Curriculum Vitae
Cynthia R. Nielsen
University of Dallas, 1845 E. Northgate Dr., Irving, TX 75062
email: [email protected]
Education
| Ph.D. | University of Dallas, Philosophy, 2011 |
|---|---|
| M.A. | University of Dallas, Philosophy, 2006 |
| B.Music | University of North Florida, 1994, magna cum laude |
| Non-degree | Moscow State University, 1997-98 advanced Russian studies; Portland State University, 1999 advanced Russian studies |
Dissertation
“Constructed Subjectivities and a ‘Thick’ Account of Agency: A Foucauldian Dialogue with Douglass, Fanon, and the Augustinian-Franciscan Tradition”
Philipp W. Rosemann, dissertation director
Joerg Rieger, Charles Sullivan, readers
Accepted with distinction, August 29, 2011
Publications–Books
Foucault and Self-Writing: On the Art of Living as Improvisation (forthcoming Wipf & Stock/Cascade 2012)
Fanon, Douglass, Foucault, Augustine, and Scotus in Dialogue: On Social Construction and Freedom (forthcoming Palgrave Macmillan 2013)
Publications–Articles
“Hearing the Other’s Voice: How Gadamer’s Fusion of Horizons and Open-ended Understanding Respects the Other and Puts One’s Self in Question” (currently under editorial review with the International Journal of Philosophical Studies).
“Augustine and Foucault: On Dynamic Relational Subjectivity or Echoes of Selves and Other-Self Inflections” (currently under editorial review with the Journal of Religious Ethics)
“Philosophy of Music,” New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement 2012-13, eds. Robert Fastiggi and Joseph Koterski, S.J., forthcoming 2012.
“Foucault’s Polyphonic Genealogies and Rethinking Episteme Change via Musical Metaphors”(forthcoming, Radical Orthodoxy: A Journal of Theology, Philosophy, and Politics 2012).
“Unearthing Consonances in Foucault’s Account of Greco-Roman Self-Writing and Christian Technologies of the Self,” (forthcoming, Heythrop Journal 2012; online preview).
“Resistance Through Re-Narration: Fanon on De-constructing Racialized Subjectivities,” (African Identities: Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society 9:4 (Dec. 2011): 363–85. DOI:10.1080/14725843.2011.614410.
“Resistance is Not Futile: Frederick Douglass on Panoptic Plantations and the Un-Making of Docile Bodies and Enslaved Souls,” Philosophy and Literature 35.2 (2011): 251–68. DOI: 10.1353/phl.2011.0018.
“What Has Coltrane to Do With Mozart: The Dynamism and Built-in Flexibility of Music,” Expositions 3 (2009): 57–71.
“St. Augustine on Text and Reality (and a Little Gadamarian Spice),” Heythrop Journal 50 (2009): 98–108.
Publications–Book Reviews
Jeremy S. Begbie. Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84:1 (Winter 2010): 166–168.
Edward T. Oakes (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Hans urs Von Balthasar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82:2 (Spring 2008): 374–378.
Louis Dupré. The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture.New Haven:YaleUniv. Press, 2004. Philotheos 6 (2006): 333–340.
James K.A. Smith. Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 80:4 (Fall 2006): 642–646.
Jean-Luc Marion. Being Given. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2002. Ars Disputandi: The Online Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 5 (2005), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org. ISSN 1566-5399.
Conference Presentations
“Augustine and Foucault On Self-Writing, Social Construction, and Unmasking Cultural Narratives.” Philosophy Colloquium, University of Dallas, Spring 2012.
“Mos Def on Socially Constructed Subjectivities, Stigmatized Spaces, and the Mutability of ‘Blackness’.” Philosophy Colloquium, University of Dallas, Fall 2010.
“Michel Foucault and Frederick Douglass on Power Relations and Resistance Strategies “From Below.” 15th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture hosted by St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, Sept. 2010.
“St. Augustine and Frederick Douglass: Counternarratives from the Underside as a Mode of Resistance and Confessio.” 35th Annual Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Conference, Villanova Conference Center, Philadelphia, PA. Oct., 2010.
