•  40
    Sylvia Plath wrote in the midst of growing racial tensions in 1950’s and 1960’s America. Her work demonstrates ambivalence towards her role as a middle-class white woman. In this paper, I examine the racial implications in Plath’s color terms. I disagree with Renée Curry’s reading in White Women Writing White that Plath only considers her whiteness insofar as it affects herself. Through a phenomenological study of how whiteness shifts meaning in this poem, I hope to show that Curry’s negative es…Read more
  •  36
    Mystic -- Grundriss -- Breath -- The poem as a visual opening -- Silences of depth -- Multiple meanings of the heart -- Ariel -- The sacramental value of colors -- The turning -- Performing the feminine -- Bodies in poetry, bodies in the world -- White as lighting and depth -- In her own voice -- Striking a balance -- The moon and the yew tree -- A heavy light-ing -- Opening onto the feminine body -- Other ways of listening and seeing the poem -- In the name of the mother -- Inside the suicidal …Read more
  •  23
    Using the F-Word in Philosophy Classes
    Philosophy Now 39 34-36. 2002.
  •  5
    Seeing Brancusi's First Cry, A First Time, Again
    Janus Head 20 (1): 33-40. 2022.
    Constantin Brancusi’s sculpture The First Cry asks questions that overlap with the concerns of contemporary existential phenomenology, namely, temporality, the relation between art and truth, the nature of embodiment, and the lived experience of perception. In this paper, I put Heidegger and Merleau- Ponty’s writings into dialogue with one of Brancusi’s many ovoid sculptures. Even though Heidegger is not commonly included by those involved in body studies, his writings—especially the later writi…Read more
  •  3
    Building and Dwelling with Heidegger and LEGO® Toys
    In William Irwin & Roy T. Cook (eds.), LEGO® and Philosophy, Wiley. 2017.
    From the beginning in 1932, LEGO toys have expressed and were designed with an ethos grounded in simplicity, care, fun, and sustainability. The LEGO corporation's emphasis on openness parallels the philosopher Martin Heidegger's emphasis on openness, releasement, and working creatively within the structures and limitations of history and culture. When one play with LEGO toys, he/she eventually realize his/her creations can be taken apart or knocked down. Heidegger explains that these moments of …Read more
  •  3
    Inside Disney's Inside Out
    In Richard B. Davis (ed.), Disney and Philosophy, Wiley. 2019.
    Inside Out takes people on a journey into terrain not often explored in animated films – the inner workings of the developing 11‐year‐old self. Inside Out takes a girl's emotional development as important, primary, and worthy of attention. Along the way, audiences come to appreciate that even though emotions often feel singular, solitary, and intense, some aspects of emotions are universal and cut across age, gender, and culture. The movie also highlights the social dimension of emotional expres…Read more
  • Review of Hélène Cixous, Stigmata (review)
    Canadian Woman Studies 20 (1). 2000.
  • I develop a phenomenological hermeneutics of four poems by Sylvia Plath: 'Mystic,' 'Ariel,' 'The Moon and the Yew Tree,' and 'The Arrival of the Bee Box.' Inspired by the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I illustrate how we can experience individual poems through the multiple aspects of our embodiment. Importantly, single artworks are treated here with the same respect as single philosophical texts. Heidegger treats poems similarly in his "later" philosophy, which also influenced this dissertation…Read more