PhD Student
(Email)
Fifth year in PhD
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
Phenomenology
Feminist Theory and Philosophy
AREAS OF COMPETENCE
Philosophy of Emotions (esp. Grief and Empathy)
CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Women’s Contributions to Early Phenomenology, esp. Edith Stein
- History of Phenomenology
- Critical and Feminist Phenomenology
- Critiques of Phenomenology
DISSERTATION TOPIC
This dissertation intervenes in contemporary phenomenological research on ethical personal development by recovering Edith Stein’s philosophy of personal becoming. According to Stein, throughout our lives we develop into the persons we become through dual processes of formation and self-formation. Our bodies and psyches are formed through encounters with a material world, through our relationships with others, and through the values we personally hold and discover in the world. However, we can also participate in our own development through self-formation, or more specifically, by modifying our personal values and thereby affecting our actions, desires, and perceptions. We are responsible for who we become, which means that self-formation is a moral imperative for Stein. Ultimately, this dissertation contends that Stein’s accounts of formation and self-formation provide resources for contemporary phenomenologists today, for whom the question of how we can personally change in relation to the shifting social and political values of today’s world remains unanswered. I argue that Stein’s account of self-formation provides the vocabulary and tools for explaining how we do the internal self-work necessary to contest internalized hegemonic visions of the world and expectations about who we should be, such that we can change ourselves and how we live. The first two chapters of this dissertation outline Stein’s accounts of formation and self-formation; the third chapter details how we should live to develop ourselves fully and authentically; the fourth examines how Stein envisions gender to affect our development through her account of women’s formation vis-à-vis the education of young girls; and the fifth situates Stein’s accounts of formation and self-formation in contemporary phenomenological debates by showing how we can modify our values to change ourselves in response to ever-changing social and political worlds.
EDUCATION
Emory University, Philosophy, Ph.D., 2022 (Expected – in coursework)
- Dissertation: Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Self-Formation: On Her Theory of Values, Gender, and its Relevance for Critical Phenomenology. Committee: Andrew Mitchell, Cynthia Willett, Antonio Calcagno
Western University, Theory and Criticism, M.A., 2017.
- Thesis: In-Between What Once Was and What is Yet to Come: On the Phenomena of Bereavement and Grieving. Committee: Helen Fielding, Antonio Calcagno
Western University, Philosophy and Women’s Studies, B.A., 2014
SELECTED SCHOLARSHIPS AND PRIZES
- DAAD Short-Term Research Grant 2021-2022, declined
- DAAD Short-Term Research Grant 2020-2021, canceled
- SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, 2017 – 2020
- SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Scholarship, 2017 – 2020, declined
- Laney Graduate School Fellowship, 2017 – 2022
- Ontario Graduate Scholarship, 2015 – 2016
- SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Master’s Scholarship, 2014 – 2015
- Ontario Graduate Scholarship, 2014 – 2015, declined
- Highly Commended Entrant in international award program, The Undergraduate Awards, 2014
- Gold Medal, Women’s Studies and Feminist Research Dept., 2014
- Chair’s Annual Essay Prize, Philosophy Dept., 2014
- The Shrimati Lajjawati Pathak Scholarship in Women’s Studies, 2013
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Breached Horizons: The Philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion. Co-edited with Antonio Calcagno, Kathryn Lawson, and Steve G. Lofts (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017).
Peer-Reviewed Contributions
“Grief in Phenomenology,” forthcoming in Encyclopedia of Phenomenology
“Edith Stein’s Contribution to Critical Phenomenology: On Self-Formation and Value-Modification,” forthcoming in Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology
“Anticipatory Grief and Perceptions of the Future.” Chiasma: A Site for Thought (Volume 3, Article 5, 2016).
Book Review
Review of Kate Kirkpatrick’s “Sartre on Sin: Between Being and Nothingness,” Reading Religion, November 6, 2018, http://readingreligion.org/books/sartre-sin
PRESENTATIONS
Conference Presentations
“Thematizing Oppression and Resistance: Beauvoir and Lugones’ Social Ontology,” philoSOPHIA, Nashville, USA, May 14-17, 2020 (Cancelled due to COVID-19 Pandemic)
“Gut Feelings,” Collegium Phaenomenologicum, Città di Castello, Italy, July 5th, 2019
“Freedom, Contingency, and the Death of the World: A Question of Ethical Openings in Being and Time,” The 2017 CAREP Conference on Heidegger: Dwelling, Thinking, and the Ethical Life, London, Canada, October 27-29, 2017.
“Living in-between: the world-shifting experience of loss,” The Canadian Hermeneutic Institute, Ramada Hotel, Toronto, Canada, June 16, 2016.
“Levels and Horizons: A Brief Exploration of the Possibility for a Phenomenology of Place,” The 2014 Undergraduate Awards, Google EU Headquarters, Dublin, Ireland, November 21, 2014.
“Wege nicht Werke: an Auseinandersetzung with the Sache and language of Heidegger’s thought,” The Later Heidegger on Language, Art, and Technology Conference, King’s University College at Western University, London, Ontario, April 10, 2014.
Lectures
“Judith Butler on Performativity: Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” in “Modern and Postmodern Philosophy” undergraduate Philosophy course at King’s University College at Western University, April 4th, 2017.
“Heidegger’s Being and Time” in “Modern and Postmodern Philosophy” undergraduate Philosophy course at King’s University College at Western University, March 9th, 2017.
“Substitution in Otherwise than Being” in “Levinas” graduate/undergraduate Philosophy course at King’s University College at Western University, November 2014.
Departmental Talks
“Speech and the Expression of our Past,” Philosophy Forum at Emory, March 8th, 2019
“In between what once was and what is yet to come: On the Phenomena of Bereavement and Grieving,” Philosophy Forum at Emory, March 30, 2017.
Responses
“Overcoming the Dichotomy of Choice and Motivation: The Will,” a response to “On Resolving the Priority Problem” by Thomas E. Randall, November 2015.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Instructor
Philosophy 100, “Basic Problems in Philosophy,” Emory University, Spring 2022
Philosophy 115 “Introduction to Ethics”, Emory University, Spring 2020
Co-Teacher (taught and graded 50% of course)
Philosophy 123 “Introduction to Feminist Philosophy” (with Professor Noëlle McAfee), Emory University, Spring 2019
Teaching Assistant
PHIL 134: “Philosophy of Human Nature” (for Prof. Cynthia Willett), Emory University, Fall 2018.
WS 2283: “Desiring Women” (for Dr. Andrea Allen), Western University, Winter 2016.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
- President, Friday Philosophy Forum, Emory University (2018 – 2019)
- Deputy Editor, Chiasma: A Site for Thought, Western University (2016 – 2017).
- Research Assistant to Professor Bipasha Baruah on project “Social Innovation and Gender Equality,” Western University (May 2017 – July 2017).
- Research Assistant to Professor Helen Fielding for book “Feminist Phenomenology Futures” (Indiana University Press, 2017), Western University (July 2016 – September 2016, March – July 2017).