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Faculty & Staff

For a list of our Emeriti Faculty please click here.

Matthew Cashen

Assistant Professor

Peck Hall, room 3207

mcashen@siue.edu / (618) 650-2066

Ph.D. in philosophy, Washington University, 2007.

Teaching interests: ancient Greek and Roman philosophy; ethics, especially biomedical ethics and ethical theory.

Research interests: ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, particularly Socratic and Aristotelian ethics.  Cashen’s doctoral research focuses on the relationship between ancient and contemporary conceptions of well-being and happiness.  He has presented his work on this topic at numerous conferences and meetings of the American Philosophical Association.  More recently, he is working on the role of what the ancients call “external goods,” such as health, wealth, friendship, and  political power, in Aristotelian and Socratic ethics.

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Suzanne Cataldi

Professor

Peck Hall, Room 2219

scatald@siue.edu / (618) 650-2184

Ph.D. Rutgers University, 1991

Research and teaching interests: contemporary European philosophy, ethics, feminist philosophy and philosophy of law. Representative publications include Emotion, Depth and Flesh, A Study of Sensitive Space–Reflections on Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Embodiment (SUNY Press, 1993); Merleau-Pont and Environmental Philosophy: Dwelling on the Landscapes of Thought, co-edited with William S. Hamrick (SUNY Press, 2007); "Sense and Affectivity in Merleau-Ponty: in Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts (Acumen, 2008); "The Philosopher and Her Shadow: Irigaray’s Reading of Merleau-Ponty,"Philosophy Today, 2004; "Animals and the Concept of Dignity: Critical Reflections on a Circus Performance" Ethics and the Environment, 2002; "Embodying Perceptions of Death" in Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty and the Problem of the Flesh (SUNY Press, 2000); "Sexuality Situated: Beauvoir on 'Frigidity'" in Hypatia, 1999; "Reflections on Male Bashing", National Women’s Studies Association Journal, 1995, and "Women and Welfare: Ethical Aspects of Aid to Families with Dependent Children" Public Affairs Quarterly, 1995.

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Judith Crane

Associate Professor

Peck Hall, Room 2218

jcrane@siue.edu / (618) 650-3861

Ph.D. Tulane University, 1999

Teaching interests: history of philosophy (especially early modern philosophy), metaphysics, logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of biology.

Research interests: early modern philosophy, metaphysics, and philosophy of biology. Crane's dissertation, "Locke, Natural Kinds, and Essentialism," argues for a Lockean view of natural kinds, which emphasizes the interest-relativity of many of the paradigmatic "natural" kinds of the natural sciences. Crane has continuing research interests in the metaphysics of natural kinds, including biological species. Representative publications include: "Locke's Theory of Classification," British Journal for the History of Philosophy, May 2003; "On the Metaphysics of Species", Philosophy of Science, April 2004; "Identity and Distinction in Spinoza's Ethics" (with Ron Sandler), Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, June 2005; and "Species Concepts and Natural Goodness" (with Ron Sandler), Carving Nature at the Joints, MIT Press, forthcoming.

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Raymond Darr

Lecturer

Peck Hall, Room 0224

radar@charter.net / (618) 650-3428

M.A. SIUE , 1984

Ray Darr recently completed an Associates of Technology degree at Vatterott College in Computer Electronics and Networking Technology.  Teaching interests include death and dying, critical thinking, and ethics.  Research interests Medical Ethics and the Tuskegee Experiment. His graduate work was concentrated in the area of American Philosophy - specifically John Dewey and George Herbert Mead.

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Greg Fields

Professor

Peck Hall, Room 2211

gfields@siue.edu / (618) 650-2461

Ph.D.  University of Hawaii, 1994.  Professor.

Research areas: North Pacific Coast culture, philosophy, and language preservation/revitalization. South Asian philosophy and religion.

Teaching areas:  Religious studies, American Indian studies, Asian studies, interdisciplinary studies, philosophy of religion, world religions, ancient Christian thought, critical thinking. 

Fields is author of Religious Therapeutics (State University of New York Press, 2001, also published in India by Motilal Banarsidass Press).  His article "Inipi: The Rite of Purification" in The Black Elk Reader (Syracuse University Press, 2000) addresses text, traditionalism, and religious syncretism.  His current projects include several audio and DVD projects on Coast Salish knowledge and culture, and a collaboration with Lummi elder Pauline Hillaire on her book, Rights Remembered: A Salish Grandmother Speaks on American Indian History and the Future (under contract with SUNY Press). 

