Skip to:Main Content

Washington and Lee University

Washington and Lee University
Washington and Lee University Campus Image

Root Lecture Series and Invited Speakers

The Root Lecture Series

Robert W. Root '42 established a special endowment in 1991 to support an annual lecture series on the mind. Guest speakers are selected on a rotating basis by the departments of Philosophy, Psychology, and Religion.

Root Lectures for the Philosophy Department have been given by:

2011 Frans de Waal (Emory University)
2008 Rebecca Lilly
2005 Paul Churchland (University of California at San Diego)
2002 Colin McGinn (Rutgers University)

Phil 399: Living Philosopher

The Philosophy Department created a capstone seminar course in 2012 in which students would read the work of a living philosopher and then have the philosopher answer questions about his/her work in a campus visit that would include a public lecture. To date the "Living Philosopher" has been:

2013 Shelly Kagan (Yale University)

2012 Andy Clark (University of Edinburgh)

 

Invited Speakers

The Philosophy Department invites numerous speakers to campus. Previous speakers include:

2013 Alia Al-Saji (McGill University)

2011 Roger Crisp (St. Anne's College, Oxford / Boston University)

2010 Lisa Guenther (Vanderbilt University)
         Mary Kate McGowan (Wellesley College)
         James Mattingly (Georgetown University)
         James Petrick (Ohio University)

2009 Dan Devereux (University of Virginia)

2008 Andrew Light (George Mason University)
         Nancy Sherman (Georgetown University)
         Georges Dicker (SUNY-Brockport)
         Daniel Markovits (Yale Law School)

2004 Jeff McMahan (Rutgers University)

2003 Susan Wolf (UNC-Chapel Hill)
         Jesse Prinz (CUNY Graduate Center)

2002 Bernard Gert (Dartmouth University)
         Joseph Neisser (Radford University)