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Kristin Boyce—Curriculum Vitae
KRISTIN BOYCE
Introduction to Humanities Program
Stanford University
Escondido Mall 94110
Stanford, CA 94305-3068
e-mail: keboyce@stanford.edu
Address for Fall 2011:
4602 Penn Avenue, #2A
Pittsburgh, PA 14225
Home phone: 412-421-1344
Cell phone: 773-540-1930
CURRENT ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT:
Post-Doctoral Fellow, The Introduction to Humanities Program, Stanford University (on research leave for fall)
EDUCATION
University of Chicago, Ph. D. Philosophy
University of Chicago Divinity School, doctoral candidate
University of Chicago, M. A., Religious Studies
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, B. A., Mathematics and
Religious Studies, summa cum laude
2010
1998-2001
1994
1988-92
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION: Aesthetics, History of Early Analytic, Wittgenstein
AREAS OF COMPETENCE: Philosophy of Religion, Logic, Ethics
DISSERTATION
“Why Wander into Fiction? Analytic Philosophy and the Case Study of Henry James”
Many analytic philosophers who make use of literature share a common assumption, namely, that a work of
literature is philosophically significant only insofar as it can be understood to contribute to the task of
expressing or justifying a philosophical view. My dissertation criticizes this assumption and identifies
within the analytic tradition a different kind of philosophical work to which a literary text might contribute:
the work that Frege calls “liberating the human spirit” from confusion. I draw on the novels and tales of
Henry James to provide a case study of literary works which serve to elucidate philosophical forms of
confusion. I develop a comparison between Frege’s logically perspicuous manner of representing thought,
which he uses to clarify confusions that interfere with the activity of thinking, and the literary modes of
representing human life that James develops. I argue that what is philosophically most significant about
James’s work is that his literary forms inherit a time-honored aspiration of philosophical writing—that of
seeking to represent a reader’s life to the reader herself in such a way as to allow her to overcome
confusions that interfere with her living.
Committee: James Conant and Michael Kremer (co-chairs), Daniel Brudney, Jonathan Lear
PUBLICATIONS
“Literature, Logic and the Liberating Word: The Elucidation of Confusion in Henry James”,
Journal of Philosophical Research Volume 35 (2010)
WORK UNDER REVIEW
“The Thinking Body: Philosophy, Dance and Modernism”, under review at The Journal for Aesthetics
and Art Criticism
WORK IN PROGRESS
“An Anscombian Approach to the Artist’s Intention in Her Work”
“What Does Literature “Show”? Literature and the Say/Show Distinction”
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Kristin Boyce—Curriculum Vitae
FELLOWSHIPS
Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Introduction to Humanities, Stanford University, 2011-12
Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Introduction to Humanities, Stanford University, 2010-11
Josephine De Karmán Dissertation Fellowship (national dissertation write-up grant), 2007-8
Tave Teaching Fellowship (University-wide competition for course-design), 2007-8
Ames Dissertation Fellowship (tuition and stipend for one year of dissertation writing), 2006-7
University of Chicago Philosophy Department Fellowship (tuition and stipend), 2001-6
University of Chicago Divinity School Luce Dissertation Fellowship, 2000-1
University of Tennessee Summer Research Fellowship in Mathematics, 1991
Budapest Semester in Mathematics, 1990
Presidential Fellowship, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 1988-92
PRESENTATIONS
“Reconsidering Philosophy of Dance”
American Association for Aesthetics Annual Meeting, Tampa, October 2011
“Reconsidering Philosophy of Dance”
Thinking Through Dance Conference, Roehampton University, February 2011
“The Thinking Body: Philosophy, Dance and Modernism”
The University of Chicago Practical Philosophy Workshop, February 2010
“The Thinking Body: Philosophy, Dance and Modernism”
University of Chicago Wittgenstein Workshop, January 2010
“Literature, Logic and the Liberating Word”
University of Chicago Contemporary Workshop, December 2007
“Forms of Perspicuity: The Role of Literary Representation in Philosophical Elucidation”
University of Chicago Wittgenstein Workshop, October 2007
“The Revelation of Another in The Wings of the Dove”
University of Chicago Wittgenstein Workshop, March 2007
“Wandering into Fiction: A Philosophical Reading of Henry James’s The Beast in the Jungle”
University of Chicago Contemporary Philosophy Workshop, February 2007
