AOS: Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, Stanley Cavell and Ordinary Language Philosophy, Philosophy and Popular Culture, and Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
I studied classics and philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina. I also earned a M.A. there with a thesis on Thomas Aquinas. I received my Ph.D. from Duke University (1995), where I wrote a dissertation on the early Jesuit philosopher Francisco Suárez. I have been at Marquette since 1995 and became Chair of the department in 2005.
My primary areas of research are 1) Late Medieval and Renaissance philosophy and 2) the philosophical interpretation and understanding of popular culture. In the first area, I've published numerous articles on such thinkers as John Duns Scotus, Suárez, and Jacopo Zabarella (an Italian Renaissance philosopher). My primary philosophical interests in this period involve issues of philosophic method, philosophy of mind, and political philosophy. I'm currently working on a book-length study of the problem of the immortality of the human soul in the sixteenth century. In the second area, I've edited Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy (Open Court, 2003) and co-edited (with Jacob Held), James Bond and Philosophy (Open Court, 2006), (with Lynne Edwards and Elizabeth Rambo) Buffy Goes Dark: Essays on the Final Two Seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Television (McFarland, 2009), and with Rod Carveth, Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing Is as It Seems (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). I've also published essays on comic books, the films of Woody Allen, and the Beatles. I am in the beginning stages of a project on the films of Robert Altman.
If you want to know still more about me, please visit my personal academic Web site.
