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CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now

Jessica Pfeifer & Lisa Vetter

Location

Performing Arts & Humanities Building : 216

Date & Time

December 5, 2016, 12:00 pm1:00 pm

Description

Fall 2016 Works-in-Progress Talks
All events begin at noon with lunch served at 11:30
Dresher Center Conference Room, PAHB 216

The Dresher Center’s CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now lunchtime series showcases exciting new faculty work in a dynamic and interdisciplinary setting.  Designed to promote ongoing conversation and multi-disciplinary investigation, these works-in-progress meetings offer faculty and advanced graduate students an informal venue for presentation, conversation, and ongoing collaborative exchange.

“What is a Population-Level Cause?”

Jessica Pfeifer, Associate Professor, Philosophy 

Recently a number of philosophers of biology have argued that natural selection is not a cause. In response, others have argued that it is, but it is a population-level cause. I think both are wrong, because I think representing natural selection as a population-level cause can misrepresent the causal structure of natural selection. However, it's unclear to me what it means to call something a population-level cause in the first place in this context, and I would love help teasing out what it might mean.


and


“The Political Thought of America's Founding Feminists”

Lisa Vetter, Assistant Professor, Political Science
 
My current research continues the project I began in The Political Thought of America's Founding Feminists (New York University Press, 2017) by examining additional early women's rights advocates and abolitionists who are not typically considered political theorists. In my presentation, I will discuss the theoretical and methodological challenges of performing interdisciplinary research and of incorporating intersectionality in American political thought.

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