sponsored by the department of religious studies at Columbia University, where he presented a commentary on a paper by Buddhist Scholar Robert Thurman. He is currently working on an Essay called "God, Freedom, and Darwin", which is designed to teach high school biology students the difference between Darwinian Scientific facts and the atheist Darwinian philosophy which is often derived from them.
Many of Teed's philosophy papers can be found at his Website "Cognitive Questions" www.california.com/~mcmf
Teed is also a musician, and the only person to play Hindustani Ragas on the Touchstyle Fretboard (aka Chapman Stick® or Warr Guitar ®) You can hear samples of his music at www.elefunt.com/teed
Zeno Swijtink
Lecturer (1997)
email: swijtink@sonoma.edu
Zeno Swijtink studied Philosophy, Mathematics, and Economics at the University of Amsterdam in the 1970s. He left Amsterdam with a MS in Philosophy and Mathematics and studied for a year logic at the University of Warsaw before enrolling as a graduate student at
Stanford University in its Program for Logic, Philosophy of Science,
and Philosophy of Language. His doctorate of 1982 at that school was in the foundations of statistical inference.
Since then he taught Philosophy at, a.o., UC San Diego, SUNY Buffalo, and Indiana University at Bloomington, and had research gigs in Bielefeld, Germany, Groningen and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Berlin, Germany, at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science, before coming to Sonoma State University in 1997.
His research focus is on topics in the History and Philosophy of
Science, and in Environmental Philosophy.
He is working, against his will and inclination, as an environmental
activist in Sonoma County, on watershed and global climate change
issues, and is wont to impress on his students the disharmony of the
modern industrial time-frame with the tempo of the web of life, all
the time firmly embedded in the trapping of post-modern existence.
His students, in turn, favor irony over blatant inconsistencies.
Helmut Wautischer
Lecturer (1995)
email: helmut.wautischer@sonoma.edu