“The Limits of Definition: The Elucidation of Logically Primitive Notions in Frege”
University of Chicago Contemporary Philosophy Workshop, December 2005
“Re-examining the Philosophical Significance of Henry James”
University of Chicago Wittgenstein Workshop, October 2004
“Truth and Proof in Frege”
University of Chicago Contemporary Philosophy Workshop, October 2003
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
As Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Introduction to Humanities Program at Stanford:
Ultimate Meanings, (Spring 2011)
Ultimate Meanings, (Winter 2011)
The Art of Living (Fall 2010)
As Stand-Alone Instructor:
Master Thesis Research and Writing Workshop (2008-10, MAPH Program, University of Chicago)
Thinking the Body/The Body Thinking: An Introduction to Aesthetics from the Perspective of Dance
(Spring 2008, University of Chicago)
Philosophy and/as Literature (Winter 2006, University of Chicago)
Philosophical Perspectives (Spring 2006, Humanities Core, University of Chicago)
The Question of God (Fall 1998, Department of Religion, Hobart and William Smith Colleges)
What’s Love Got to Do With It? (Fall 1998, Department of Religion, Hobart and William Smith)
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Kristin Boyce—Curriculum Vitae
As Course Assistant at The University of Chicago:
Foundations of Interpretive Theory (taught by David Levin and Mark Miller, Fall 2008 and 2009)
Stories (taught by Ted Cohen, Winter 2008)
Philosophy and Film (taught by James Conant and Joel Snyder, Fall 2004)
Philosophical Foundations of Psychoanalysis (taught by Jonathan Lear, Winter 2004)
Elementary Logic (taught by Jason Bridges, Fall 2001)
As Writing Intern in The Humanities Core at The University of Chicago:
Philosophical Perspectives (Spring 2005)
Human Being and Citizen (Fall 1996, Winter 1997, Spring 1997 and Fall 1998)
SAMPLE COURSES PREPARED TO TEACH
Introductory Courses:
Informal Logic
From Informal to Formal Reasoning
Philosophical Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
Three Moral Thinkers: Hume, Kant and Emerson
The Ethical Significance of Literary Works
Introduction to Philosophy and the Visual Arts
Thinking the Body/The Body Thinking: Introduction to Aesthetics from the Perspective of Dance
Introduction to Philosophy of Literature
Introduction to Philosophy of Film
Ultimate Meanings
Art of Living
Advanced Courses:
Deductive Logic
History of Early Analytic Philosophy
Wittgenstein
Frege
The World of the Film
Philosophical Theories of Dance
Problems of Absorption and Theatricality in Painting, Film and Philosophy
Philosophy, Art and the Everyday
Theories of Artistic Intention
Graduate Courses:
Theories of Literature: Nussbaum, Diamond and Cavell
Realism in Film, Philosophy and Literature
Frege, Wittgenstein and the Logical/Psychological Distinction
Dance and the Nature of Practical Intelligence
Definition, Argument and Elucidation in Early Analytic Philosophy
Forms of Argument and Persuasion in Philosophy and Literature
Aesthetic Form and Logical Form
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Kristin Boyce—Curriculum Vitae
GRADUATE COURSE WORK IN PHILOSOPHY {* indicates an audited course}
History of Early Analytic
The Philosophy of Frege [Conant]
The Philosophy of Wittgenstein [Conant]
Wittgenstein Workshop [Conant and Linsky]
Wittgenstein Workshop [Conant and Kremer]
Frege [Kremer] *
Wittgenstein [Finkelstein] *
Aesthetics
Philosophy and Literature [Cohen and Strier]
Philosophy of the Ordinary [Cavell and Davidson]
Introduction to Aesthetics [Cohen]
Moral Perfectionism [Cavell]
Philosophy/Photography/Film
[Conant, Snyder] *
From Goethe to Wittgenstein
[Conant and Wellbery] *
Logic
Intermediate Logic [Kremer]
Advanced Logic [Kremer] *
Truth and Paradox [Kremer] *
Other Course Work
Philosophical Introduction to Psychoanalysis [Lear]
Philosophy of Psychoanalysis: Melanie Klein
[R. D. Hinshelwood]
Kierkegaard [Conant and Lear]
Kant [Rödl] *
Themes From Leibniz to Newton [Paul Franks]
German Philosophy Translation Workshop
[Conant, Rödl]
Phenomenology of Husserl [Jean-Luc Marion]
Heidegger: Being and Time [Haugeland, Lear]
Action-based Work in Ethics [Vogler]*
Introduction to Philosophy of Mind [Bridges] Aesthetics:
Perceptual Experience and Knowledge [Finkelstein]
Theory of Reference [Stern]
Philosophy of Science [Haugeland] *
Contemporary Philosophy Workshop [Vogler/Stern]
Contemporary Philosophy Workshop [Stern]
Contemporary Philosophy Workshop [Finkelstein]
Preliminary Essay Workshop [Stern]
RESEARCH LANGUAGES: German, French
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES, ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE AND DEPARTMENTAL
SERVICE
Reviewer for The Journal of Religion, Fall 2011.
