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211Disinterestedness and Political ArtIn Carolyn Korsmeyer (ed.), Aesthetics: The Big Questions, Blackwell. pp. 155-171. 1998.Can an ordinary viewer ever experience art---particularly politically charged, socially relevant art--in a neutral, detached, and objective way? The familiar philosophical notion of disinterestedness has its roots in eighteenth-century theories of taste and was refined throughout the twentieth century. In contrast, many contemporary theorists have argued for what I call an "interested approach" in order to expand beyond the traditional emphasis on neutrality and universality. Each group, in effe…Read more
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203Glaring omissions in traditional theories of artThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 4 177-186. 1999.I investigate the role of feminist theorizing in relation to traditionally-based aesthetics. Feminist artworks have arisen within the context of a patriarchal Artworld dominated for thousands of years by male artists, critics, theorists, and philosophers. I look at the history of that context as it impacts philosophical theorizing by pinpointing the narrow range of the paradigms used in defining “art.” I test the plausibility of Danto’s After the End of Art vision of a post-historical, pluralist…Read more
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198Review of Feminism and Contemporary Art: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Laughter and The Emptiness of the Image: Psychoanalysis and Sexual Differences (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (3): 299. 1998.Both books published in 1996 explore the role that gender plays in the psychology of art (dealing with both making and viewing), complicating current philosophical distinctions between the aesthetic and the cognitive, and providing new insights into basic topics in the history and psychology of perception, representation, and disinterestedness.
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189The Sense of Art (review)The Personalist Forum 6 (1): 89-91. 1990.Review of 1989 text by Ralph A. Smith, noted art education scholar during the era of DBAE (Discipline Based Art Education), that criticizes the author's agenda to remedy the ills of the state of arts education, arts' secondary status to the sciences, pluralism, and popular ideologies of of contemporary culture as an agenda that is (below the surface) clearly conservative, male-centered, Eurocentric and elitist. My conclusion: "Educators, beware."
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175Feminism and Aesthetics in Contemporary American ArtAmerican Studies 15 133-146. 1997.What is feminist art? Can an ordinary viewer experience it in a neutral, detached, and objective way? These two questions are the focus of this essay which attempts to bridge a gap between philosophical aesthetics and feminist theorizing about women's art. The first question is purely historical, easily answered by means of a brief overview of the past twenty-five years of feminist art in America. The second question raises philosophical issues squarely within the realm of aesthetics, contingen…Read more
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174ORLAN Revisited: DIsembodied Virtual Hybrid BeautyIn Peg Brand Weiser (ed.), Beauty Unlimited, Indiana University Press. pp. 306-340. 2013.This essay offers an update on the author's thoughts on the French feminist performance artist ORLAN, analyzing her visual representations as a new category of feminist visual art, namely, virtual hybrid beauty.
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161Review of Out of Order, Out of Sight (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (4): 405-406. 1998.There has been an important artist in our midst. Her work is about gender, race, and the internal structures of the artworld, and it predated the current popularity of those topics in theoretical circles by three decades.... Piper's volumes serve two functions. Volume I, Selected writings in Meta-Art, 1968-1992, provides an intimate history of the development of her own creative art making, while Volume 2, Selected writings in Art Criticism, 1967-1992, chronicles her more public responses to art…Read more
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144Feminism in Context: A Role for Feminist Theory in Aesthetic EvaluationIn John W. Bender & Gene Blocker (eds.), Contemporary Philosophy of Art: Readings in Analytic Aesthetics, Pearson College Division. pp. 106-112. 1993.This paper explores the role of 1980s to early 1990s feminist theory of art within the analytic philosophical tradition of aesthetics starting with a critique of the noncontextual criticism of aesthetics of Jerome Stolnitz and Monroe Beardsley contrasted with contextual feminist theory, informed by contextual theories of Arthur Danto, George Dickie and Marcia Eaton, and concluding that knowledge of external, contextual data is necessarily required to assess a work of art that has been deemed a w…Read more
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137Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power, by Susan Cahan, and Museums and Public Art: A Feminist Vision, by Hilde Hein. (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (1): 91-94. 2017.
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137Bound to Beauty: An Interview with OrlanIn Peg Zeglin Brand (ed.), Beauty Matters, Indiana University Press. pp. 289-313. 2000.The feminist performance art of the controversial French artist named Orlan is discussed in this interview with the artist.
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129Revising the Aesthetic-Nonaesthetic Distinction: The Aesthetic Value of Activist ArtIn Peg Zeglin Brand Weiser & Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.), Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 245-272. 1995.This essay explores the role that the aesthetic-nonaesthetic distinction plays in assessing activist art by women and artists of color. First, I shall review one traditional line of philosophical thought and show how it serves as the foundation for three types of reasons typically given for artworks reputed to lack aesthetic value. I develop two of the three reasons by examining recent writings opposed to the aesthetic value of activist art by well-known art critic Donald Kuspit, pointing out hi…Read more
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33Feminist AestheticsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.Overview essay of the field of feminist aesthetics updated Winter, 2021.
