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Faculty

Full-Time Faculty


Jacqueline Taylor

Department Chair
(415) 422-5323

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...

Education:

PhD, University of Chicago

Geoffrey Ashton

Associate Professor
(415) 422-2893

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...

Education:

PhD, Philosophy (Asian and Comparative Philosophy), University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, MA, Philosophy (Indian Philosophy), University of Hawai'i at Mānoa , MA, South Asian Languages and Civilizations (Sanskrit, Indian Aesthetics), University of Chicago

Thomas Cavanaugh

Professor
(415) 422-6356

  Professor Thomas Cavanaugh teaches medical ethics, a first-year seminar entitled What is Wisdom? (for which he received an NEH Enduring Questions grant), and, more recently, in the Honors College where he offers a course entitled Wisdom’s Lovers: Ancient and Medieval Philosophers. His most recently completed project concerns the Hippocratic Oath, which founds medicine as an exclusively therapeutic practice that especially excludes deliberately injuring patients. In 2018, Oxford University...

Education:

Ph. D., University of Notre Dame, A.B., Thomas Aquinas College

David Kim

Associate Professor, Fleishhacker Chair
(415) 422-5067

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,...

Education:

PhD, Philosophy, Syracuse University

Gerard Kuperus

Associate Professor
(415) 422-6969

Gerard Kuperus teaches in the philosophy department and the environmental studies program. He specializes in philosophy of nature / environmental philosophy, comparative philosophy (specifically zen and indigenous thinking), and continental philosophy. He is the author of Ecopolitical Homelessness: Defining place in an unsettled world (Routledge, 2016) and has published two collections: Ontologies of Nature (Springer, 2017; co-edited with Marjolein Oele) and Thinking in the American West (...

Education:

MA, University of Amsterdam, PhD, DePaul University

Nick Leonard

Assistant Professor
(415) 422-6372

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

Education:

University of Hawaii, BA in Philosophy, 2011, Northwestern University, PhD in Philosophy, 2019

Rebecca Mason

Assistant Professor

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. She specializes in metaphysics (especially social metaphysics), feminist philosophy, and social and political philosophy. She also has interests in epistemology and philosophy of language, especially where these intersect with her areas of specialization.

Education:

PhD in Philosophy, Northwestern University, 2015, MA in Philosophy, Dalhousie University, 2008 , BA in Philosophy, Dalhousie University, 2007

Marjolein Oele

Full Professor
(415) 422-4369

Marjolein Oele is a professor of philosophy and was trained as an MD at the Free University of Amsterdam. She has a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Amsterdam and received her PhD in philosophy in 2007 from Loyola University Chicago. Her primary research interests are in 20th century and contemporary European philosophy, in ancient philosophy (mainly Aristotle), and in environmental philosophy (a research area she recently added). She is the author of the monograph E-Co-...

Education:

PhD, Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago, MA, Philosophy, University of Amsterdam, MD, Free University of Amsterdam

Jeffrey Paris

Associate Professor
(415) 422-5116

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.

Education:

PhD, Purdue University,1998, BA, Humboldt State University, 1992

Ronald Sundstrom

Professor
(415) 422-5319

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...

Michael Torre

Associate Professor
(415) 422-2386

Michael D. Torre received a PhD in 1983 and joined the USF philosophy department in 1989. He is now its senior member. He has served as the department chair and as the coordinator of its ethics sections. Professor Torre has been a past vice-president of the Institut Internationale Jacques Maritain, and is currently serving on its Scientific Committee. He was the second general editor of the American Maritain Association's series of publications from 2009-2013, and its president from 2012-2016....

Part-Time Faculty


Jennifer Fisher

Adjunct Professor
(415) 422-6543

Jennifer Fisher received her PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2003. Her interests include epistemology, the philosophy of logic, and meta-ethics.

Education:

PhD, Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Expertise:

epistemology, philosophy of logic, meta-ethics

Rebecca Gordon

Adjunct Professor
(415) 422-6543

Rebecca Gordon received her PhD from Graduate Theological Union. Her latest book is American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. She publishes regularly at Tomdispatch.com, a project of The Nation Institute. Prior to teaching at USF, Rebecca spent many years as an activist in a variety of movements, including for women's and LGBTQ+ liberation, the Central America and South Africa solidarity movements and for racial justice in the United States. Her...

Education:

MDiv, Starr King School for the Ministry, PhD, Graduate Theological Union, BA, Reed College

Expertise:

Political philosophy, Theories of justice

Richie Kim

Adjunct Professor
(415) 422-6543

Richie is a San Francisco native, educated at UCLA and Stanford. He teaches part-time for USF, UC Berkeley, and Stanford.

Education:

UCLA, Stanford University

Lucio Mare

Adjunct Professor
(813) 300-5808

Lucio Mare joined USF in the Spring of 2019. He received his PhD from the University of South Florida in 2016 and MA from Université Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV in 2011. His areas of interest include early modern philosophy, Aztec philosophy, and postcolonial studies. His most recent publications include a book chapter written in French for Presses Universitaires Françaises, and several other articles on early modern views on identity, individuation, and atomism. For the past six-years, Lucio Mare...

Education:

PhD, University of South Florida, MA, Université Paris-Sorbonne

Greig Mulberry

Adjunct Professor
(415) 422-6543

Greig Mulberry began teaching at USF in 2011 and has taught Ethics, Existentialism, and Social and Political Philosophy. His research interests include 19th and 20th century continental philosophy and aesthetics.

Brian Pines

Adjunct Professor

Brian Pines researches continental philosophy with a special focus on French and German thinking of the 19th and 20th centuries. He maintains active interests in ancient philosophy, especially that of Greece, India, and China. His current project is entitled "Van Gogh and Nietzsche: Imaginations of 1888," a dual biography concentrated on a single year. At the beginning of 1888 Nietzsche was living in Nice and Van Gogh seventy miles away in Arles; the last ten years for both had been...

Education:

Staffordshire University, PhD in Philosophy, 2016, Duquesne University, MA in Philosophy, 2013, Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, BA in Continental Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, 2011

Expertise:

Ancient Philosophy, Eastern Philosophy, Continental Philosophy

Melanie Tate

Adjunct Professor

Professor Tate’s research focuses on René Descartes' theory of the passions, and she also has research interests in Baruch Spinoza, Princess Elisabeth, and Anne Conway. She teaches courses in ethics, history of philosophy, and medical ethics.

Education:

University of Washington, PhD in Philosophy, 2020, University of Washington, MA in Philosophy, 2016, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, BA in Philosophy, 2014

Expertise:

Ethics, Medical Ethics, History of Modern Philosophy

Emeriti Faculty


Raymond Dennehy

Professor Emeritus
(415) 422-6456

Raymond Dennehy was born in San Francisco in 1934. While serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the heavy cruiser, USS Rochester (CA 124) as a radarman, principally in the South China Sea, from 1954–58, he decided on a university education and while at the university decided on graduate studies in philosophy. Among his teachers were Karl Popper, Anton Pegis, C.B. MacPherson, and Edward Synan. His areas of teaching and research interest are metaphysics, epistemology, and social ethics. Dennehy is...

Education:

BA (Philosophy), University of San Francisco, 1962, MA (Philosophy), University of California, Berkeley, 1964, PhD (Philosophy), University of Toronto, 1973

David Stump

Professor
(415) 422-6153

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,...

Education:

PhD, Northwestern University, BA, UC Berkeley