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This week at the Stony Brook University Humanities Institute...
02/10/2021

This week at the Stony Brook University Humanities Institute...

Originally by , caption unedited • Jacob Lawrence was one of twentieth-century America’s most celebrated black artists.⠀...
02/05/2021

Originally by , caption unedited • Jacob Lawrence was one of twentieth-century America’s most celebrated black artists.⠀
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Lawrence’s paintings represent histories of black liberation, chronicling the lives of revolutionaries including Toussaint L’Ouverture, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown in a dynamic, cubism-inflected style. His political commitments, which earned him a spot on an FBI watch list in 1953, are manifest in his bold and straightforward depictions of segregation, police brutality, poverty, and violent evictions in his Harlem community.⠀
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In 'Struggle', his series of paintings on the American Revolution, he opened up new territory in American history by venturing beyond the narrow set of topics like Harlem, jazz clubs, and cotton plantations which had become synonymous with black art in mid-century America.⠀
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But the persistent framing of African-American history as lying outside of United States history did and still casts black people as “exceptions,” exempt from historic promises of liberty and equality. By desegregating the mainstream American narrative of the period, Lawrence repudiated both radical and reactionary separatist efforts to divorce black Americans from the nation’s past and difference them in its present.⠀
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Lawrence, like many of his peers, expressed frustration with the art world’s tacit insistence that black artists focus exclusively on “black” themes, a ghettoization that limited opportunities and resulted in the de facto segregation of museum and gallery exhibitions. In addressing national and universal concerns, Lawrence ventured beyond the narrow set of topics — Harlem neighborhoods, jazz clubs, cotton plantations — which had become synonymous with blackness in mid-century American culture. By doing so, he opened up new territory in American history and staked a claim for himself and for black Americans.⠀
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Read the full essay by Rachel Himes on Jacobin (link in [Jacobin’s] bio)

I met Professor Robert Harvey during Prof. Casey’s Fall 2019 M.A. seminar, “Feeling and Emotion in Art,” one September e...
01/19/2021

I met Professor Robert Harvey during Prof. Casey’s Fall 2019 M.A. seminar, “Feeling and Emotion in Art,” one September evening when Prof. Harvey aided in our discussion of Kant’s Analytic of the Sublime. After a lively seminar, many of us walked just down the block to Someday Bar, eager to uncover where next our discussion would lead and not yet ready to give up the ghosts of intellectual inquiry.

I had the chance to speak more personally with Prof. Harvey at Someday, where I discovered his familiarity with the work of Walter Benjamin — a prominent figure in my own research and, at the time, my sole lodestone. Immediately excited, I mentioned my (then-) recent publication on Benjamin, Adorno, and Spinoza and floated the possibility of constructing a directed study on Benjamin for the spring.

When I reached out to Prof. Harvey once more in December, I found he was already engaged in another study with a colleague due to the lateness of my inquiry. Despite this, Prof. Harvey offered to let me join the already-set reading list, being able to substitute one of the other texts for Benjamin’s “Illuminations.” Within the week, we were additionally joined by a third interested classmate.

We spent the first class editing our reading list together and discussing different reasons for choosing specific texts by specific authors.

Our classes were invigorating and often full of allusions to texts of which I had never heard (hence the spelling mistakes), and the small size of the class required that each student present the weekly reading material multiple times throughout the semester. I had the chance to hear from my classmates frequently and thoroughly, and I am grateful to have witnessed the density of thought which arises more readily in these settings of less than five interlocutors.

Many of the pictured books came from this directed study or from my consequent thesis research with Prof. Harvey, who warmly agreed to be my advisor when I asked him as much.

We hope to aid in your research this fall at Stony Brook’s M.A. Program in Philosophy and the Arts. For all inquiries, please email Professor Edward Casey at [email protected].

keep in touch,

Justin

The idea for a phenomenology of homemaking came about, in germ, from my work on John Dewey in Professor Megan Craig’s sp...
01/17/2021

The idea for a phenomenology of homemaking came about, in germ, from my work on John Dewey in Professor Megan Craig’s spring 2020 class “Art as Education.” I explored a reading of medium/artwork/expression as language through Dewey’s “Art as Experience,” and Prof. Craig was warmly supportive of my paper topic, noting that she expected it to produce a unique reading of Dewey.

