Summer Institute in American Philosophy

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Summer Institute Reading Lists for Seminar Sessions

The institute has long been organized primarily around our Seminar sessions. These sessions are plenary sessions inw which all attendeeds participate. So as to facilitate discussion, seminar leaders have asked that attendeeds prepare in advance for the sessions by reviewing the following readings. Note that a finalized Conference Schedule is now available.

How to be an American Philosopher

This seminar will be led by John Lysaker (Emory University), Erin McKenna (Pacific Lutheran University), and Adam Arola (Pacific University). Sessions will proceed like seminars: the aim will be to facilitate discussions.


Nancy, Jean-Luc, "Eulogy for the Melee", in *Being Singular Plural,* trans. Richardson and O'Byrne (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000), pp. 145-158.

Lear, Jonathan, *Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation* (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008) pages tba

Cordova, V.F. *How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V.F. Cordova.* Ed. Moore, Peters, Jojola, and Lacy. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 2007) pages tba

Smith, John. E. "Receptivity, Change and Relevance: Some Hallmarks of Philosophy in American," in America's Philosophical Vision (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 193-207.

Bernstein, Richard J., "Appendix: Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Healing of Wounds," in The New Constellation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 323-340.

McDermott, John J. "An American Angle of Vision, Part 1 & 2," in The Drama of Possibility, ed. Douglas R. Anderson (New York: Fordham UP, 2007), pp. 37-88.

Locke, Alain, "The Contribution of Race to Culture,' in The Philosophy of Alain Locke, ed. Leonard Harris (Philadelphia; Temple University Press, 1989), pp. 201-206.

West, Cornel, "Introduction," in The American Evasion of Philosophy, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 3-8.

Roth, John K. "What Became of American Dreams?" in American Dreams (San Francisco: Chandler and Sharp Publishers, 1976), pp. 1-6.

Pratt, Scott L., "Introduction" and "The Problem of Origins," in Native Pragmatism (Bloomington, Indiana UP, 2002), pp. xi-xviii and 1-16.

Seigfried, Charlene Haddock, "Cooperative Intelligence," in Pragmatism and Feminism (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, , 1996) pp. 259-276.

Seigfried, Charlene Haddock, "Advancing American Philosophy," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Fall 1998 Vol. 32, No. 4 807-838

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "The American Scholar" (available widely online)

Lysaker, John. Philosophizing in America: A Declaration of Independence.

Rereading W.E.B. Du Bois

This seminar will be led by Denise James (University of Dayton) and Marilyn Fischer (University of Dayton).

Du Bois' Souls of Black Folk and Darkwater, read both in full if you can, or focus on specific chapter selections as outlined below. Use the Dover editions for pagination purposes, but the texts are also available online (SBF and DW).

Note: Updated Reading List

Session I: Souls of Black Folk, available at http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html
Read Chapters 1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 13, 14

Session II: Darkwater, available at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubDark.html
Read Chapters 2-4, 7

Session III: Art, Religion, and Romance
Souls of Black Folk, Ch 12, available at http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DubSoul.html
"Criteria of Negro Art", available at http://www.webdubois.org/dbCriteriaNArt.html
Prayers, Poems and Tales from Darkwater

Expanding Pragmatist Political Philosophy

Presenters: Jackie Kegley (CSU, Bakersfield; and President of SAAP) on Josiah Royce, Colin Koopman (University of Oregon) on William James, Judy Whipps (Grand Valley State University) on Jane Addams, and Christopher Voparil (Union Institute and University) on Richard Rorty.

Readings for this session will consist of primary works by the figures that will be at the center of our discussions: Josiah Royce, William James, Jane Addams, Mary Parker Follett, and Richard Rorty. Attendeeds are welcome to bring to the discussions their own readings of other pragmatist thinkers who stand to offer novel contributions to the projects of political philosophy and political theory. Our aim is to consider ways in which pragmatism can make new contributions to political philosophy not already on the map. This explains why we are not explicitly engaging the work of John Dewey in our reading lists. Our view is that it is already largely clear how Dewey's work contributes to a pragmatist political philosophes. Our focus will be on forms of pragmatist political philosophy that build on or otherwise move beyond the Deweyan influence.

