Research

Home

Research

European Philosophy

European philosophy is a traditional focus of the Northwestern Department of Philosophy. We currently have particular strength in German philosophy from Kant to the present and in 20th century and contemporary French philosophy.

Core Faculty

Mark Alznauer

(Philosophy): German philosophy (esp. Hegel), existentialism, ethics, social and political philosophy

Penelope Deutscher

(Philosophy): 20th century and contemporary French philosophy (esp. Foucault and Derrida), Nietzsche, feminist philosophy and gender theory, poststructuralist theory, biopolitics.

Peter Fenves

(German): German literature and philosophy, contemporary French thought (Kant, Kierkegaard, Derrida, Benjamin)

Cristina Lafont

(Philosophy): German philosophy, particularly hermeneutics and critical theory (Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas); contemporary moral and political philosophy, philosophy of language.

Rachel Zuckert

(Philosophy): Kant; eighteenth- and nineteenth-century aesthetics; the nineteenth-century German philosophical tradition, with special interest in Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Hegel

Charles Mills and Mark Alznauer chat before Rolf-Peter Horstmann's Coloquium.

October 2009.

Additional Faculty

Philosophy faculty with a strong secondary interest in European philosophy:

Kyla Ebels Duggan

(Philosophy): Moral theory, political philosophy, Kant, History of ethics

Sean Ebels-Duggan

(Philosophy): Philosophy of logic and mathematics, forerunners of and early analytic philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of language, and mind, philosophy of religion, Kant.

Axel Mueller

(Philosophy): Philosophy of science, American pragmatism, philosophy of language in the analytic tradition, Kant.

Charles Mills

(Philosophy): Race Theory, Political Philosophy, Marx

Kenneth Seeskin

(Philosophy): ancient and medieval philosophy and philosophy of religion, Kant, Jewish philosophy, including continental (Maimonides, Spinoza, Cohen, Rosenzweig, Levinas).

Jon Garthoff settles in before Rolf-Peter Horstmann's Coloquium.

October 2009.

Additional Northwestern faculty with special interests in European Philosophy:

Chris Bush

(French and Italian): French, German, and American modernities, interactions between East Asian and Euro-American modernisms; intellectual and cultural history, aesthetics, avant-gardes, translation, media. Teaching concentrations in Derrida, Hegel, Marx.

Mary G. Dietz

(Political Science): Political Theory, Feminist theory, and the history of political thought, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt.

Scott Durham

(French and Italian): 20th- and 21st-century literature, film, and theory, with particular emphasis on Foucault and Deleuze, as well as the Marxist critical tradition.

Bonnie Honig

(Political Science): Political theory, (agonism and foreignness in democratic politics), Arendt, Nietzsche, Derrida, Hegel.

Lars Tønder

(Political Science) early modern political thought, political theology, phenomenology, and new theories of democracy, post-structuralism, Kant, Spinoza, Deleuze, Nietzsche.

Sam Weber

(German): Critical Theory, Derrida, Freud, Lacan, Frankfurt School, Benjamin

Activities

In addition to department sponsored graduate courses and lectures, students are invited to participate in the Chicago Area Consortium in German Philosophy, a collaborative arrangement among scholars in the Chicago area studying classical and contemporary German philosophy. Graduate students are encouraged to attend seminars and events at cooperating institutions, in order to exploit the significant resources in scholarship in German philosophy in the Chicago area. The consortium sponsors lectures, a yearly workshop of Chicago area scholars, and aims to disseminate information concerning events, seminars, and reading groups sponsored by participating departments of interest to scholars of German philosophy. Through the consortium, students can have participating faculty on their dissertation committees.

The Chicago area includes a number of departments of Philosophy with strengths in European philosophy, particularly at De Paul University, Loyola University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago. Northwestern graduate students can access further course offerings and activities at all these venues.

Northwestern Program Collaborations:

Graduate students in relevant fields can participate in Northwestern’s Interdisciplinary Cluster in Critical Theory.

Some philosophy students have completed a graduate certificate in gender studies, concurrent with their PhD in Philosophy. For more information, click here.

Departmental, cross-program and cross- departmental readings groups form spontaneously and often at Northwestern. For those interested in continental traditions, five of the most recent reading groups have engaged with the work of Martin Heidegger; Paul of Tarsus; the Spinozism/pantheism controversy; Alain Badiou; and William Bristow’s Hegel and the Transformation of Philosophical Critique. In some cases funding is available to support such groups from the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. For more information, click here.

Study Abroad

The department encourages graduate students to seek study abroad, especially in Germany and France. In the past, our students have been very successful in securing funding for study abroad, and we maintain excellent institutional connections with several universities in both countries. For different funding opportunities click here:

Language Opportunities

To improve their language skills, our students can take advantage of a variety of language courses offered by the German and French department. Click here for more information about German courses and French courses.

Four additional Northwestern programs for students with interests in European philosophy at Northwestern University:

FIG: (French Interdisciplinary Group)

GIG (German Interdisciplinary Group)

Critical Theory Program

Northwestern University Paris Program in Critical Theory

FIG: (French Interdisciplinary Group)

Founded in 1996 FIG supports presentations, seminars, and colloquia on French or francophone studies, on French scholarship, and presentations by French visitors in all disciplines. It offers two regular speakers’ series, the Causeries, for undergraduates, and the Cafés Philosophiques, organized by and for graduate students.

FIG supports graduate studies as well. It provides small summer grants, actively collaborates with the Paris Program on Critical Theory and the dual PhD Program in International and Intercultural Studies in partnership with the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). It is actively involved in the management and development of graduate exchange programs with the École Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm and the École Normale Supérieure, Lyon. FIG works to form new partnerships and programs with French institutions of higher education, notably Sciences Po, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). For more information about FIG, click here.

GIG: (German Interdisciplinary Group)

Just founded, GIG plans to offer some of the activities offered by FIG for students with interests in German theory, culture, literary and philosophy. Watch its space! For more information about GIG, click here.

Critical Theory Program/ Interdisciplinary Cluster in Critical Theory

Graduate students in relevant fields can participate in Northwestern’s Interdisciplinary Cluster in Critical Theory. The cluster provides a thorough introduction to critical theory through a structured, interdepartmental curriculum. Exposure to critical theory is highly recommended for cross-disciplinary students of literature, philosophy, politics, culture, the visual arts, gender and race studies, rhetoric, and society, post-colonial and postmodern studies. For more information about the Interdisciplinary Cluster in Critical Theory, click here.

Northwestern University Paris Program in Critical Theory

Annually affords five Northwestern graduate students from different disciplines a one year research period in Paris familiarizing themselves with French and European theoretical research, with the fall quarter spent in the weekly research seminar of Program Director, Avalon Professor of the Humanities at Northwestern University, Sam Weber. For more information about the Paris Program, click here.