Contributors

Professor Emeritus Roger Burggraeve, Ph.D.

Roger Burggraeve was born in Passendale, Flanders (Belgium), in 1942. Salesian of Don Bosco (priest). Licentiate in Philosophy (Rome, 1966). Doctorate in Moral Theology (Leuven, 1980). Associate Professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven (1980-1988). Professor (Ordinarius) from 1988 till 2007; now Emeritus Professor. Has taught at the Faculties of Theology, Pharmacy, Philosophy, Canon Law, Medicine (Dentistry, Sexuality and Family Sciences) courses of Fundamental Theological Ethics; Sexual and Relational Ethics; Faith, Biblical Thought, and Ethics; Faith, Values, and Ethics: on Emmanuel Levinas’ Ethical and Metaphysical Thinking; Perspectives on Religion and Meaning; Pharmaceutical Ethics. As Emeritus with an assignment he continued till 2010 to teach courses on “Bible and Ethics”, “Christian Sexual and Conjugal Ethics”, and “An Ethics of Growth for Difficult Pastoral and Educational Situations” at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven. He actually taught the same courses as Visiting Professor at the International Institute for Religious and Catechetical Sciences ‘Lumen Vitae’ (Brussels), Dharmaram College (Bangalore, India), in Congo, Kenya, and Canada. Since 1987 he was the Co-founder and Chair, and now he is the Honorary Chair of the Centre for Peace Ethics, KU Leuven.

Domains of research: the ethical and religious (Jewish) thinking of Emmanuel Levinas; the relationship between Christian faith and ethics; sexual, relational, marital and family ethics and education; ethics and (therapeutic/pastoral/educational) guidance; the relationship between bible and philosophy (with special attention for the dialogical Jewish philosophy of Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas). He also developed an ethical model of growth for education, social welfare, and pastoral work. He is a member of several Ethical Committees (Caritas Catholica Flanders, Ethical Committee for Metally Disabled People, Flemish Welfare Union). He published more than 365 books, articles and contributions in English, Dutch, French, Italian, and Japanese on: Emmanuel Levinas; relational, sexual and marriage ethics; Bible and ethics; nationalism and holy war; education, pastoral guidance, social welfare and ethics; evil, judgement, revenge or retaliation, forgiveness and reconciliation.

He is last but not least Spiritual Director at the Holy Spirit College in Leuven, where 50 to 60 international priests (Asia and Africa) reside for studies in theology, philosophy or canon law.

Michel Valentin, Ph.D.

Michel Valentin is Professor of French at the University of Montana where he teaches all levels of the French language, literature and culture included. His research/inquiry and teaching specialties are Literary/Textual Critical Theory, Postmodern Studies, the application of Psychoanalysis to Texts, Film Studies (especially French and West African), and 17th century Art and Literatures. He has published in several literary journals and has edited a book on the Muslim Veil.

Emaline Friedman, M.A.

Emaline Friedman is a doctoral student at the University of West Georgia where she is currently a first-time professor. Having earned degrees in psychology and philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Emaline’s studies focus on critical discourse analytic systems and various accounts of subjectivity that borrow from psychoanalytic theory and materialist philosophies. She also enjoys writing poetry and spending time with her dog, Annie.  

Wim Matthys

Wim Matthys is a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at the University of Ghent and resident psychologist at the Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Counseling. His Freudio-Lacanian approach of Stanley Kubrick’s films has resulted in International Publications and Conference Presentations around Europe and the United States. His primary research interests are applied and clinical psychoanalysis.

Katharine Wolfe, M.A.

Katharine Wolfe is a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy at Stony Brook University and a Teaching Fellow for the Foundation Year Programme at the University of King’s College. She has also taught for Bard College’s Language and Thinking Program. Her work has been published in Deleuze Studies, Rethinking Marxism, and Contemporary Aesthetics. She is currently at work on a dissertation project addressing the relational nature of need.

Alberto Varona, Psy.D.

Dr. Alberto Varona is Assistant Professor of clinical psychology at Adler School of Professional Psychology where he teaches Psychopathology I & II, Psychoanalytic Approaches and History &Systems. He is also the faculty advisor and guest lecturer for two student organizations, the Contemporary Psychoanalytic Study Group and the Great Books & Thinkers of the Humanities. He earned his doctorate from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, after many years studying religion and philosophy.  His current interests include philosophical phenomenology, process philosophy and contemporary psychoanalysis

Joseph Scalia III

Joseph Scalia III is a psychoanalyst in Bozeman, Montana.  He is a Psya.D. Dissertator, in Psychoanalysis and Culture, at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.  His published writings include Intimate Violence: Attacks Upon Psychic Interiority and The Vitality of Obects: Exploring the Work of Christopher Bollas.   He has published a number of articles in Modern Psychoanalysis, The Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and with Lynne Scalia in Philosophical Studies in Education.   Mr. Scalia is the Founding Director of Northern Rockies Psychoanalytic Institute and its Center for Cultural Critique and Intervention.  He has been in practice since 1979, having worked as a Staff Psychologist in such institutions as Arkansas State Prison, Warm Springs (Montana) State Hospital, and Western Montana Community Mental Health Center, and since 1989 in private practice.

