Book Cover, New Job, &c.
It’s been awhile since I’ve updated anything here. That’s a sign of business not laziness, of course. (It’s also a function of the increasingly-useful way in which status updates are handled on facebook.)
Two main pieces of news.
First, I am now living up in Eugene, Oregon where I have a one-year appointment as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Oregon. I am (if it’s not obvious) quite pleased to be up here: great colleagues, great graduate students, great program, and a great place to live.
Hunkering down for a solid year of solid work in Eugene should give me the opportunity to update the blog more often. So I plan to start on that.
Second, it now appears as if my book Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty will be out with Columbia University Press very soon (sometime next month, apparently). I was quite pleased that Columbia was able to get the rights to an image of the painting that I have long hoped would grace the cover of the book, Ducham’s Nude Descending a Staircase, no.2. You can read a little more about the book on Columbia UP’s website.
So, more soon I hope. I’m investing lots of time in lots of projects right now. Some of them will be bloggable in short order.
requiem for certainty 
very cool! congrats on the book (and of course the oh too cool cover)!! and glad that it sounds like you are liking it up there in Eugene!
sandra
October 27, 2009 at 1:37 am
thanks. book is out now so am v happy about it. see you at apa-pacific if not before. 🙂
Colin Koopman
October 27, 2009 at 2:03 am
Colin,
Let me say first what a really wonderful blog you have here. It is a fine example of the genre not devolving into political rant or irrelevancy. I am writing, however, to tell you I just began reading your book and am thoroughly engrossed. I am also writing about pragmatism, but my interests are more literary (my dissertation deals with Dewey’s aesthetics and American modernism). Your concept of transitionalism is, as you already seem aware, consistent with the arguments that Jonathan Levin makes in his Poetics of Transition, which was an inspirational text for my own current work. However, I am curious if you have read much of Roberto Unger, especially his most recent The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Unger also seems to share your enthusiasm for the idea of transitioning, especially on the scale of national politics. I am attaching a link to my review of his book written for the CUNY Graduate Center Advocate newspaper.
Thanks again for the great blog.
Yours,
James Hoff.
http://www.gcadvocate.com/2007/11/revolutionary-practice-practical-revolution/
james Hoff
June 9, 2010 at 12:46 am
james, how do you/Unger reply to Rorty’s challenge to public Goods in his Irony book, or to the question of means/transmission of common goals/values/lifestyles in The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge and Presuppositions
by Stephen P. Turner. Unger just seems like more Richard Berstein, no? Levin’s book was excellent but I don’t see how to make such matters/experiences general/public.
dmf
June 9, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Thanks, James. Unger is definitely someone who should be more on my radar. I plead “guilty”. Thanks for the nice review of his book. I quite like the idea of “revolutionary reformism” though I would perhaps prefer the phrase “radical reformism” since it seems to me that revolution-ism is precisely part of the problem — I can’t see how revolution in the sense of widespread upheaval is going to work for most situated agents in most social contexts.
And thanks much for taking a look into my book. It’s good to know that it’s not stillborn on the shelf. I believe reviews in all the standard journals will start rolling out later this year.
colin koopman
June 9, 2010 at 8:44 pm
ck, have your read any of D.Schon’s work on “relective” practioners or his various offspring in the developing field of “action” research?
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jds/Santorini.htm
dmf
June 10, 2010 at 12:47 pm
sorry berNstein, my spelling is sadly lacking
dmf
June 9, 2010 at 2:07 pm