19th and 20th century Continental philosophy
Faculty from a variety of disciplines form a critical mass in this area, making the University of Kentucky an excellent institution at which to study 19th- and 20th-century continental philosophy. The department is distinguished by the fact that five members of the department, including all four faculty listed below, have received Research Awards from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to conduct research in Germany. Courses are offered and projects are overseen in a wide variety of figures, movements, and issues in this area. The Department of Philosophy specializes in and covers practically the entire span of 19th- and 20th-century German philosophy. The specialists in this area are Daniel Breazeale (Post-Kantianism, Fichte, German Idealism, Nietzsche, Existentialism), Ronald Bruzina (the phenomenological movement, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and post-structuralism), Eric Sanday (Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty), Theodore Schatzki (Nietzsche, Life-philosophy, Heideggerian phenomenology, Wittgenstein, and post-structuralism), and Christopher Zurn (Frankfurt School, post-structuralism, critical social theory, philosophical anthropology).
Faculty in other departments with interests in German and continental thought include: Michael Jones [German] (German Idealism, philosophy of history), Jeff Rogers [German] (Frankfurt School, especially Adorno and Benjamin), Robert Jensen [Art] (Frankfurt School), Virginia Blum [English] (psychoanalytic literary theory, psychoanalytic theory, cultural theory), Herbert Reid [Political Science] (phenomenology and post-Marxism), Ernest Yanarella [Political Science] (phenomenology and post-Marxism), and Dwight Billings [Sociology] (Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Habermas).
Philosophy Ph.D. students interested in German and Continental thought are encouraged to sample courses in other departments and to establish multidisciplinary dissertation committees. The W. T. Young Library at the University of Kentucky houses a superlative collection in German philosophy, including an extremely rich set of German language materials.Back to Research and Teaching Clusters