The Department of Philosophy features a significant strength in continental European philosophy. Within this area, our faculty is distinguished by expertise in Kant, German Idealism and Romanticism, and major figures in nineteenth-century philosophy, as well as by philosophical movements of phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics, critical theory, poststructuralism, and feminist theory. Faculty research interests emphasize continental approaches in ethics, social and political philosophy, and aesthetics, focusing on some of the most pressing social justice and cultural issues of our age. Our work also focuses on dialogues, and tensions, between research in continental philosophy and in philosophies of the global south, Latin American philosophy, and Africana philosophy.
Faculty members in this area include:
Conway's primary area of research specialization is post-Kantian European philosophy. Conway is perhaps best known for his books and papers on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, but he also lectures and publishes on such figures as Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Kafka, Arendt, Unamuno, Camus, Derrida, Deleuze, et al.
Recent Publications in Area:
- Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024. xiv + 247 pp.
- “Eschatological Technophobia: Cinematic Anticipations of the Singularity,” Religions 15: 172, 2024, pp. 1-22. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020172
- “Behold the Man, Again: What Nietzsche Hopes his Readers Will See in Ecce Homo,” Labyrinth 26/1, Autumn 2024, pp. 10-39.
Deere's research engages with questions of space, power, and knowledge in 20th century French philosophy, especially in understanding how these accounts come into relation with Caribbean and Latin American Philosophy. He is also interested in how decolonial approaches to modernity intersect with and depart from continental critiques of modernity.
Recent Publications in Area:
- The Invention of Order: On the Coloniality of Space. Duke University Press, Fall 2025. Foreword by Santiago Castro-Gómez.
- “Transmodern Geographies and Coloniality: On Enrique Dussel’s Pluriversal Modernity.” Latin American Perspectives, Forthcoming 2025.
- “Coloniality and Disciplinary Power: On Spatial Techniques of Ordering.” Inter-American Journal of Philosophy. 10.2 (2019): 25-42.
Media:
George's research contributes to several important areas of continental philosophy. His research focuses especially on hermeneutics, as well as the related areas of phenomenology, Heidegger studies, classical German philosophy, and the philosophy of art. His research also contributes to applied hermeneutics, especially in the disciplines of nursing and education.
Recent Publications in Area:
- The Responsibility to Understand: Hermeneutical Contours of Ethical Life (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
- The Gadamerian Mind in the Routledge Philosophical Minds Series co-edited with Gert-Jan van der Heiden (London and New York: Routledge, 2021)
- “Hermeneutics in Dark times: Toward an “Original” Ethics of Understanding in Gadamer and Arendt,” Arendt Studies, Vol 8 (2024):61–74
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Islekel is trained in Continental Philosophy and her research contributes particularly to Continental Political and Continental Feminist Philosophy. In particular she publishes on the work of Michel Foucault, a key 20th century philosopher, in relation to other figures of the French tradition, such Jacques Derrida.
Recent Publications in Area:
- Nightmare Remains: The Politics of Mourning and Epistemologies of Disappearance. Northwestern University Press, 2024. ISBN: 0810147491
- Foucault, Derrida, and The Biopolitics of Punishment. Co-edited with Rick Elmore. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2022. ISBN: 0810144875
- Foucault Studies, The Foucault Circle Special Issue, Co-edited with Lauren Guilmette (forthcoming: January 2025).
Media:
- https://michel-foucault.com/2024/09/26/ege-selin-islekel-nightmare-remains-the-politics-of-mourning-and-epistemologies-of-disappearance-2024/
Jaima works on 20th century continental philosophy, particularly as it interfaces with Africana philosophy and philosophy of art. Notable figures in his research include Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, and Merleau-Ponty.
Recent Publications in Area:
- “(Re)Situating Geschlecht 3: The Political Stakes of Jacques Derrida’s Reading of Martin Heidegger’s Reading of Georg Trakl.” Derrida Today 17 (1): 40–59. https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2024.0325.
Rivera focuses on phenomenology (Heidegger and Merleau Ponty in particular), aesthetics, and the intersection between Continental philosophy and Latin American philosophy (including decolonial theory). Dr. Rivera work is also based on 19th Century philosophy (Hegel, Nietzsche and Marx) and phenomenological interpretations of Ancient Greek Philosophy.
Recent Publications in Area:
- Andean Aesthetics and Anticolonial Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2021)
- “Cosmological Topologies and the (De)formations of Things at Catastrophic Ends.” Research in Phenomenology 54 (2024): 52-73.
- “Toward the Vanishing of the “Human”: Animal Becoming and Elemental Architecture.” Research in Phenomenology 52, 2 (2022): 242-260.
Sweet's research focuses principally on the work of Immanuel Kant, especially his ethics, political theory, aesthetics, and his conception of system. Sweet's work on Kant takes some orientation from his inheritors in the European tradition: Idealists, Romantics, and those who also hold to a method of transcendental argumentation, especially in phenomenology and hermeneutics.
Recent Publications in Area:
- Kant on Freedom, Nature, and Judgment: The Territory of the Third Critique (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
- “The Continental Kant: Ethics and Judgment,” The Cambridge Companion to Continental Philosophy (forthcoming)
- “Interpretation and Truth in Kant’s Theory of Beauty,” Research in Phenomenology, 54 (2024) 275-290.
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Events:
- Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, 2023 https://www.spep.org
- “Hermeneutics, the Humanities, and the Future of Interpretation.”, 2019
- History of Philosophy Society: Art and Nature, 2016 https://histofphil.org
- philoSOPHIA 2025: Critical Borderlands, April 10-12, 2025 https://www.philosophiafeministsociety.com/#/accomodations-travel-2023/
- Poetics v. Philosophy, conference co-sponsored by Hispanic Studies, Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, and Philosophy at Texas A&M University, 2013
- Collegium Phaenomenologicum, “Philosophy, Truth, and the Claims of Art,” Città di Castello, Italy, July 9–29, 2011
- The North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics, Sept. 16-18, 2025, Texas A&M University Bush School of Government and Public Service, Washington, DC Campus, Sept. 18-20, 2025.
- Critical Thought of the Global South Workshop, October 17-18, 2024 https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/glasscock/2024-25-stvf/