“Phenomenological Reflections on Music as Performed: Embracing Continua and Deconstructing Dichotomies.” North Texas Philosophical Association, Annual Conference, University of North Texas, April 2010.
“Fanon and the Quest for a Phenomenology That Saves Difference.” 34th Annual Conference National Council for Black Studies, Atlanta, GA. March 2010.
“Paul and Slavery: Submit, Subvert or Something In-Between?” Society of Biblical Literature, Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA. Nov. 2009. (My paper was accepted, but I was unable to attend for financial reasons).
“Scotus and the Will as a Self-Determining Active Power,” 33rd Annual Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Conference, Villanova Conference Center, Philadelphia, PA. Oct., 2008.
“A Glimpse at Christocentric Friendship in the Heartbeat of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Symposium on Faith and Culture, Friendship: Quests for Character, Community and Truth, Baylor University, Oct., 2007.
“St. Augustine on Text and Reality and a Little Gadamerian Spice,” 32nd Annual Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance Conference,Villanova Conference Center, Philadelphia, PA. Oct., 2007.
“Hermeneutical Continuities: St. Augustine and Hans-Georg Gadamer,” Institute of Philosophic Studies Colloquium, University of Dallas, Oct. 2007.
“Does God’s Incomprehensibility, Human Finitude, and the Human Condition Make Reasonable (a qualified) Fideism? Or Does Reason Exceed Human Being?” Midwest Regional Conference of the Society of Christian Philosophers, University of Notre Dame, April 2006.
“The Anti-Enlightenment Nature of Jazz: Embracing Particularity and Universality, Freedom and Form, Tension and Resolution,” The World and Christian Imagination, Baylor University, Nov. 2006.
Teaching Competence
Primary: 20th Century Continental Philosophy (esp. Michel Foucault), Social & Political Philosophy, Ethics, History of Philosophy
Secondary: Critical Race Theory, Feminist Philosophy, Applied Ethics (esp. race, gender, & contemporary issues of social justice), Existentialism
Teaching History
University of Dallas, Dallas, TX, 2008–present
- Philosophy of the Human Person (Fall 2008, Spring 2011, Fall 2011)
- Texts planned for 2011 course: Plato, Symposium, Aristotle, selections from, De Anima; St. Augustine, selections from, the Confessions; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I.75-83; René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy; Kierkegaard, selections from Fear and Trembling, The Concept of Anxiety, Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript; Foucault, selections from Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: “Self-Writing,” “Technologies of the Self,” “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom”
- Texts covered in 2008 course: Plato, Phaedo; Aristotle, selections from, De Anima; St. Augustine, selections from, the Confessions; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I.75-83; René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy; John Locke, selections from, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- Philosophy and the Ethical Life (Fall 2009, Fall 2010)
- Texts covered in 2010 course: Plato, Republic; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II.90-95; Frederick Douglass, selections from Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Douglass’s 1852 Orations, “The Internal Slave Trade” and “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”; Simona Forti, “The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato”
- Philosophy of Being (Spring 2010)
- Texts covered in 2010 course: Aristotle, Metaphysics; St. Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia; Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics; Heidegger, selections from Basic Writings “What is Metaphysics?”, “The Question Concerning Technology”, “The End of Philosophy”
- Recent Philosophy (Spring 2012)
- Selected ReadingsFrom Modernism to Postmodernism, ed. Lawrence Cahoone (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), Black Skin, White Masks (F. Fanon), and Feminist Contentions (ed. Linda Nicholson). Texts covered: Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’”; From the Preface to Critique of Pure Reason; Hegel, “Absolute Freedom and Terror”; Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense”; “The Madman”; “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable”; “The Dionysian World”; Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”; Derrida, “Differance”; Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”; From “Truth and Power”; Cornel West, “A Genealogy of Modern Racism”; Frantz Fanon “The Lived Experience of the Black Man” (chapter 5 of Black Skin, White Masks); Seyla Benhabib, “Feminism and Postmodernism”; Judith Bulter, “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of ‘Postmodernism’”
Eastfield College, Mesquite, TX, 2005–present
- Introduction to Western Philosophy
- Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder; Philosophy: A Text with Readings by Manual Velasquez
Invited Lectures
- “Frantz Fanon and Racialized Subjectivities,” University of Dallas, HUSC-3331: Sciences of Society and Culture Course,Irving,TX, Spring 2012.