Course Coordinator for Ultimate Meanings, Stanford, University, Spring 2011. (Responsibility for
serving as the liaison between the faculty members and post-doctoral fellows in the course, and between the Teaching
Team for the course and the IHUM Central Office Staff.)
Research Assistant for Prof. James Conant, University of Chicago, 2005-2009. (Responsibility for
research, copy editing, correspondence, assistance in writing grant proposals, assisting
visiting students and visiting scholars, and coordinating two separate edited volumes, Analytical Kantianism
and Philosophical Skepticism, respectively).
Assistant Director: University of Chicago Writing Program 2005-6. (Responsibility for training and
advising new writing instructors and for coordinating and managing the Writing Program.)
Coordinator of Wittgenstein Workshop, 2005-Fall 2007. (Responsibility for managing the budget, putting
together the annual program, and coordinating the visits of outside speakers.)
Coordinator of Contemporary Philosophy Workshop, 2005-6. (Responsibility for managing the budget,
scheduling presentations, and coordinating the visits of outside speakers.)
Coordinator of the German Philosophy Translation Workshop led by James Conant and Andrea Kern,
2004-5. (Responsibility for preparing parallel translations and documenting group discussions and
the production of group translations.)
Coordinator of the Women in Philosophy Group, 2003-6. (Responsibility for securing funding,
managing the budget, scheduling meetings and coordinating the visits of outside speakers).
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Kristin Boyce—Curriculum Vitae
EXPERIENCE IN THE PERFORMING ARTS
As Dancer
Modern Ballet Workshop, soloist and ensemble member (Chicago, 1996-2000)
Stanford University, student (studied with Muriel Maffre, Spring 2011)
ODC Open Adult Division, student (studied with August Moore and Marisa Castillo, 2010-present)
Joffrey Ballet Open Adult Division, student (studied with Pierre Lockett, Ariel Cisneros and Alexei
Kremnev, Chicago, 2009-present)
Hubbard Street Dance, student of ballet (studied with Paul Abrahamson and Patti Eyler, Chicago,
2001-present)
Hyde Park School of Ballet, student (studied with Aimee Tye and Sara Ford, Chicago, 2001-2008)
As Actor
Guys and Dolls (University Theatre, Chicago, 1999)
Little E, an adaptation of Ibsen’s Little Eolf (Bartlett Theatre, Geneva NY, 1992)
The Broken Heart (Bartlett Theatre, Geneva, NY, 1992)
Tropical Madness (Bartlett Theatre, Geneva, NY, 1991)
Our Town (Bartlett Theatre, Geneva, NY, 1989)
Small Craft Warnings (Bartlett Theatre, Geneva, NY 1988)
As Production Assistant
Court Theatre (Chicago, 1992-3)
As Set Builder
Bartlett Theatre (Geneva NY, summer 1992)
REFERENCES
James Conant (jconant@uchicago.edu)
Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities, University of Chicago
Michael Kremer (kremer@uchicago.edu)
Mary R. Morton Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago
Daniel Brudney (dbrudney@uchicago.edu)
Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago:
Jonathan Lear (jlear@uchicago.edu)
John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought and Department of Philosophy
Alice Crary (CraryA@newschool.edu)
Associate Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Liberal Arts
Jason Bridges (bridges@uchicago.edu)
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago
David Levin (dlevin@uchicago.edu )
Assoc. Professor, Department of Germanic Studies, Committee of Cinema & Media Studies, Theatre &
Performance Studies and the College and Co-Director of Master of Arts Program in the Humanities
(MAPH)
Ellen Woods (woods@stanford.edu)
Associate Director, Introduction to the Humanities Program, Stanford University
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Kristin Boyce—Curriculum Vitae
Abstract: Why Wander into Fiction? Analytic Philosophy and the Case Study of Henry James
When reading a great work of literature, it is not unusual to feel that something of philosophical importance
is being achieved. But it has often proved difficult to do justice to such a feeling from within an analytic
philosophical framework. One source of this difficulty is that the analytic tradition has defined itself in part by
distinguishing sharply between the “logical” (that which pertains to the expression and justification of truthevaluable content) and the “psychological” (that which pertains to effects on the psychological faculties of a
reader or viewer, especially the feelings and imagination). This has created an obstacle to the possibility of
seeing literary works as vehicles of serious philosophical thought because the sort of force that literary works
have for their readers has been associated with a “merely psychological” capacity to powerfully engage the
feelings and imagination. In seeking to overcome this obstacle, many analytic philosophers have assumed that if
a work of literature is philosophically significant, this must be because of what it contributes to the “logical”
task of expressing or justifying a philosophical view of some sort. I call this the “natural analytic assumption”. I
argue not only that this assumption is not compulsory but also that making it precludes the possibility of doing
full justice to some of the very literary works that have struck many as most philosophically powerfully.
