Faculty

Professor Geoffrey Ashton recently joined the Department of Philosophy at USF from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where he also held an appointment as Assistant Professor of Asian Philosophy. Prof. Ashton has studied Sanskrit, Thai, and Spanish, and conducted research at numerous institutions of higher learning abroad (twice as a Fulbright scholar), including Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi, India), Deccan College (Pune, India), the Jñāna-Pravaha Institute (Varanasi, India...

Professor Cavanaugh regularly teaches medical ethics, a medieval honors seminar (Boethius, Dante and Chaucer), and a first-year seminar entitled What is Wisdom? (for which he received a 2015 NEH grant). His most recent project concerns the Hippocratic Oath, which founds medicine as an exclusively therapeutic practice that especially excludes deliberately injuring patients. Oxford University Press published his book entitled, Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The Birth of the Medical...

Hello, and welcome! In case you parachuted onto this page via Google, I'm the David Kim who is a philosophy prof at the U. of San Francisco, not the concert violinist, the cosmetic surgeon, the CEO of Baja Fresh (featured on Undercover Boss), etc., etc. Sorry, but I can't play Mozart, safely administer a nip and tuck, or get you a job making burritos. There's a film, Grace Lee, portraying the lives of several semi-randomly chosen women named "Grace Lee." With the sheer number of David Kims,...

Gerard Kuperus is specialized in philosophy of nature and environmental philosophy as well as Continental philosophy. He teaches in the philosophy department and environmental studies. His courses include The Human Animal, Environmental Ethics, Globalization: Development and Environment, Social and Political Philosophy, Global Environments and Societies, Aesthetics, and Existentialism, as well as courses on Gary Snyder and Nietzsche. Kuperus has published a monograph Ecopolitical Homelessness:...

Nick Leonard is finishing up his PhD in Philosophy at Northwestern University. He is interested in epistemology, cognitive psychology, and some topics that lie at the intersection of the two. He received his BA in Philosophy from the University of Hawaii, and in 2015-2016 he was a visiting scholar at Brown University.

Rebecca Mason is originally from Nova Scotia, Canada where she completed her BA and MA in Philosophy at Dalhousie University. In 2015, she received her PhD in Philosophy from Northwestern University. Rebecca works primarily in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and feminist philosophy. She is especially interested in social ontology. Her research asks questions such as: Are social kinds mind-dependent? What is distinctively social about social kinds? Are social kinds natural? What is the...

Jeffrey Paris joined the USF faculty in 2001, teaching courses in topics ranging from existential and postmodern philosophy, to imprisonment, to science fiction, to his current focus on environmental ethics. He has two co–edited volumes—Liberation between Selves, Sexualities and War and New Critical Theory: Essays on Liberation.

David J. Stump is a professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco. A native Californian, he was educated at the University of California and Northwestern University. He is co-editor, with Peter Galison, of The Disunity of Science, and is author of journal articles on Poincaré, Duhem, the history and philosophy of mathematics, and general philosophy of science. His research is centered on late 19th and early 20th century philosophy and science and the exchange between the two,...

Ronald Robles Sundstrom teaches for USF's Philosophy program, African American Studies program, and the Master of Public Affairs program for the Leo T. McCarthy Center of Public Service and the Common Good. He was awarded the 2008 Sankofa Faculty Award from USF's Multicultural Student Services, USF's 2009 Ignatian Service Award, and was a co-winner of the 2010 USF Distinguished Teaching Award. His areas of research include political theory, critical social and race theory, and African American...

Jacqueline Taylor has broad philosophical interests that are reflected in the courses she teaches (see below). Her research has focused on David Hume and the eighteenth century, and her book, Reflecting Subjects: Passion, Sympathy and Society in Hume’s Philosophy appeared in 2015 (Oxford University Press). She is currently working on an edited volume on Hume’s later moral philosophy, and beginning two new research projects, one on eighteenth century women intellectuals, and one on character...

Michael Torre received his PhD in 1983 and joined the Philosophy Department in 1989, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He has been a past Vice-President of the Institut Internationale Jacques Maritain, and is currently the General Editor of the American Maritain Association's series of publications. He has taught numerous courses for the Department, and has specialized in the Philosophy of Religion, and in the figures of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, as well as Contemporary...