Fields has presented research at the International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages, The Center for Studies of Religion and Society at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, the East-West Center in Honolulu and the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Calcutta.  Fields’ model of religious therapeutics has applications in religion and science, ethnomusicology, and social philosophy.  For example, ideas concerning health of the body politic are presented in the article “Gandhi and Dewey on Education for Peace” in Problems for Democracy (Rodopi Press, 2006). 

Fields is a founding member of Friends of the Center for Spirituality and Sustainability (formerly the Religious Center), a group dedicated to expanding the potential of the geosphere designed by Buckminster Fuller on the SIUE campus as a center of intercultural and interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and fellowship www.siue.edu/religion.  Fields is among the members of the faculty who are launching a new C.A.S. minor in Native American Studies in 2010/11 and he is one of those in the College of Arts and Sciences working to establish the Interdisciplinary Research and Informatics Scholarship Center (IRIS) www.siue.edu/iris.

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Rhonda Harper

Secretary

Peck Hall, Room 3212

rharper@siue.edu / (618) 650-2250

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William Larkin

Associate Professor

Peck Hall, Room 2207

wlarkin@siue.edu / (618) 650-2643

Ph.D. University of California Santa Barbara, 1998

Professor Larkin’s research is primarily focused on two projects in contemporary analytic epistemology: (a) using a certain pragmatic norm of assertion to undermine contextualists, closure-deniers, and skeptics; and (b) analyzing warrant in terms of a particular belief’s cognitive consequences rather than its manner of production. Some publications representative of other ongoing research interests include “Shoemaker on Moore’s Paradox and Self-Knowledge” in Philosophical Studies, and “Persons, Animals, and Bodies” in Southwest Philosophical Review. Additional teaching interests include logic, the history of early analytic philosophy, and interdisciplinary courses on war and peace and global problems. Professor Larkin has a personal homepage. At present, Prof. Larkin is the Major Advisor.

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Greg Littmann

Assistant Professor

Peck Hall, Room 3231

glittma@siue.edu / (618) 650-3266

Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004

Professor Littmann’s research interests include the philosophy of logic (especially paradoxes), metaphysics (especially mind, time and change), and epistemology (especially skepticism). At present, he is particularly concerned with the paradoxes of rationality (including Littmann’s paradox), revenge liar paradoxes, the paradoxes of denotation, dialethic accounts of motion and other changes, and the epistemological consequences of human evolution.  He teaches Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Media Ethics and Critical Thinking.

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Bryan Lueck

Assistant Professor

Peck Hall, Room 3213

blueck@siue.edu / (618) 650-2096

Ph.D. - Pennsylvania State University in 2007

Professor Lueck's research focuses on issues in contemporary Continental philosophy, especially as they pertain to ethics.  At present, he is particularly interested in rearticulating  some of the central concepts of Kantian ethics with reference to the work of such  philosophers as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel  Serres, and Jean- Luc Nancy.  Representative publications include "Toward a Serresean Reconceptualization of Kantian Respect," Philosophy Today, 2008; "Kant's Fact of Reason as Source of Normativity," Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 2009; and "The Event of Sense in Lyotard's Discours, figure", The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2010.

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Erik Meade

Instructor

Peck Hall, Room 1216

emeade@siue.edu /  (618) 650-2257

M.A. Southern Illinois University - Carbondale

Philosophical Interest include a wide range of topics in analytic philosophy especially in epistemology and the philosophy of religion. He wrote his thesis on the topic of Alvin Plantinga and Gettier cases.   He is particularly interested in teaching Critical Thinking and Deductive Logic.   He is a member of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers.

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Christopher H. Pearson

Assistant Professor

Peck Hall, Room 3210

chpears@siue.edu / (618) 650- 5337

PhD University of Washington 2007

Assistant Professor specializing in philosophy of biology, philosophy of science, and environmental philosophy.  In addition to these areas, professor Pearson teaches  epistemology, bioethics and philosophy of religion.  Pearson is also the philosophy minor advisor.

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Alison Reiheld

Assistant Professor

Peck Hall, Room 2208

areihel@siue.edu / (618) 650-2574

Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2010

TEACHING INTERESTS: applied ethics of any stripe as well as science and technology studies; medical ethics with special attention to interactions between clinical personnel and between the clinic and society; critical thinking and informal logic; medicalization and shifting definitions of disease; philosophical critiques of gender/sex and related value systems.

RESEARCH INTERESTS: ethics of memory; ethical implications of medicalization and shifting definitions of disease; global bioethics; ethics of pandemic/epidemic response; developing world bioethics; philosophical analysis of parenting and domestic labor; clinical ethical issues for trans patients; ethical issues raised by medical technology transfers between professions and across cultural/national borders.

