Announcement for Catherine of Siena Fellowship

Start Date:  Fall 2013

The Ethics Program of Villanova University seeks applicants for a Catherine of Siena Teaching Fellowship. Responsibilities include a 3/3 load teaching the sophomore/junior level core ethics course, research, plus committee work for the program. A Ph.D. is preferred. The position is for one year, renewable up to three years. Candidates should have an expertise in Christian ethics, with a competency to teach Western philosophical ethics. Candidates should visit the Human Resources website to apply: https://jobs.villanova.edu/. LORs can be submitted via the HR website. Undergraduate/graduate transcripts should be sent to Dr. Mark Doorley, Ethics Program, Villanova University, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085. Villanova is a Roman Catholic University sponsored by the Augustinian Order. An AA/EEO employer, Villanova seeks a diverse faculty committed to scholarship, service, and especially teaching, who understand, respect, and can contribute to the mission and values of the university. Applications should be submitted by October 1; interviews will take place at the annual AAR meeting in Chicago. For more details see http://ethics.villanova.edu/ or contact Dr. Doorley at mark.doorley@villanova.edu.

Catherine of Siena Fellowship

The Ethics Program has among its excellent faculty three scholars who have received our Catherine of Siena Fellowships. Usually these are younger scholars who we think can contribute greatly to the mission of the Ethics Program. These fellowships are for three years, though fellows have the opportunity to pursue tenure-track opportunities at any time during their stay at Villanova.

The fellows are teaching the core Ethics course, with occasional opportunities to teach in other areas of the university, including

• Philosophy
• Theology & Religious Studies 
• Humanities and Augustinian Traditions
• Center for Peace & Justice Education

In addition, they are very involved in the various student-centered activities that the Ethics Program sponsors.

Current Fellows

Dr. Selin Gursozlu

Selin received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the State University of New York at Binghamton in the program in Social, Political, Ethical, and Legal Philosophy (2010). Prior to coming to Villanova, she worked as a visiting instructor in the Department of Philosophy at Grand Valley State University (2009-2010). She also worked at SUNY Binghamton as an Instructor (2008-2009) and Teaching Assistant (2004-2008) and served as a Graduate Assistant for Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute (PIKSI) organized by Rock Ethics Institute at Pennsylvania State University (2009). Her areas of research include virtue ethics and feminist philosophy. Her primary interest is in virtues and flourishing under oppression. She particularly focuses on the virtue of integrity. She is currently working on a concept of moral resistance as it pertains to the question of the good life under oppression.

Dr. Cynthia Nielsen

Cynthia received her Bachelor of Music in jazz studies and performance from the University of North Florida and her Master of Arts and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Dallas. Cynthia’s work is highly interdisciplinary in nature and her research interests include social and political philosophy, ethics, critical race theory, feminist theory, and the philosophy of music. She is currently working on a book entitled Foucault, Douglass, Fanon, and Scotus in Dialogue: Imagining Ourselves Otherwise (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan). In her book, Nielsen shows how Douglass’s and Fanon’s concrete experiences of oppression not only confirm Foucault’s theoretical analyses concerning power, resistance, and subject formation but also expand, strengthen, and offer correctives to Foucault’s project. Having highlighted problem areas in Foucault’s philosophical anthropology, Nielsen introduces her premodern dialogue partner, John Duns Scotus.  Scotus’s anthropology provides a basis for transhistorical moral critique—a critique of the sort Douglass and Fanon issue against slavery and colonization.

Dr. Peter Wicks

Peter received his B.A. from Oxford University, his M.Phil. from Cambridge University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. Before coming to Villanova he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. His areas of specialty are ethical theory and political philosophy, and he also has interests in the history of philosophy, especially ancient philosophy, and applied ethics, especially medical ethics. His dissertation argued that contemporary work in ethical theory has been marred by a tendency to misrepresent our moral beliefs by translating them into a sparser, and hence more easily theorized, conceptual vocabulary. Peter is currently working on a book about the sources of the appeal of consequentialist approaches to ethics and an article surveying recent work by moral philosophers on the concept of evil.