Aesthetics for Birds

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art for Everyone

Category Archives: News & Announcements

June 28, 2017
by Rebecca Millsop
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Kenneth Walden Wins the Inaugural Danto/ASA Prize!

The American Philosophical Association and the American Society for Aesthetics are pleased to announce that Professor Kenneth Walden (Dartmouth College) has been selected as the winner of the inaugural Arthur Danto/American Society for Aesthetics Prize for his paper, “Art and Moral Revolution.” The Danto/ASA Prize, in the amount of $1,000, is awarded to a member of the APA and the ASA for the best paper in the field of aesthetics, broadly understood. In addition, a symposium in honor of the recipient of the prize is held at the APA Eastern Division meeting, normally the next such meeting following the selection of the prize winner. This prize is in honor of the late Arthur Danto, a past president of the APA Eastern Division. Walden is assistant professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College. His areas of expertise are ethics, epistemology, Kant, and aesthetics. He received his Ph.D. from MIT. Walden has published … Continue reading →

June 14, 2017
by Rebecca Millsop
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ASA 75th Annual Meeting Preliminary Program Now Available

The 75th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics will be held in New Orleans November 15-18, 2017. Check out the preliminary program PDF: ASA Preliminary Meeting Program REGISTRATION: Early-bird registration is available on-line through October 15. To register on-line (with a credit card), click the red REGISTER button on this page. To receive the discounted ASA member rates, please log into the ASA site FIRST. To mail in registration (with a check), use this form. Early-bird deadline for mail-in registration: postmark by October 10 Everyone on the  program (as a presenter, panelist, commentator, or chair) MUST register for the meeting and MUST be a member of the ASA. The Wollheim Lecturer at this meeting will be Professor Derek Matravers, Open University, UK. The ASA will provide: Day Care Subsidies Registration waivers for local Minority Serving Institutions Highlights: New Orleans Museum of Art: https://noma.org/ Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans: http://cacno.org/ Ogden … Continue reading →

June 7, 2017
by Rebecca Millsop
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Congrats to the Winners of the 2017 APA Curriculum Diversification Grants

The American Society for Aesthetics is pleased to announce the winners of the 2017 Curriculum Diversification Grant competition: Chris Jenkins, Associate Dean for Academic Support, Oberlin Conservatory Project:  The Aesthetics of African-American Classical Music Erich Hatala Matthes, Assistant Professor, Wellesley College Project: Art and Cultural Heritage Rossen Ventzislavov, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Woodbury University Project: The Aesthetics of Performance Art CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THE WINNERS!!! Each will receive a grant of $5,000 to prepare the proposed diversity curriculum. These will be posted on the ASA web site in September 2017. This is a project of the ASA Diversity Committee, chaired by Thi Nguyen. To see the final curricula of the 2015 and 2016 winners, click here.

May 27, 2017
by utahphilosoraptor
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Art Rules: Conference Recap, DAY 2

Mary-Beth Willard (Weber State) offers pseudo-live-blogging/recap/latergram of the Art Rules Conference, Day 2 I’ve found (n = a few) that aesthetics conferences have some of the best philosophical audiences and discussions. I am not sure why this has been the case – the small size of the subfield? The somewhat more interdisciplinary nature of aesthetics? Whatever the reason, the participants at Art Rules were no exception. Discussion has been great.

May 26, 2017
by utahphilosoraptor
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Art Rules: Conference Recap, DAY 1

Mary Beth Willard (Weber State) offers pseudo-live-blogging/recap/latergram of the Art Rules Conference, Day 1 Most people know Salt Lake City as “weren’t the Olympics there in 2002?” and some people after mine own heart know it as “Isn’t that the city where Scully was going to be banished in the first X-Files movie?”, but what they don’t know is that the art community in Salt Lake is so generous that the Art Rules: Aesthetic Reasons, Norms, and Standards (May 19-20) conference was held inside of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art for free. An aesthetics conference in an art museum! No one tell them this isn’t a thing.

