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Philosophy Department

Noëlle McAfee, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor of Philosophy

Contact Information:
Office: Rob B453
Email: nmcafee@gmu.edu
Phone: 703 993-9573

Office Hours:
TR | 1:30-2:30 | and by appointment

Spring 2008 Courses:

PHIL 151 Introduction to Ethics (3)
Phil 151 001 | TR | 3:00-4:15 | 12491

PHIL 391 Special Topics (3)
Examines topics of current interest
Pragmatism
Phil 391 001 | TR | 12:00-1:15 | 12552

Areas of Interest:
Noëlle McAfee is a visiting associate professor of philosophy at George Mason University. Her work is in ethics; democratic theory; feminism; pragmatism; and continental philosophy. She has recently been working on a project on the future of public media at the Center for Social Media at American University with funding from the Ford Foundation and the Kettering Foundation, researching and convening meetings of leaders in public broadcasting; new, participatory media; foundations; and citizen groups.

McAfee has a B.A. in history from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. in public policy from Duke University, an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas. During the mid-to-late 1980s she worked in Washington, D.C. on a number of public interest projects and began her long association with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, researching civil society, higher education, and deliberative democracy. In 1996 she took a year off from her doctoral studies to help direct the National Issues Convention, the first deliberative opinion poll conducted in the United States. After receiving a Ph.D. In philosophy, she taught political theory in the government department at Texas, then taught at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in the philosophy department, earning tenure within four years. In 2004 she taught at Brandeis University as the Allen-Berenson Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies. She has been the director of both the Gender Studies program and the Honors Program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

She is the author of Habermas, Kristeva, and Citizenship (Cornell University Press, 2000); Julia Kristeva (Routledge, 2004); and the forthcoming Democracy and the Political Unconscious (Columbia University Press). She co-edited, with James Veninga, Standing with the Public: the Humanities and Democratic Practice (Kettering Foundation Press). Her articles have appeared in the journals Philosophy and Social Criticism, Philosophy Today, the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Hypatia, and Semiotica. She is associate editor of the Kettering Review and co-editor, with Claire Snyder, of a special issue of the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia on feminist engagements in democratic theory, forthcoming Fall 2007. She is also a member of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Public Philosophy.