OTHER WORK: Professor Reiheld is the advisor for the SIUE chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the national philosophy honors society, and is also the co-editor, with her colleague Rory Kraft of York College in Pennsylvania, of the journal Questions: Philosophy With Children.  Questions publishes original philosophical work by pre-college students K-12 and is the publication venue for the annual national Philosophy Slam competition.

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Ed Schallert

Instructor

Peck Hall, Room 2203

eschall@siue.edu / (618) 650-2683

M.A. SIUE ,1990

Ed's thesis was a translation and commentary of a Latin document attributed by some to Ockham.  Research interests include Ockham, Scotus, John of Salisbury, and C.S. Peirce as well.  Teaching interests include critical thinking, ethics, symbolic logic, philosophy of human nature, and philosophy of religion.  Ed enjoys reading medieval Latin texts.

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Matthew Schunke

Assistant Professor

Peck Hall, Room 0228

mschunk@siue.edu/ (618) 650-5363

Ph.D., Rice University, 2009

Professor Schunke comes to the SIUE Philosophy Department after earning his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Rice University.  His research focuses on the relationship between philosophy and religion, particularly as it has been dealt with in the philosophical method of phenomenology.  He examines the possibility of a phenomenology of religion by engaging both the works of thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc Marion and current debates surrounding the nature of religious experience and the academic study of religion. His latest work, an article entitled “Apophatic Abuse: Misreading Heidegger’s Critique of Ontotheology,” appeared in Philosophy Today.  His teaching interests included Philosophy of Religion, World Religions, Christian Thought, and Modern Jewish Thought.

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Ezio Vailati

Professor

Peck Hall, Room 2212

evailat@siue.edu / (618) 650-3376

Ph.D. University of California at San Diego, 1985

Teaching and research interests: history of modern philosophy, the history of modern science, and metaphysics. He also has a personal home page.  Representative publications include "Leibniz on Reflection and its Natural Veridicality," Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1987; "Leibniz on Locke on Weakness of the Will," Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1990; with Paolo Mancosu, "Torricelli's Infinitely Long Solid and Its Philosophical Reception in the Seventeenth Century," Isis, 1991; "Clarke's Extended Soul," Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1993; and "Leibniz and Clarke on Miracles," Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1995. In addition, he has authored Leibniz and Clarke: A Study of their Correspondence (Oxford University Press: 1997) and has edited Clarke: A Demonstration of the Nature and Attributes of God (Cambridge University Press:1998).  At present Vailati is writing a manuscript on quantum mechanics and philosophy.

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Robert Bruce Ware

Professor

Peck Hall, Room 2208

rware@siue.edu / (618) 650-2913

D. Phil. Oxford University, 1995

Robert Bruce Ware's teaching interests include social and political philosophy, nineteenth century philosophy, Marxism, ancient philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics, physics, and biology. He is the author of Hegel: The Logic of Self-Consciousness and the Legacy of Subjective Freedom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999) and the co-author, with Enver Kisriev, of Dagestan: Russian Hegemony and Islamic Resistance in the North Caucasus (M.E. Sharp, 2009).  He has published numerous articles on Hegel’s philosophy, and on the politics and religion of the North Caucasus region. He has published in journals including The British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Metaphilosophy, History of Political Thought, The Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, Post-Soviet Affairs, Europe-Asia Studies, Central Asian Studies, Central Asia and the Caucasus, Current History, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Global Dialogue, The Review of Higher Education, and The New Review. His articles have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The International Herald Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, United Press International, Pravda, The Moscow Times, The St. Petersburg Times, The Russia Journal, The Hindu, Asia Times, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,  The Central Asia Caucasus Analyst, and many others. He has been an invited speaker at meetings, lectures, and seminars worldwide, has testified before US Congressional Committees, and has been an invited speaker at the White  House. He has a personal homepage.

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Robert Wolf

Emeritus Professor

Peck Hall, Room 0226

rwolf@siue.edu / (618) 650-3481

Ph.D. St. Louis University, 1970

Teaching interests include critical thinking, ethics, engineering ethics, the full range of the history of philosophy and history of political theory courses, as well as metaphysics, symbolic logic, and philosophy of science. Currently he is working on a series of bibliographies: one, on analytic philosophy of religion 1960-1996, is being published by the Philosophy Documentation Center. A second, an update to his published bibliography on Entailment and Relevant Logics, will be put on line as soon as he figures out how to do it. A third, his big one, is on Logic and Philosophy of Logic, and will not be anywhere near finished for a number of years. He is also a science-fiction fanatic as well as a devotee of historical mysteries.  Recent publications include Analytic Philosophy of Religion: A Bibliography From 1940-1995, Philosophy Documentation Center, 1997.

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