I make this argument by drawing on one central case study: the literary project of Henry James. I turn to
James’s work in particular because his writings have already attracted the attention of a number of leading
philosophers, many of whom make the natural analytic assumption. The first stage of my argument involves
examining in some detail the work of four such interpreters: Daniel Brudney, Alice Crary, Martha Nussbaum
and Robert Pippin. I bring out how the natural analytic assumption shapes—intentionally or unintentionally—
their respective accounts of literature and argue that making this assumption cripples their capacity to do full
justice to the philosophical significance of James’s work.
The second stage of the argument involves developing an alternative account of the philosophical
significance of James’s work. I do this by building on the work of philosophers such as Stanley Cavell and Cora
Diamond who seek to account more adequately for the philosophical significance of the literary form of
uncontroversially philosophical texts that are central for the analytic tradition, namely, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
and Philosophical Investigations. These interpreters do not make the natural analytic assumption. Instead, some
such interpreters argue that Wittgenstein’s work takes the unusual literary forms it does as part of his effort to
inherit and more fully develop methods of elucidating confusion and illusion which had their beginnings in the
work of another brilliant philosopher of form, albeit non-aesthetic form: Gottlob Frege. Frege develops a special
form of representing thought which he conceives of as, in part, an aid to the philosopher in the task of
“liberating the human spirit” from confusions and illusions of thought. The larger argument in the second half of
the dissertation is that the literary forms of representation that James develops contribute in a similar way to the
elucidations of what I call confusions and illusions of living. James himself suggests the comparison between
illusions of thought and illusions of life. In the opening paragraphs of The Wings of the Dove, he compares the
disintegration of a meaningful sentence into meaningless sounds or marks to the disintegration of the unity and
progression of a meaningful life into a mere succession of disconnected movements. Many of his works are
centrally preoccupied with the possibility that our lives can lapse into such meaningless successions. I argue that
what is philosophically most powerful and distinctive about his works lies in the ways in which they can serve
to exhibit a reader’s life to the reader herself so as to allow her to recognize when her living is breaking down in
this way—when her living has, to follow James’s own way of speaking, lapsed into a mere “death-in-life”.
Given that the analytic tradition developed in part out of the possibilities opened by Frege’s brilliant selfconsciousness about form, it is surprising that this tradition has underestimated as consistently as it has the
philosophical potential of both aesthetic and non-aesthetic forms of representation. The dissertation argues that
keeping in view the methodological underpinnings of Frege’s self-consciousness about the usefulness of his
Begriffsschrift can help us think more adequately about what philosophical uses various aesthetic forms may
have. Furthermore, it demonstrates that doing fuller justice to aesthetic forms of representation in this way
affords an important opportunity to more fully to develop some of the analytic tradition’s own best possibilities.
Although by Frege’s lights the clarification of confusion plays a merely secondary role in his overall project,
such clarification is recognized by central figures of the analytic tradition, such as Carnap and Wittgenstein, as
philosophical work of the first importance. One central dimension of the inheritance of Frege's work within the
analytic tradition, especially in the hands of the later Wittgenstein, has been a gradual expansion of our
appreciation of the diversity of forms of philosophical confusion there can be, along with an exploration of the
correlative diversity of methods of clarification best suited to their treatment. The dissertation argues that, in
effect, central aspects of the literary project of Henry James can bring into view possibilities for yet further
stages in such a development. 6