Research

My question regarding the ethics of immigration is rooted in my participation in the Student Clinic for Immigrant Justice, a pilot clinic at Worcester State University. After being trained extensively on immigration law and then working with an attorney on asylum cases, I became interested in the issues of who is allowed access into the United States and on what grounds.

This paper considers the early 20th-century artistic movement of Precisionism through the sharply differing aesthetic theories of Immanuel Kant and R.G. Collingwood. It argues that the movement was consistent with Kant’s theory, while the application of Collingwood’s “The Principles of Art” points to the movement’s flaws and perhaps a reason for its end.

This paper applies key philosophical concepts of language use from phenomenology and post-modernism, especially Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s “Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature”, to the experiences of bilingual students at the Worcester State University Writing Center.

Katie Commerford considers the Electoral College’s fairness and explores alternatives; Karen Huu argues that journalists valuing traditional political rhetoric failed to appreciate candidate Trump’s communicative effectiveness; and Nicholas Wurst analyzes the election as a reflection of broader forces in liberal capitalist societies, where competing candidates actually reinforce the same core agenda.

This paper examines religion through the phenomenological frameworks of Edith Stein, Franz von Brentano, and Martin Heidegger. It argues that, contrary to usual claims that empiricist-tending philosophies such as phenomenology cannot be applied to the content of religious beliefs, the work of these three philosophers offers important insights into key religious notions.

Through phenomenological and existentialist philosophical concepts, especially from black existentialism, this paper takes up the question of whether it is possible to identify a defining essence of black identity in the United States. The paper argues that any black identity has external determinants that undercut claims of an essence, and develops a concept of black identity that fits within this complex framework.

This paper uses phenomenological philosophical analysis to analyze the effects of over-provision and overconsumption of information in a digital world on cognitive processes. It argues that increased information has counterintuitively driven a narrowing of thought into simplistic dichotomies that do not support the subtle arguments necessary to proper understanding of complex contemporary issues.

The students in this course studied various historical and contemporary aesthetic and creativity theories. Their final project was to produce original creative projects that illustrated elements of the theoretical work they studied. The products of their work along with statements about them and explanations of the geneses of their projects will be displayed, along with students available for further discussion.