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32Out of Order, Out of Sight: Selected Writings in Meta-Art and Art Criticism, 1968-1992 (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (4): 405-406. 1998.Review of the artwork and essays created by conceptual and performance artist and philosopher Adrian Piper whose two-volume selected writings in meta-art and art criticism span 1968-1992. Addressing issues of "passing" and "crossing" for a woman of color and performing a male persona in public undergirds her explorations of identity, gender, and race. It is no coincidence that her deep commitment to making political art--in which the artist is an agent of social change--functions in tandem with …Read more
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20Revising the Aesthetic-Nonaesthetic Distinction: The Aesthetic Value of Activist ArtIn Peg Zeglin Brand Weiser & Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.), Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, Pennsylvania State University Press. 1995.
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13Enhancing Artistic Presence through Contemplative Contextual CriticismIn Julien Robson (ed.), Presence, The Speed Art Museum. pp. 180-193. 2006."Presence" is a word that can function both as a descriptor of the uniqueness, identity, and strength of an(y) identifiable, individual work of art (as used in the phrase, its "artistic presence") and, more specifically, and with a capital P, the name of a year-long exhibit consisting of a series of artworks in a uniquely created architectural environment with the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. In addition, as well-known art theorist Donald Preziosi points out in his 2004 essay ["Art …Read more
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12Definitions of Art (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (2): 492-494. 1994.Davies presents the reader with a sterling review of the literature--the recent history of the interest in defining "art" through the writings of Anglo-American philosophers that follow Morris Weitz' well-known 1956 essay, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics"--and a stimulating discussion of the role of conventions in the making and appreciating of contemporary art. His emphasis on the social nature of art leads one to wonder how other recent inquiries into the multilayered contextually of the art…Read more
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10Modern Death, Decent Death, and Heroic Solidarity in The PlagueIn Camus's _The Plague_: Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press. pp. 198-223. 2023.Not everyone faces “modern” death equally, whether in Oran or today’s world. In this chapter, I argue that the “difficulty” in Oran of “modern death” as described by Camus is still with us today in that Americans neither faced death together in any form of solidarity under the Trump administration nor faced death individually in any traditional “decent” manner (as proposed by the character Tarrou), that is, comforted by family or friends. One reason is overwhelming fear of death—what neuroscient…Read more
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9Editors' IntroductionJournal of Intercollegiate Sport 14 (3): 1-4. 2021.This Special Issue [available free online] co-edited by Peg Brand Weiser (University of Arizona) and R. Scott Kretchmar (Pennsylvania State University) is entitled, "The Myles Brand (1942-2009) Era at the NCAA: A Tribute and Scholarly Review." The late Myles Brand was a philosopher (of action theory; social and political applied philosophy, philosophy of sport), former department chair (University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Arizona), dean (Arizona), provost (The Ohio State University)…Read more
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3Introduction to Beauty UnlimitedIn Beauty Unlimited, Indiana University Press. pp. 1-25. 2013.We are more than a full decade into the new millennium and, inevitably, the world has become smaller, more complex, and immanent. Post 9/11, we live daily with the "war" on terror. An image of a veiled woman is fraught with political overtones, yet stunning in its starkness, simplicity, and evocation of beauty that is innocent and long gone. . . . The essays of Beauty Unlimited position readers in the twenty-first century by pointing them forward and forcing them into the future, toward a more e…Read more
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1Surface and Deep InterpretationIn Ernest Lepore & Mark Rollins (eds.), Danto and his Critics, Wiley‐blackwell. 2012.This chapter contains sections titled: Analogy with Human Action The Dependency Theses Are Deep Interpretations Weakly Dependent on Surface Interpretations? Consequences for the Constitutive Dependency Thesis.
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Why is painting unique among the visual arts? And why in the late sixteenth century did Cesare Ripa in his landmark Iconologia choose to create a distinctly female template for the act of painting? Moreover, why would a woman--Artemisia Gentileschi, among others--ever choose to paint herself as La Pittura (The Allegory of Painting)? This essay offers the thoughts of a painter-philosopher on the historic significance of the choice of topic, iconography, and gender of the most recognized allegory …Read more
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Indiana University Purdue University, IndianapolisDepartment of Philosophy
Women's Studies ProgramRetired faculty -
University of ArizonaDepartment of Philosophy
Applied Intercultural Arts Research
Dep't. of Gender & Women's StudiesOther (Part-time)
APA Western Division
Eugene, Oregon, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Value Theory |
Other Academic Areas |
Areas of Interest
Aesthetics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Philosophy, Misc |
PhilPapers Editorships
Feminist Aesthetics |