Josiah Royce: Read the following four Royce essays. "Provincialism", "On Certain Limitations of the Thoughtful Public in America", "The Possibility of International Insurance", "The Hope of the Great Community"

William James: Read the three essays below from the McDermott (U Chicago) volume if you have it, otherwise find an online copy linked below or at the James Archive. "The Moral Equivalent of War", "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings", and (if you have time only) "What Makes a Life Significant?" if you have time). Also please skim James's selected topical writings on the Spanish-American War.

Jane Addams: “Introduction” and Chapter 6 in Addams’s Democracy and Social Ethics.

Mary Parker Follett: Follett, Mary Parker. 1) “Consent: Not the Technique of Democracy” from Creative Experience, pp. 197-210, Chapter XI and 2) “The True Democracy” from The New State, pp. 156-161, chapter XIX.

Richard Rorty: Read the following four Rorty essays. "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy", "Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality", Justice as a Larger Loyalty", "Feminism and Pragmatism" (at U Mich).

Latin American Philosophy

This seminar will be led by David O’Hara (Augustana College), Joseph Orosco (Oregon State University), Stacey Ake (Drexel University), and Jeffrey Edmonds (Vanderbilt University). Session titles include: "Race as a Shared Concern in American Philosophies: José Vasconcelos, Josiah Royce, and W.E.B. DuBois on Race", "A Cord of Three Strands is not Easily Broken: Poetry, Philosophy, and Social Change in/as Latin American Thought", and "Experience and the Production of Hispanic/Latino Pragmatisms".

Readings for the session are those below:

• Guillermo Hurtado, “Two Models of Latin American Philosophy” in Journal of Speculative Philosophy v20n3
• Enrique Dussel, “Philosophy in Latin America in the Twentieth Century: Problems and Currents.” Also found in Mendieta, below.
• Gloria Anzaldúa, "Towards a New Consciousness” (in Borderlands/La Frontera)
• Eduardo Galeano, Upside down: A Primer for the Looking Glass World, especially the introduction and the last two chapters
• Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America
• José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica, The Cosmic Race, preferably read the whole piece, but a short and helpful excerpt may also be found in Nuccetelli and Seay.
• José Enrique Rodó, Ariel, preferably read the whole piece, but a short and helpful excerpt may be found in Nuccetelli and Seay.

• Eduardo Mendieta, ed. Latin American Philosophy: Currents, Issues, Debates. (Especially Dussel.)
• Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay, eds. Latin American Philosophy: An Introduction with Readings. (Especially the selections from León-Portilla, Dussel, Rodó, Martí, Boff, Vasconcelos, and Gracia.)

• Rudolfo Usigli, “Corona de sombra.”
• Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, especially the chapter entitled “The Mexican Intelligentsia.”
• Juan Augusto Marichal, Cuatro fases de la historia intelectual latinoamericana (1810-1970) (out of print)
• Gregory Pappas, Pragmatism in the Americas (Fordham U.P., Forthcoming but not yet available).

Pre-Institute Seminar on Pragmatist Social Science

This seminar will be led by Jerry Rosiek (University of Oregon, Education).

The selections for this seminar explore one or more of three themes: 1) the relation between experience and knowledge, 2) the purpose of knowledge generation and its relation to action , amelioration, and social justice, & 3) the practice and ideal of reflexivity in social science research. The purpose of our seminar is not to debate the merits of these texts individually, but to have a discussion about the kinds of issues they raise.

The readings are available for download here as a ZIP file (to unpack this large file you may need to install free software, such as WinRAR on your computer).

In addition to a few selections from pragmatists classical and contemporary, the readings focus on the following themes:

• Andrew Abbott—Process and Temporality in Sociology
• Zygmunt Baumann—On Writing Sociology
• Richard Bernstein—Themes of the Pragmatic Ethos & Interdisciplinary Scholarship
• Michael Burawoy--Provincializing the Social Sciences
• James Campbell—Preservation versus Advancement in Pragmatic Philosophy
• Charlotte Davies—Reflexive Ethnography
• Mary Parker Follett—Creative Experience, Experience and the Expert
• Patti Later – This is Your Father’s Paradigm
• Patti Later—Issues of Validity + Postscript + Afterword
• George Marcus—Critical Anthropology Now
• Chela Sandoval—The Failure of Barthes Semiology is the Power of the Methodology of the Oppressed
• Shari Stone-Mediatore—Standpoint Theory, Narratives, and the Revaluing of Experience
• Linda Tuhiwai-Smith—Choosing the Margins
• Michael Young—From Constructivism to Realism in the Sociology of the Curriculum