Non-credit Adult Continuing Education Courses
- Augustine’s Confessions (books I-IX). St. John’s Episcopal Church, Dallas, TX, Summer 08.
- “Why Study the Past?” by Rowan Williams. A six-week adult education course, sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church, Dallas, TX, Spring 2011.
Reading Languages
- French
- German
- Latin
- Russian
Academic Awards
- Travel stipend to attend 34th Annual Conference National Council for Black Studies, Atlanta, GA. March 2010, awarded granted via the University of Dallas Graduate Student Association, Spring 2010.
- Travel stipend/scholarship to attend the 15th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture hosted by St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, Sept. 2010, award granted via the University of Dallas Philosophy Department.
- McDermott Fellowship in Philosophy, University of Dallas, 2007–2009
- Edwin L. Jones Graduate Fellowship, Westminster/Redeemer Seminary, 2005
- Phi Sigma Tau Honor Society: The International Honor Society for Philosophers
- Music Scholarship, University of NorthFlorida
- Golden Key National Honor Society, 1990-94
- Graduated magna cum laude, University of North Florida
Academic Societies
- American Academy of Religion
- American Philosophical Association
- Association For Feminist Ethics and Social Theory
- National Council for Black Studies
- North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics
- North American Society for Social Philosophy
- Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology
- Society for Women in Philosophy
University Involvement, Community Service & Cross-Cultural Experience
- Advisor for the University of Dallas Undergraduate Philosophy Club, 2011-12
- Braniff Graduate Student Association, University of Dallas, 2002-2011
- Faculty/graduate student reading group,University of Dallas, Fall 2010, Summer 2011
- Contemporary Postmodern/Postchristian Readingsof St. Paul: Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, Alain Badiou, St. Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Slavoj Zizek, The Puppet and the Dwarf, Fall 2010.
- Readings on various contemporary thinkers/topics: Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, Philip Goodchild, Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety, Summer 2011.
- Active parishioner at St. John’sEpiscopal Church, Dallas, TX
- Adult Christian Education
- Volunteer for and contributor to Food and Clothing Projects for Genesis Women’s Shelter, White Rock Center for Hope, Austin Street Centre (sandwich ministry).
- Prison Ministry
- I correspond regularly with a prisoner serving a life-sentence, and I advocate actively on his behalf via public petitions.
- Member of the Child Welfare League of America
- Supporter and advocate for:
- The CoMission for Children at Risk (ministry to orphans in Russian-speaking countries)
- The International Mission for Justice (a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression).
- Ecumenical humanitarian aid internship assisting orphans and pensioners in Moscow, Russia 2000-2002.
References
University of Dallas, Department of Philosophy, 1845 E. Northgate Dr, Irving, TX 75062; Professor Philipp W. Rosemann, department chair, 972.721.5166, [email protected]
Liverpool Hope University, Hope Park, Liverpool, L16 9JD; Professor Steven Shakespeare, Department of Theology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies, Lecturer in Philosophy, Co-facilitator, The Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion www.hope.ac.uk/acpr, 0151 291 3208, [email protected]
University of California, Los Angeles, 212 Royce Hall, P.O. Box 951550, Los Angeles, CA 90095; Professor Patrick Coleman, Department of French and Francophone Studies, UCLA Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, 310.794.8920, [email protected]
Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology, P.O. Box 750133, Dallas, TX 75275-0133; Professor Joerg Rieger, Wendland-Cook Professor of Constructive Theology, 214.768.2356, [email protected]
Career Goals
I hope to receive a tenure-track teaching/research appointment, to be an active, collegial contributor to my academic community (and of course beyond the university “walls”), and to continue publishing and developing both academic and “life-on-life” mentoring relationships with my students.