Cynthia Freeland

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Cynthia A. Freeland (born 1951) is an American philosopher of art. She has published three monographs, over two dozen articles, and edited several books. She is Emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Houston. She was the president of the American Society of Aesthetics until 2017. She has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2003 for a research project on Fakes and Forgeries. [1] Her book But is it Art? (2001) has been translated into fourteen languages and was republished as part of the Oxford Very Short Introductions series. [2] She talked about her book Portraits&Persons with Nigel Warburton on the Philosophy Bites podcast. [3] She was interviewed by Hans Maes for the book Conversations on Art and Aesthetics (2017) which includes a photograph of her by American photographer Steve Pyke. [4] [5]

Contents

Publications

Cynthia Freeland writes on aesthetics, ancient philosophy, philosophy of film, and feminist theory.

Monographs

Book chapters

Selected articles

Edited books

Related Research Articles

{nib art specifically studies how artists imagine, create, and perform works of art, as well as how people use, enjoy, and criticize art. Aesthetics considers why people like some works of art and not others, as well as how art can affect our moods and our beliefs. Both aesthetics and the philosophy of art try to find answers to what exactly is art and what makes good art.

Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large. Film theory is not to be confused with general film criticism, or film history, though these three disciplines interrelate.

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Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest surviving work of Greek dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory. In this text Aristotle offers an account of ποιητική, which refers to poetry and more literally "the poetic art," deriving from the term for "poet; author; maker," ποιητής. Aristotle divides the art of poetry into verse drama, lyric poetry, and epic. The genres all share the function of mimesis, or imitation of life, but differ in three ways that Aristotle describes:

  1. Differences in music rhythm, harmony, meter, and melody.
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  3. Difference in how the narrative is presented: telling a story or acting it out.
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Feminist philosophy is an approach to philosophy from a feminist perspective and also the employment of philosophical methods to feminist topics and questions. Feminist philosophy involves both reinterpreting philosophical texts and methods in order to supplement the feminist movement and attempts to criticise or re-evaluate the ideas of traditional philosophy from within a feminist framework.

Philosophy of matter is the branch of philosophy concerned with issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology and character of matter and the material world. The word matter is derived from the Latin word materia, meaning "wood", or “timber”, in the sense "material", as distinct from "mind" or "form". The image of wood came to Latin as a calque from the ancient Greek philosophical usage of hyle (ὕλη).

Espen Hammer is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Focusing on modern European thought from Kant and Hegel to Adorno and Heidegger, Hammer’s research includes critical theory, Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy, phenomenology, German idealism, social and political theory, and aesthetics. He has also written widely on the philosophy of literature and taken a special interest in the question of temporality.

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Mary Margaret Anne McCabe, known as M. M. McCabe, is emerita professor of ancient philosophy at King's College London. She has written books on Plato and other ancient philosophers, including the pre-Socratics, Socrates and Aristotle.

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Ann E. Cudd is an American philosopher and academic. She is the president of Portland State University as of August 1, 2023. She was previously the provost and senior vice chancellor and professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh and dean of the college and graduate school of arts and sciences at Boston University. She also served as vice provost and dean of undergraduate studies, as well as university distinguished professor of philosophy, at the University of Kansas, and was an affiliated faculty member in the Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies Program during her time there. Cudd is considered one of the founders of analytical feminism, was a founding member of the Society for Analytical Feminism, and served as its president from 1995 to 1999. On March 10, 2023, Cudd was formally selected as the 11th president of Portland State University.

Feminist aesthetics first emerged in the 1970s and refers not to a particular aesthetic or style but to perspectives that question assumptions in art and aesthetics concerning gender-role stereotypes, or gender. Feminist aesthetics has a relationship to philosophy. The historical philosophical views of what beauty, the arts, and sensory experiences are, relate to the idea of aesthetics. Aesthetics looks at styles of production. In particular, feminists argue that despite seeming neutral or inclusive, the way people think about art and aesthetics is influenced by gender roles. Feminist aesthetics is a tool for analyzing how art is understood using gendered issues. A person's gender identity affects the ways in which they perceive art and aesthetics because of their subject position and that perception is influenced by power. The ways in which people see art is also influenced by social values such as class and race. One's subject position in life changes the way art is perceived because of people's different knowledge's about life and experiences. In the way that feminist history unsettles traditional history, feminist aesthetics challenge philosophies of beauty, the arts and sensory experience.