My interest in homemaking in relation to Dewey arose out of what Dewey calls “an experience,” where ‘an’ is italicized and indicates that a consummate and memorable quality pervades the event. My favorite example of this phenomenon occurs while washing dishes after sharing a meal with loved ones, during which one can come to understand the ways in which the entire preceding dinner has already engraved in one’s lifespan the markings of its significance.

My colleagues and I made public homes of Brooklyn’s piers, parks, restaurants, bars, neighborhoods, streets, and subways, inhabiting them the way one confides in a close friend. I have so many lovely memories of walking with friends — deep in invigorating, reflective conversation — through Brooklyn and Manhattan. I would often commute together with classmates on the subway, and during our group museum visits, we would all walk and ride the subway together. There’s still nothing like it.

After our evening M.A. seminars, my cohort members and I would always walk each other to our respective cars and subway entrances as we disembarked, always to return together for more discussion, learning, and personal growth.

We hope to walk (mask-on!) through Brooklyn with you this fall, learning from your unique perspective and insight. Check out Stony Brook’s M.A. Program in Philosophy and the Arts to join us; the deadline to apply is this Monday, January 18

If you have any further questions, please reach out to Professor Edward Casey, director of the M.A. Program, at [email protected].

Stay tuned for more posts about other students, faculty, and research in the coming days, and

keep in touch,

Justin

Growing up in semi-rural Texas and Oklahoma, I’ve always been around cars; public transit was never an option in the are...
01/17/2021

Growing up in semi-rural Texas and Oklahoma, I’ve always been around cars; public transit was never an option in the areas in which we lived. During undergrad, I frequently drove long stretches of highway across Texas to see family and friends. When I received my offer to attend Stony Brook in spring 2019, I was excited to experience life in a walking city, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Commuting around by foot really changes the way you experience both a place and yourself. You might be surprised at the intimacy and comfort you can find on a crowded street, sharing space with others toward a common goal.

I eventually wrote about this phenomenon, drawing on my actual experiences living in Brooklyn in order to tackle the problems of spatial and affective prejudice in public environments and in the process of homemaking, public and private. I was able to pursue this nexus as a phenomenology of homemaking for a doctoral course on Merleau-Ponty’s “Phenomenology of Perception,” taught by Professor Anthony Steinbock. I am additionally looking forward to the continuation of Professor Steinbock’s Phenomenology Research Group (PRG) through this spring.

If walking for miles and waiting on the (timely) MTA subways and buses sounds appealing to you, then I recommend looking into Stony Brook’s M.A. Program in Philosophy and the Arts, at https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/philosophy/graduate/masters/index, and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact Professor Edward Casey at [email protected].

These are just the horizontal photos from my time in Brooklyn. Stay tuned later tonight for the vertical images, and

keep in touch,

Justin

Our shared workspace here at Stony Brook’s M.A. in Philosophy and the Arts is something special. The Brooklyn Commons at...
01/16/2021

Our shared workspace here at Stony Brook’s M.A. in Philosophy and the Arts is something special. The Brooklyn Commons at 388 Atlantic Avenue offers democratic-minded citizens the chance to thrive in a historic, four-story brownstone. The bottom floor consists of the Commons Café and its event space, whereas the second floor houses journalists, activists, and our M.A. seminars. The third floor is solely devoted to a legal office, and the fourth, a roof garden.

When you walk into the Brooklyn Commons, the hectic bustle (and honking) of Atlantic Avenue fades into the quiet, low-light serenity of a brownstone café, serving espresso, drip, pour over, a large assortment of loose leaf teas, pastries, sandwiches, bagels, and other light yet diverse menu items. The space of the Commons Café is welcoming and hospitable, and we often met with professors for office hours in the cafe’s back event space. I miss it like an old friend.

Our master’s seminars are held upstairs in an intimate, personable room scarcely larger than the two tables and the score of chairs it contains. Being on the second floor, the room overlooks Atlantic Ave through three large, double windows with beautiful wooden sills deep enough for one to comfortably sit in. I have fond memories of making room for friends and colleagues as we huddled together in respectfully shared space, shared both at the table for our notes and in our chairs for our bodily comfort. It seems like no matter how packed the seminars became, we always had room for more earnest participants, whether shy and attentively listening or outspoken and enthusiastically leading the discussion.