Daniel Bradley, Ph.D.

Dan O’Dea Bradley graduated from Gonzaga with degrees in Biology and Philosophy in late 90s.  At the National University of Ireland in Galway, he earned a Masters in Ethics and Cultural Studies and in 2008 was awarded a PhD in philosophy for his dissertation, “The Ambiguity of Desire: Truth and Illusion in the Discernment of the Divine.”  Dan has been teaching in the philosophy department at Gonzaga University for the last five years.   He regularly teaches Human Nature, Ethics, Phenomenology, and Hermeneutics.  His research focuses on the phenomenology of religion, and he has recently published on Ricoeur and Kierkegaard.  His research continues on those two thinkers as well as Heidegger, Edith Stein, Hossein Nasr, and Teresa of Avila.  In Galway he met his wife Róisín who is now an adjunct lecturer also in the philosophy department at Gonzaga.  The two of them have three children.

Janelle Kwee, Ph.D.

Dr. Janelle Kwee is a clinical psychologist, with active credentials in Washington State and in British Columbia.  She is a core faculty member in the Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology program at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, where she provides clinical and research supervision in addition to teaching various practice-oriented courses.  She has received postdoctoral psychotherapeutic training in Existential Analysis and Logotherapy under Drs. Alfried Langle and Daniel Trobisch, and is one of the founding members of the Existential Analysis Society of Canada, which is an affiliate of the International Society for Logotherapy and Existential Analysis in Vienna, Austria.  Janelle grew up in Washington State where she enjoyed both summers and winters in the North Cascades.  Lately, she mostly reserves time in the summer for the mountains, where she enjoys hiking with her enthusiastic young children and incurably urbanite husband.

Justin Pritchett,

Justin grew up in suburban Virginia making annual pilgrimages to Wyoming. After completing his MA in Theological Studies he moved to the mountains where he plays around with ideas loosely associated with existential phenomenology: issues of the grounding of human action, prereflective and transrational commitments, and the relationship between praxis and theory are common when he is not caught up in wonder at the immensity of the world, the grace of fish on the fly, and the delicate finish of beer.”

Melayna Schiff

Melayna Schiff is currently a senior student at the New College of Florida, the Honors College of the State University System of Florida, where she is focusing on philosophy and psychology. She is currently concentrating on understanding psychiatric diagnosis, and more specifically, the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, through the lens of speech act theory. Her general research interests include continental philosophy, philosophy of language, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and bioethics.

Steven Goldman, Ph.D.

Steven Goldman, Ph.D. Steven Goldman grew up in Chicago and got interested in philosophy as a young person — he has studied at St. John’s College, The University of Paris, Heidelberg University, and completed his doctorate in philosophy at the Claremont Graduate University. Steve started teaching in the early 80s and is still teaching today — formerly at places like the UC Irvine, the Claremont Colleges, the Venice Community Adult School, the Art Institute of Portland, Pacific Northwest College of Art — and currently at Portland State University.  Steve writes under the name Steven Brutus and has several books out there including Important Nonsense (2012), which was named one of the best 100 books of 2012 on Kirkus Reviews “indie list.” Steve’s most recent book is Religion, Culture, History: A Philosophical Study of Religion.  Steve also started dabbling in philosophical counseling in the 1980s and has written extensively about the application of philosophy to therapy.

Professor Alphonso Lingis, Ph.D.

Alphonso Lingis is an original among American philosophers. An eloquent and insightful commentator on continental philosophers, he is also a phenomenologist who has gone to live in many lands. His books include Excesses: Eros and Culture (1984), Libido: The French Existential Theories (1985), Phenomenological Explanations (1986), Deathbound Subjectivity (1989), The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common (1994), Abuses (1994), Foreign Bodies (1994), Sensation: Intelligibility in Sensibility (1995), The Imperative (1998), Dangerous Emotions (1999), Trust (2003), Body Modifications: Evolutions and Atavisms in Culture (2005), The First Person Singular (2007), Violence and Splendor (2010),and Contact.