Murray Smith is a film theorist and philosopher of art based at the University of Kent, where he is Professor of Philosophy, Art, and Film and co-director of the Aesthetics Research Centre. He is the author of three books and numerous articles on film and aesthetics, and the co-editor of three collections of essays. He was President of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image from 2014 to 2017, and has served on the editorial boards of Screen, Cinema Journal, the British Journal of Aesthetics, Projections and Series. He has held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2005–6), and a Laurance S Rockefeller Fellowship at Princeton University’s Centre for Human Values (2017–18). He delivered a Kracauer Lecture in 2014 at the Goethe University Frankfurt, the inaugural Beacon Institute lecture in 2015, and the Beardsley Lecture in 2018, sponsored by Temple University at the Barnes Foundation.

<i>Film and Philosophy</i> Academic journal

Film and Philosophy is a peer-reviewed academic journal that examines films from a philosophical perspective. It was established in 1994 and is sponsored by the Society for the Philosophic Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts. The journal has examined various film genres, including horror and science fiction films, and contributed to feminist philosophy of film. It has also published special issues on ethical issues and existential themes in film, as well as philosophical themes in the films of Woody Allen. For many years the journal was edited by Daniel Shaw at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. It is currently edited by Laura T. Di Summa. Publication of the journal is managed on the Society's behalf by the Philosophy Documentation Center.

References

  1. ↑ "NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES GRANTS December 2002" (PDF). National Endowments for the Humanities. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  2. 1 2 Freeland, Cynthia (2003-02-13). Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction . Very Short Introductions. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780192804631.
  3. ↑ "Cynthia Freeland on Portraits". philosophy bites. Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  4. ↑ Conversations on Art and Aesthetics. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 2017-07-25. ISBN   9780199686100.
  5. ↑ "Cynthia Freeland – Conversations on Art and Aesthetics" . Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  6. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia (2010-06-17). Portraits and Persons. OUP Oxford. ISBN   9780199234981.
  7. ↑ But Is It Art?: An Introduction to Art Theory. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 2002-04-04. ISBN   9780192853677.
  8. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia (2002-01-04). The Naked And The Undead: Evil And The Appeal Of Horror. Avalon Publishing. ISBN   9780813365633.
  9. ↑ Nussbaum, Martha C.; Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg, eds. (1995-11-09). Essays on Aristotle's De Anima. Clarendon Aristotle Series. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780198236009.
  10. ↑ Bordwell, David; Carroll, Noel; Carroll, Noël E. (1996-02-15). Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Univ of Wisconsin Press. ISBN   9780299149444.
  11. ↑ Dadlez, E.M, ed. (2018-12-27). Jane Austen's Emma: Philosophical Perspectives. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190689414.001.0001. ISBN   9780190689452.
  12. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A. (2017), Lennox, James G.; Gill, Mary Louise (eds.), "Chapter 3. Aristotle on Perception, Appetition, and Self-Motion", Self-Motion: From Aristotle to Newton, Princeton University Press, pp. 35–64, retrieved 2019-04-20
  13. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A. (2001). "The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror". Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 59 (4): 433–434.
  14. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A. (1997). "Art and Moral Knowledge". Philosophical Topics. 25 (1): 11–36. doi:10.5840/philtopics19972518.
  15. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A.; Dickie, George (1992). "Evaluating Art". Philosophical Review. 101 (2): 486. doi:10.2307/2185585. JSTOR   2185585.
  16. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A.; Kenny, Anthony (1981). "Aristotle's Theory of the Will". Philosophical Review. 90 (1): 159. doi:10.2307/2184387. JSTOR   2184387.
  17. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A. (1986). "Aristotle on Possibilities and Capabilities". Ancient Philosophy. 6: 69–89. doi:10.5840/ancientphil198666.
  18. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A. (2002). "Feminist Interpretations of Aristotle". Hypatia. 17 (4): 238–243. doi:10.1353/hyp.2002.0089. S2CID   144354725.
  19. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A. (2017). "A New Question About Color". Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 75 (3): 231–248. doi:10.1111/jaac.12380.
  20. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A. (2000). "Feminism and Ideology in Ancient Philosophy". Apeiron. 33 (4): 365–406. doi:10.1515/apeiron.2000.33.4.365. S2CID   147481918.
  21. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia A.; Wartenberg, Thomas E. (1995). Philosophy and Film. Routledge.
  22. ↑ Freeland, Cynthia (1998). Re-Reading the Canon: Feminist Readings on Aristotle. Pennsylvania State University Press.
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