We would love to have you at our table. To learn more about our unique M.A. Program in Philosophy and the Arts, check out our previous posts and/or feel free to email Prof. Edward Casey at [email protected]. For more information about the Brooklyn Commons, including the event space and the worker-owned and -operated Commons Café, check out https://www.ediblebrooklyn.com/2018/brooklyn-commons-cafe-worker-cooperative/.

Stay healthy and keep in touch,

Justin

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Yesterday’s and today’s photos of the Brooklyn Commons at Atlantic Ave by

Our courses in the Master of Arts Program in Philosophy and the Arts offer a compelling blend of philosophic and artisti...
01/14/2021

Our courses in the Master of Arts Program in Philosophy and the Arts offer a compelling blend of philosophic and artistic traditions through which we may broach questions new and old.

My first semester at Stony Brook, I took “Feeling and Emotion in Art” with Prof. Ed Casey and “Text, Texture, Weaving” with Prof. Megan Craig. Both classes were fantastic and imparted practical knowledge about the kinesthetic, aesthetic, and socioeconomic practices of textiles, the plastic arts, the performing arts, and the recording arts.

In Prof. Casey’s class, I explored Lugones’s interpersonal world-traveling in the context of Dufrenne’s world of the aesthetic object, and in Prof. Craig’s class, I worked on language and on the communicability of diverse histories in Kristeva and Derrida. Both projects proved incredibly fruitful and engendered strong trajectories for my current thesis research, my future doctoral research, and my own poetry as a personal artist. Prof. Craig’s class on Dewey the following semester also taught me that expressing oneself through new mediums can facilitate self-understanding, and I feel that I am a better human being for the wisdom I have thus far gained through my work in the program.

Don’t hesitate to apply if Stony Brook sounds and feels like it might be a good fit for you, and even if you’re unsure, feel free to direct your questions to Professor Edward Casey, Director of the M.A. Program, at ‪[email protected]‬. He’s more than happy to speak with you.

Stay healthy and do good work,

Justin Hill
MA Student / MA Outreach Liaison

We are excited to announce that Stony Brook University’s Master of Arts in Philosophy and the Arts is accepting applicat...
01/14/2021

We are excited to announce that Stony Brook University’s Master of Arts in Philosophy and the Arts is accepting applications for Fall 2021 admission, with a graduate school deadline of January 18 and rolling admission through the spring.

Situated in Brooklyn at the center of the New York art world, Stony Brook’s M.A. in Philosophy and the Arts welcomes both artists and philosophers alike, and while our program is designed for all who wish to deepen their knowledge of philosophy and art, graduates of our M.A. program have been notably successful in gaining admission to strong doctoral programs — especially those that specialize in continental philosophy but those in other areas of philosophy as well as programs in other fields altogether.

The master’s classes, held at the historic Brooklyn Commons at 388 Atlantic Ave, offer a unique mix of philosophic reasoning and questioning as applied to artistic mediums, phenomena, practices, and histories. Moreover, master’s students may take up to two doctoral classes, two independent studies, and two classes from other graduate departments at SBU, allowing for a compelling interdisciplinary outreach in one’s ten-course curriculum. Students may also audit as many classes (in any department) as time permits. It is a flexible yet rigorous interdisciplinary program.

If you’re looking to find a close-knit group of scholars to workshop your art or to develop your research, Stony Brook’s M.A. in Philosophy and the Arts could be the place for you, and as far as art goes, NYC certainly is the place to be. As Ed Casey told me two years ago: “Every day and every night there is something extraordinary occurring in the arts in the greater New York area. And there is a lot of philosophy happening as well.” Ed was certainly right, and we all hope to see that spirit, warmth, and vibrancy return to Brooklyn as our public and cultural healths recover in the latter half of 2021.

For more information, check out https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/philosophy/graduate/masters/index. For all other inquiries, please email Professor Edward Casey at [email protected].

Stay tuned in the coming days,

Justin Hill
MA Student | MA Outreach Liaison

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