I work on normative issues in the arts, culture, and everyday social interactions. My work often focuses on class, gender, race, and sexuality.
I’m the co-editor of The Aesthetics: A Reader in Philosophy of the Arts, (2022, Routledge).
I’m currently writing a book on Prestige, Status, and Snobbery. If you want, you can watch a conversation I had about this project with Brandon Polite on Polite Conversations, an excellent podcast series on philosophers of art.
I’m also co-writing on games and sociality with Shelby Moser, an art historian and philosopher in the University of Utah’s Division of Games. And I have several co-authored projects underway with Andrew Jordan, a Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Iowa College of Law, including a paper on Aristotle’s social-aesthetic virtue of wit (eutrapelia), and expressive content in constitutional law.
Here is a list of publications, and active research projects.
“Aesthetic Snobbery” Philosophy Compass, (2023)
“Snobbery in Appreciative Contexts,” British Journal of Aesthetics (2018)
Book in progress: Snobbery: What It Is. What It Isn’t. And Why It Matters.
“Eutrapelia and the Normativity of Social Humor,” in ed., Brian Robinson, The Moral Psychology of Amusement, (Rowan and Littlefield, 2021, w/Andrew Jordan)
“Fitting Attitude Theory and the Normativity of Jokes,” Erkenntnis, 83:6, 1303-1320 (2018, w/ A. Jordan).
“Joking About Race and Ethnicity,” in eds, Linda Martin Alcoff, Luvell Anderson, and Paul Taylor, Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race, Routledge, 2018).
“Against the Moralistic Fallacy: A Modest Proposal for a Modest Sentimentalism about Humor,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, (2012, w/ A. Jordan).
Article in progress: “Joking and Playing Around Together: Eutrapelia as a Social-Aesthetic Virtue,” with A. Jordan
“On Gender and Race in Videogames,” in eds., Thi Nguyen and John Sageng, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Games (Routledge, forthcoming)
“Ethics” in eds., TreaAndrea M. Russworm and Soraya Murray Anti-Racist Futures: Games, Play, and the Speculative Imagination (Duke University Press, forthcoming)
“Games, Motives, and Virtue,” Journal of Philosophy of Sport: Special Issue on C. Thi Nugyen’s Games: Agency as Art, 48:3, 369-79. (2022)
“Colonial/ist Board Games,” roundtable “Playing Games with History: Philosophers on the Ethics of Historical Board Games,” Aesthetics for the Birds. (2019)
“Videogames and Imaginative Identification,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, (2017)
“Pornography, Ethics, and the Gamer’s Dilemma,” Ethics and Information Technology (2013)
“The Incorrigible Social Meaning of Video Game Imagery: Making Ethical Sense of Single-Player Video Games,” Ethics and Information Technology (2011)
Article in progress: “Digital Fictions, Interactivity, and Somaesthetics”
Article in progress: “Centering Sociality: Games and Social Contexts,” with S. Moser
Article in progress: “Shifting the Burden: Reasonable Speakers not Reasonable Hearers” (w/Andrew Jordan)