Professor Alessandra Tanesini

Overview

Position: Professor in Philosophy Email: Tanesini@cf.ac.uk
Telephone: +44(0)29 208 75663
Extension: 75663
Location: John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cathays, Cardiff

Research Group

Philosophy

Research Interests

Epistemology, Feminism, Philosophy of Mind and Language, Wittgenstein.

Selected Publications

An Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies (Oxford, Blackwell, 1999).

Wittgenstein. A Feminist Introduction (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004).

‘Bringing About the Normative Past’, American Philosophical Quarterly 43 (3), 2006, pp. 191-206.

with Mark Lance, ‘Emotions and Rationality’ in R. Stainton, M. Ezcurdia, and C. Viger (eds) New Essays in Philosophy of Language and Mind. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary volume 30, (Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 2004), pp. 275-95.

‘Whose Language?’ in Kathleen Lennon and Margaret Whitford (eds), Knowing the Difference (London, Routledge, 1994) pp. 203-16 and reprinted in Women, Knowledge and Reality, 2nd ed., ed. by Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (New York & London, Routledge, 1996), pp. 353-65.

‘Nietzsche's Theory of Truth’, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 73 (4), 1995, pp. 548-59; also selected to appear in the software educational package on the Humanities SIRS Renaissance Database, 1997.

Publications

Books

Philosophy of Language A-Z (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2007).

Wittgenstein. A Feminist Introduction (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2004).

An Introduction to Feminist Epistemologies (Blackwell, Oxford, 1999).

Articles

‘Bringing About the Normative Past’, American Philosophical Quarterly 43 (3), 2006, pp. 191-206.

‘The Nature and Content of Experience’ in Luca Malatesti and Michael Peckitt (eds), Symposium on The World, The Flesh and the Subject by Paul Gilbert and Kathleen Lennon’, SWIF Philosophy of Mind Review 5 (1), 2006, pp. 24-31.

‘A Theory of Assertives’ in Heather Battaly and Michael P Lynch (eds), Perspectives on the Philosophy of William P. Alston (Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2005), pp. 239-49.

with Mark Lance, ‘Emotions and Rationality’ in R. Stainton, M. Ezcurdia, and C. Viger (eds) New Essays in Philosophy of Language and Mind. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary volume 30, (University of Calgary Press, Calgary, 2004), pp. 275-95.

‘In Search of Community: Mouffe, Wittgenstein and Cavell’, Radical Philosophy 110, 2001, pp. 12-9.

with Mark Norris Lance, ‘Identity Judgements, Queer Politics’, Radical Philosophy 100, 2000, pp. 42-51 and reprinted in Queer Theory ed. by Iain Morland and Annabelle Willox (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2004) pp. 171-186.

‘The Powers of Words: Feminism and Philosophy of Language A Review Article’, Women’s Philosophy Review, 21, 1999, pp. 26-46.

‘Real Knowledge and Real Norms’, Social Epistemology, 12 (3), 1998, pp. 241-251.

‘The Practices of Justification’ in Linda Martín Alcoff (ed.) Epistemology: The Big Questions (Blackwell, Oxford, 1998), pp. 152-64.

with P. Sedgwick, ‘Lyotard and Kripke: Essentialisms in Dispute’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 32 (3), 1995, pp. 271-8.

‘The “Spider's Web” and the “Tool”; Nietzsche vis-a-vis Rorty on Metaphor’ in P. Sedgwick (ed.), Nietzsche: A Reader, (Blackwell, Oxford, 1995), pp. 276-93.

‘Whose Language?’ in Kathleen Lennon and Margaret Whitford (eds), Knowing the Difference (Routledge, London, 1994) pp. 203-16 and reprinted in Women, Knowledge and Reality, 2nd ed., ed. by Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (Routledge, New York & London, 1996), pp. 353-65.

with A.J. Dale, ‘Why are Italians more reasonable than Australians?’, Analysis, 49 (4), 1989, pp. 189-94.

“On Mackie’s Solution to Semantic Paradoxes”, Logique et Analyse, 31, 1988, pp. 223-6.

Research

For many years my work has focused on a range of issues and topics in epistemology (especially feminist and social epistemology) and in the philosophy of language (especially theories of truth in both analytic and continental philosophy). I am the author of two monographs (one in feminist epistemology and the other on Wittgenstein) and of a reference work in the philosophy of language. I have published numerous articles in peer-refereed journals and collections on a variety of topics including: Nietzsche on truth, the role of emotions in epistemology, temporal externalism about meaning, and the debate over essentialism in feminism.

More recently, I started work in the philosophy of mind as embedded, embodied, enactive and extended. Together with my colleague Richard Gray, I am one of the founding members of a Research Network in the Philosophy of Mind which has already organised two workshops drawing participants from the UK, US, Ireland, Spain and Croatia.

Biography

I did my undergraduate work at Bologna University (Italy) and gained my PhD on Quine at the University of Hull (UK). In the meantime I studied and taught for a couple of years at Syracuse University (US) before coming to Cardiff in 1992. In 1996 I was a Visiting Senior Lecturer in School of Philosophy (General Philosophy) at the University of Sydney, and in 1997 I was Visiting Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Georgetown University (US).

Teaching Interests

Formal Logic, Epistemology, Philosophy of Feminism, Philosophy of Mind and Language.

Cardiff School of English Communication and Philosophy