Education

Ph.D., Fordham University, 2006. Dissertation: "Sizing Up Infinite Alterity: The Possibility of a Levinasian Practical Ethics" (Director: Merold Westphal).

M.A., Fordham University, 2004

B.A., Philosophy, Seattle Pacific University, 1999

B.S., Mathematics, Seattle Pacific University, 1999

Areas of Specialization

Continental Philosophy, Ethics, Levinas

Areas of Competence

History of Western Philosophy; Modern Philosophy (esp., Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche); Social and Political Philosophy; Philosophy of Religion; Logic

Teaching

Augustana College, South Dakota, 2007-present; Assistant Professor

The Ethics and Politics of Commitment (Senior Seminar), Fall 2007

Our Philosophical Heritage II (Modern Philosophy), Spring 2008, Spring 2009

Existentialism, Fall 2008

Contemporary Moral Issues, Fall 2008

Ethical Perspectives, Spring 2009

Development, Poverty, and Ethics: What is our Responsibility?, Interim 2009 (travel to Chiapas, Mexico)

Reason, Faith, and the Search for Meaning, Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009

Dimensions of the Self, Fall 2007, Spring 2008

Fordham University, New York, 2004-07; Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow, Senior Teaching Fellow

Philosophy of Human Rights, Spring 2007

Philosophical Ethics, Spring 2004, Fall 2005, Spring 2006, Fall 2006

Philosophy of Human Nature, Fall 2004, Spring 2005, Fall 2006, Spring 2007

Publications

Religion with Religion, co-edited with J. Aaron Simmons and including my chapter "Faith without Content is Dead: Commitment and Justification in a Pluralistic Society." In preparation for Fordham University Press.

"Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion," Philosophy Compass, under review. Co-authored with Jackson Murtha (Solicited).

"The Optics of Responsibility," Southwest Philosophy Review (July 2009).

"Works of Justice, Works of Love: Kierkegaard, Levinas, and an Ethics beyond Difference" in Kierkegaard and Levinas: Ethics, Politics, and Religion, eds. David Wood and J. Aaron Simmons (Indiana University Press, 2008). (Solicited)

"From Perpetual Peace to the Face of the Other: A Levinasian Reframing of Human Rights," Philosophy in the Contemporary World (Fall 2007).

"Derrida's Inhospitable Desert of the Messianic: Religion within the Limits of Justice Alone," Heythrop Journal (March 2007).

"In Praise of Wanderers and Insomniacs: Economy, Excess, and Self-Overcoming in Nietzsche and Levinas," Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology 37:3 (October 2006).

"Intersubjectivity, Responsibility, and Reason: Levinas and the 'New Husserl,'" Philosophy Today 50:5, special volume entitled "Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy" (SPEP Supplement 2006).

"Forging Identities and Respecting Otherness: Levinas, Badiou, and the Ethics of Commitment," Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 9:2, special volume entitled "Contemporary Issues in Continental Ethics" (Fall 2005).

"Is there a Teleological Suspension of the Philosophical? Kierkegaard, Levinas, and the End of Philosophy," Philosophy Today 47:2 (Summer 2003).

"The Ethics of Negative Soccer" in Soccer and Philosophy, ed. Ted Richards (Open Court, 2010).

"Review of Alan Schrift's Twentieth-Century French Philosophy" (Blackwell Publishing), International Philosophical Quarterly (Fall 2007).

Presentations

"Phenomenology beyond the visual," presented at the Southwestern Philosophical Society, 70^th Annual Meeting (November 2008, Kansas City).

"'One must not sleep, one must philosophize!' Levinas's postmodern faith in reason," presented at Augustana College research colloquium (November 2008, Sioux Falls, South Dakota). (Solicited)

"In Praise of Rationality: Levinas's Faith in Reason," presented at the North American Levinas Society, "Levinas and the Sacred" (September 2008, Seattle).

"Development and the Human Good: Beyond Economics," presented at the 20^th Annual Nobel Peace Prize Forum, "Striving for Peace: Investing in Community" (March 2008, Moorhead, Minnesota).

"Exclusion without Violence: An Agonistic Approach to Religious Pluralism," presented at the American Academy of Religion, Southwest Meeting (March 2008, Dallas).

"Obligation and/or Responsibility: Moral phenomenology with Husserl and Levinas," presented at the Nordic Society for Phenomenology, 5^th Annual Meeting, "Self and Other" (April 2007, Copenhagen, Denmark).

"The Absolute Made Relevant: The possibility for social engagement in Kierkegaard and Levinas," presented at the Center for Subjectivity Research, "Despite Oneself: Subjectivity and its Secret in Kierkegaard and Levinas" (February 2007, Copenhagen, Denmark).

"Levinas's Third and Social Mediation: On the way to a Levinasian theory of social action," presented at the North American Levinas Society, "Levinas and the Political" (May 2006, West Lafayette, Indiana).

"The Love of Wisdom and The Wisdom of Love," invited lecture at Augustana College (December 2006, Sioux Falls, South Dakota).

"From the Interpersonal to the Social: What Levinasians can learn from Sartre's development of the third party," presented at the North American Sartre Society (October 2006, New York).

"Levinas and the 'New Husserl,'" presented at Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, 44^th Annual Conference (October 2005, Salt Lake City).

"In Praise of Wanderers and Insomniacs: Economy, Excess, and Self-Overcoming," presented at the International Conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, "Nietzsche and Ethics" (September 2004, Brighton, England).

"Philosophy's Critical Potential for a Child of One's Time: Hegel and Levinas on the Relation between Philosophy and Society," presented at Boston College 6^th Annual Graduate Student Conference, "Philosophy's Service" (April 2005, Boston).

"The Obligated Subject: A Comparative Study of Kant's and Levinas's Ethical Theories," presented at the Fourth Annual New School for Social Research Graduate Student Philosophy Conference, "Topics in Kant and Post-Kantianism" (April 2005, New York).

"Critique and the Socially Conditioned Subject: Thinking the Ethical Life with Hegel and Levinas," presented at the Loyola University Chicago Graduate Conference in Philosophy, "Encounters with the Other" (March 2005, Chicago).