FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 16, 2018
Contact: Jen Horneman
Phone: 202-745-3287
The Phi Beta Kappa Society
Announces Winner of
2017-2018 Romanell - Phi Beta Kappa Professorship
WASHINGTON, DC –
January 16, 2018 – The
Phi Beta Kappa Society is pleased to announce that Dr.
Marianne Janack of Hamilton College, has been awarded the 2017-2018 Romanell-Phi
Beta Kappa Professorship. Dr. Janack was nominated for this award by the Phi
Beta Kappa Epsilon Chapter of New York at Hamilton College.
The
Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Professorship was established in 1983 by Phi Beta Kappa member Patrick Romanell
and his wife Edna. Patrick graduated from Brooklyn College and was the H.Y.
Benedict Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso. The
Professorship is awarded annually to scholars in the field of philosophy,
without restriction to any one school of philosophical thought and carries with
it a stipend of $7,500. The recipient gives a series of three special lectures
during the year of the professorship at the nominating Phi Beta Kappa chapter
sheltering institution. These lectures are open to the general public as well
as to the academic community.
Dr. Janack, the John Stewart
Kennedy Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton, received her doctorate from
Syracuse University and teaches courses in philosophy of science, philosophy of
mind, feminist philosophy and philosophy and literature. She won both the College's
Hatch Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Richardson Award for Innovation
in Teaching. She received a major National Science Foundation grant in 2008-09
to support her work on What We Mean by Experience, published by Stanford
University Press in 2012. Dr. Janack is also the editor of Feminist
Interpretations of Richard Rorty. She is working on a book about David Foster
Wallace, teaching and philosophy, based on a course she co-taught with students
in spring 2014.
She was awarded the Romanell
Professorship for her proposed lecture series on the alleged uselessness of
philosophy, its literary possibilities and its shifting history. She plans to
explore the following in her lecture series titled Metaphilosophical Investigations:
Lecture 1: The charges
against philosophy: abstraction; a lack of attention to the concrete details of
life, or practice; uselessness
Lecture 2: Philosophy as
Literature/ Literature as Philosophy: The cases of Simone de Beauvoir,
Wittgenstein, and David Foster Wallace.
Lecture 3: Loneliness,
Escape, Entertainment, and Writing: Why do we read? Why do we write?
As a colleague expressed,
“Marianne Janack is, quite simply, a teacher of distinction and genius.
Throughout her distinguished career, she has often been the reason why students
come to love philosophy, find themselves there, and venture boldly into a now
beckoning world.”
Nominations for the 2018
Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Professorship can be sent to jhorneman@pbk.org and will be accepted until June 15, 2018. You can find the nomination form here.
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About The Phi Beta Kappa
Society
Founded on Dec. 5, 1776, The Phi Beta Kappa Society is the nation’s most
prestigious academic honor society. It has chapters at 286 colleges and
universities in the United States, almost 50 alumni associations, and more than
half a million members worldwide. Noteworthy members include 17 U.S.
Presidents, 39 U.S. Supreme Court Justices and more than 130 Nobel Laureates.
The mission of The Phi Beta Kappa Society is to champion education in the liberal
arts and sciences, foster freedom of thought, and recognize academic
excellence. For more information, visit www.pbk.org