May 17, 2017
by Rebecca Millsop
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Arthur Danto ASA Prize – Deadline 5/31

The Arthur Danto/American Society for Aesthetics Prize will be awarded to a member of the APA and the ASA for the best paper in the field of aesthetics, broadly understood, in a refereed journal, or an original book chapter or original essay published in a collection with a multiplicity of contributors. This prize is in honor of the late Arthur Danto, a past president of the APA Eastern Division. The winner receives a $1,000 prize. In addition, a symposium in honor of the recipient of the prize is held at the APA Eastern Division meeting, normally the next such meeting following the selection of the prizewinner. The nomination deadline is May 31, 2017. Nominees must be members of both the APA and the ASA in the year of the nomination. For the inaugural award, nominated papers must have been published in 2015 or 2016. Nominations must be from a person who … Continue reading →

May 17, 2017
by Rebecca Millsop
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Workshop in Aesthetics and Cognitive Science

The American Society for Aesthetics is providing $4000 to support the Workshop in Aesthetics and Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, June 28, 2017. The Workshop is being held in conjunction with the 2017 meeting of the Society of Philosophy and Psychology (SPP) June 28-July 1. Funding for the workshop is also being provided by the Neuroaesthetics Initiative of Johns Hopkins’ Brain Science Institute (BSI) and by the Johns Hopkins Humanities Institute (JHU HI). The organizers are Steven Gross (Johns Hopkins, Philosophy) and Mohan Matthen (University of Toronto, Philosophy). The workshop will consist of three invited symposia (on art and skill, art and pleasure, and creativity), with four speakers each; a general roundtable discussion; a dance performance and discussion; a closing reception; and a poster session. Wednesday, June 28 – Saturday, July 1, 2017 Johns Hopkins University Keynote Speakers: Brit Brogaard, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Alison Gopnik, and Dan Schacter Invited … Continue reading →

May 16, 2017
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Differences: Remembering Peter Kivy

What Follows is a guest post by Aaron Meskin (University of Leeds) Peter Kivy, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and an incredibly influential contemporary philosopher of art, passed away last week. See other announcements here, along with a statement from the Rutgers Philosophy Department. What follows is a guest post by Aaron Meskin, a former student of Peter Kivy’s. Please feel free to share any stories, comments, or reflections below.

May 10, 2017
by Rebecca Millsop
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Workshop: the Arts and Imagination

JULY 3rd – 6th, 2017  •  ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA @ the University of Adelaide & the Art Gallery of South Australia http://artsense.edu.au/workshop-2017/ The American Society for Aesthetics is pleased to co-sponsor “Workshop: The Arts and Imagination: the role of metaphors, tropes and images in shaping experience and guiding action.” The initial segment of this project was conducted in San Francisco at the meetings of the American Philosophical Association-Pacific Division in April 2016. Principal funding for the conference has been provided by the Australian Research Council, with an additional $7,000 provided by the ASA. The 2017 portion of the project will occur at the University of Adelaide and Art Gallery of SA July 4-6, 2017. The ASA is supporting the costs of videostreaming of the events so they can be viewed worldwide. ASA funding also will support a travel grant of up to $2000 for the best paper submitted by a graduate … Continue reading →

May 5, 2017
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Introducing New Wing Commander: C. Thi Nguyen!

We’d like to welcome to the AFB team our newest Wing Commander (“Assistant Editor” in AFB lingo): C. Thi Nguyen! Here are some fun facts about Thi, so you can get to know him: Current position: Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Utah Valley University Background: Once I was a food writer and a restaurant critic for the LA Times. This nearly derailed my graduate school career. Then I had to choose between that and academia. Still unsure if I chose properly. Philosophical interests: Trained as an epistemologist. Currently writing about game aesthetics and food aesthetics and even weirder aesthetics. Also, the epistemology stuff is still alive in a project on understanding how echo chambers work. Also: I swear all these interests are related. Most recent publication: “The Uses of Aesthetic Testimony”, about all the weird kinds of trust relationships our aesthetic lives involve, towards our reviewers, teachers, curators. Other hats: Chair of … Continue reading →