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Why Study Philosophy
People average about three careers in their lifetimes. Study philosophy and be prepared for all of them.
Watch Dr. Michael Hymers's interview about studying Philosophy at Dalhousie
Weekly Colloquium
This Week's Colloquium
The colloquium will be held from 3:00-5:00 pm (Atlantic time) on Friday, November 22 both in person, in Room 2130 of the Marion McCain Arts and Social Science Building, and online via zoom (details below).
Speaker: Lisa McKeown (Sheridan College)
Title: Fleabag: The Unlikely Virtue of Unlikeability
Abstract: My dissertation critiqued contemporary feminist diagnoses of silencing, arguing that any good theory must incorporate a diagnosis of why not only language, but body language, appears to be illegible to certain sexual aggressors. What became clear by the end of my dissertation but also by the end of talks I give based on my dissertation is that the audience was often left with the question: okay so where do we go from here? At times I’ve even been asked “what should we watch to become better interpreters?” But it's not simply about putting more and better content into our brains and hoping that’s a recipe for liberation. After one particular instance of this, I half-jokingly threw out the suggestion, “I don’t know, watch Fleabag.” It flew out of my mouth before I’d really thought about it, but in retrospect it seems both a good enough place to start as any, but also potentially more relevant than I’d even first realized. This paper is my attempt to explain to myself why that is. My explanation, insofar as I have one, begins in a suspicion that by aggressively breaking the fourth wall, Waller-Bridge disrupts certain cinematic norms, including the male gaze, and in so doing asks us to look beyond what is likeable or pleasing to what is vulnerable and human.
(Lisa encourages audience members to watch some Fleabag beforehand – it’s on Amazon Prime and other platforms)
Dal Philosophy is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Colloquium
Time: Nov 22, 2024 03:00 PM Atlantic Time (Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88638324974?pwd=lD255Cfe70JuVMb9aF6pT9bc1mbyUa.1
Meeting ID: 886 3832 4974
Passcode: 804515
Our Department
The Dalhousie University Department of Philosophy is one of the most active and supportive philosophy departments in Canada. Our program will prepare you for any career because philosophy is the ultimate transferable skill.
Where do I begin?
The basic skills practiced in philosophy are the very skills demanded and rewarded in the most lucrative, influential professions. Start your journey by registering for a first-year course or pick a second-year course in an area of interest to you.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
All Philosophy courses at Dalhousie emphasize the importance of academic integrity. Students are responsible for ensuring that all work they submit is their own, and, unless otherwise explicitly indicated by the instructor, AI-driven tools and generative AI models (including language models like the GPT suite, translation models like Google Translate or DeepL, editing tools like QuillBot, GrammaryGo, etc.) should not be used to generate ideas or written materials for any class offered by the Philosophy department.
AFFILIATED GROUPS
- Atlantic Canada Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy
- Minorities and Philosophy
- Dalhousie Women Around Philosophy
- Evolutionary Studies Group
- Animal Studies Group
- The Canadian Philosophical Association - see the CPA's Good Equity Practices
- The Dalhousie Philosophy Equity Committee
DEPARTMENT KUDOS
- Congratulations to Erik Nelson who defended his PhD dissertation, The Nonlinguistic Mind: Nonlinguistic Concepts, Normativity and Animal Cognition, this June.
- Congratulations to our PhD student, Clarisse Paron, for being awarded the Hadden Prize by the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science for presenting on of the best two student papers at the Annual Meeting, June 2024. The title of her paper is “Are the New American Pediatric Obesity Guidelines Eugenic? Eugenic Logics and the Medicalization and Pathologization of Children’s Bodies.”
- Congratulations to our PhD students, Lara Millman and Clarisse Paron, for being awarded Dalhousie’s President’s Graduate/Undergraduate Student Teaching Award (2 of 3 available university-wide awards!)
- Congratulations to Dr. Travis LaCroix, who has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Durham University, starting in the fall of 2024.
- Congratulations to Dr. Travis LaCroix, who has been award an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council! Travis’s research project is entitled “Philosophy on the Spectrum: The Philosophy of Autism and Autistic Philosophy.”
- Tyler Hildebrand’s paper “Inductive Reasoning Involving Social Kinds” (with Barrett Emerick) has been published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. https://philpapers.org/rec/EMEIRI
- Congratulations to Kayla Beals, who is the 2024 recipient of the F. Hilton Page Memorial Prize, awarded to a graduating student whose thesis is judged to be outstanding.
- Congratulations to George Arnott, who is the 2024 recipient of the Roland Puccetti Memorial Award for the best essay submitted by a student in a 3000- or 4000-level class. George’s essay is entitled "The Virtuous Cohort" Habituation and Character-Friendship as Rational Motivators for Aristotelian Courage.