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Hello, and welcome back!

The Aesthetics Work Group has another exciting fall semester ahead of it. AWG is an open interdisciplinary group of professors and students at CofC who meet about 8 times a term (usually on Thursday, usually at 4PM) to discuss theoretical works about and in the arts. Discussion usually focuses on works in progress by members of AWG and visitors from other institutions. We have discussed, and are open to discussing, many kinds of work: talks, articles, position papers, chapters, catalogues raisonnés, and works of art. We also sponsor the occasional public event. (Click here for a list of AWG events since 2011.) AWG is led by Jonathan Neufeld in the Philosophy Department and is regularly attended by students and faculty from German, English, Religious Studies, Music, Art, Art History, Political Science, and Psychology.

If you are interested in participating or just keeping up with what we are doing by email, let me know and I will put you on the mailing list.
If you have students who might be interested in AWG, please have them contact me. The group is open to anybody (including interested members of the Charleston community).

You can also keep up by following our Facebook page or our Twitter account.

Here's how AWG meetings go: About a week before the meeting, presenters send whatever reading they would like to discuss. They then give a quick (ten minutes or so) spiel summarizing, motivating, or filling in a bit of background for the work that the group participants will have read. We then dive into discussion. The setting is informal and relaxed though, since everybody will have read relatively carefully, discussion can go quite deep. Students and faculty attend from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, and one of the strengths of the group is its ability and willingness to engage (and to take a certain joy in engaging I think!) a work from multiple disciplinary perspectives and multiple levels of expertise. Meetings will typically be on Thursdays or Fridays in the afternoon (depending on speakers' schedules). A core group attends every meeting, but most group members attend only those meetings whose topics interest them—feel free to pick and choose.

Fall 2015 schedule so far:

Sept 10: Jonathan Neufeld (CofC Philosophy): Introduction and “Works of Art and Public Reason”
Sept 24: Mathew Rabon (CofC Philosophy student): “Types and Tokens in a Social Ontology of Art” (tentative title)
Oct 9: Susan Wolf (John’s Hopkins Philosophy): "Aesthetic Responsibility” (Public lecture sponsored by the Philosophy Department’s Philosofest)
Oct 15: Marian Mazzone (CofC Art History): “Fluxus as a Problem for Art History and Aesthetics”
Oct 22: Mari Crabtree (CofC African American Studies): "On Subterfuge: Deception, Subversion, and Critique in African American Political Thought.”
Nov 5: TBA
Nov 19: Nancy Nenno (CofC German): “How different is Black Austrian Studies?"
Dec 3: TBA

If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks, and I look forward to a good term!

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Jonathan A. Neufeld
Department of Philosophy
College of Charleston
66 George St.
Charleston, SC 29424
(843) 953-3961
Neufeld Webpage
AestheticsWorkGroup @AWGCofC o n Twitter
Aesthetics Work Group Facebook Page