Professor of Philosophy & Interfaith Chair • Department of Philosophy & Center for Judaic Studies • University of Denver
Recent goings on…
Some Recent Publications:
• Check out my Medium essays: https://medium.com/@sarahpessin
• “Redemption Without Blue Skies: Racialized Exception, Exclusion, and Exile in Fanon, Wilderson, Moten, and Rosenzweig, Political Theology 22(8): 744-752; DOI: 10.1080/1462317X.2021.2002519
• “Rosenzweig for the Contemporary Moment,” co-authored with Elias Sacks, Political Theology 22(8), November 2021
• “Ibn Gabirol,” for The Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Religion, December 2021
• “Maimonides,” for The Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Religion, December 2021
• “Emanationist Powers: Plotinus, Theology of Aristotle, and Ibn Gabirol,” Oxford Philosophical Concepts: Powers, ed. Julia Jorati (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
Some Recent Presentations:
• “Sacred Bread, Sacred Body: From Kearney on “Eucharist of the Everyday” to Levinas on “Living From Bread”,” presentation for Judaism panel “Jewish Anatheisms,” American Academy of Religion, November 2021
• Co-curator/facilitator, Rosenzweig for the Contemporary Moment: A (Zoom) Roundtable Celebration of Star of Redemption’s 100th Anniversary, Political Theology Network, 2021
• “Levinas, Pause, Covenant-Eventality,” New Polis, Critical Conversations series, “The Politics of Pause: Struggling Over Speed for Better Futures” (online), 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3fe-zt_jhU
Some forthcoming articles:
“Liturgical Politics: Racism, Antisemitism, and the Drama of Word-Wounds,” Special Issue of Religions journal, “Jewish Thought in Times of Crisis,” eds. Elias Sacks and Andrea Dara Cooper
“Ibn Gabirol: Virtue, Sensation, and the Hidden Pulse of Receptivity,” Jewish Virtue Ethics, eds. Geoffrey Claussen and Alex Green (Albany: SUNY University Press)
“Jewish Emanationisms,” Oxford Handbook of Jewish Philosophy, eds. Paul Franks and Yitzhak Melamed (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
“Self-knowledge & the Horizon of Humility in Jewish Thought,” for Ax:son Johnson Foundation volume on Self Knowledge (Stolpe Publishing, Sweden).
“Chains, Trees, and Ibn Gabirol’s Spirit-to-Body Boundary: Substance, Spiritual Matter, and the Principle of Matter as Higher Cause,” in Solomon Ibn Gabirol: Sources, Doctrines, and Influence on Medieval Philosophy, eds. Nicola Polloni, Marienza Benedetto, and Federico Dal Bo (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols).
“When a Part is not a Part?: Hylomorphic Emanationist Mereology in Ibn Gabirol,” forthcoming in On What There Was: Parts and Wholes, edited by Andrew Arlig (Belgium: Brepols)
Some essays in-progress:
Update for “Ibn Gabirol” entry, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“Bonomythy in a Greco-Jewish Key: Pause, Prayer, and Paradox in Plotinus and Levinas,” special issue of Modern Theology journal, “Constructive Jewish Theology,” ed. Stephen Kepnes
“A Trace of Levinas: Wolfson’s Phenomenology of Vulnerable Learning,” Festschrift for Elliot R. Wolfson, eds. Susannah Heschel, Glenn Dynner, and Shaul Magid.
“Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” co-authoring with Peter Adamson, for The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy, eds. Ty Goldschmidt and Daniel Rynhold (New York; London: Routledge)
Books
IN PROGRESS
- Pause and Pardon: Early Levinas on Embodiment, Effort, and Excess
- Uncomfortable Virtues: Seven Paths to Responsible Coexistence
PUBLISHED
- Editor of “The Jewish Tradition,” in Medieval Philosophy: A Multicultural Reader, edited by Bruce V. Foltz, with foreword by Bernard McGinn, Part 4, pp. 367-530. London, New York, Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, April 2019.
- Author of Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
I Just Had an Emotional Breakup—With CVS
Oh, how I wish I had not succumbed to saving $10 last month when I was buying some supplies for a work event at a CVS miles from my house.
Jan 03, 2022 / Read More
Arts and Political Transformation
In his recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Adam Driver offered up some great insights on theater. But what I liked m...
Nov 19, 2021 / Read More
Social Media is Turning us into Suffering Cyborgs: On the Problem of Scale in a Time of Strangers
It is no secret that in this era of infinite online connections, many of us are feeling lonelier than ever. Separate from COVID (which ob...
Oct 18, 2020 / Read More
Did you hear the one about Hitler? (Twitter in the Times of #StandBy)
Last night I finally joined Twitter. For better and mostly for worse, it took place right during the first 2020 presidential “debate” (ar...
Sep 30, 2020 / Read More
Hate & Protect
In a “Politics of Responsibility” you have to protect people whose ideas you hate…
Levinas’ pause
A project in progress on phenomenologies of pardon and pause; read more about current Levinasian projects.
Interfaith
Roles include Interfaith Chair & Team Leader for DU’s Religious Inclusivity initiative and instigator of the “Interfaith Your Calendar” project!
Ibn Gabirol book
Read about Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire (Cambridge 2013)
“26”
[some light numerological bibliomancy]
Medieval Videos
Some narrated explorations of cosmo-ontology in a Greco-Judeo-Islamic key.
Recent Research
Some recent, current, and forthcoming work.
Social Action Site
DU’s Holocaust Memorial Social Action Site aims to foster inclusivity & equity.
Interview on History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
Episode 156 on Jewish Neoplatonism (30 mins, audio, 2013)
Interview on Colorado Public Radio
Discussion of “Hate & Protect” Project (13 mins, audio, 2018)
Blog post for Cambridge U Press
On why Neoplatonic cosmo-ontology is not “invisible topography” or a search for “invisible Kansases” (2013)
Interview on Ibn Gabirol book
On the New Books in Philosophy podcast (1 hr, 14 min, audio, 2014)
Featured in AAC&U Cover Story on Interfaith in Higher Ed
[Better religious inclusivity via calendaring best-practices!]
On Stage at Buntport Theater
[Repeat offender in the Great Debate, The Narrators, and other comedic formats!]
Mellon, IFYC, AACU, CIC Grantee
Interfaith Chair and Team Leader for Religious Inclusivity project @ DU with multiple recent interfaith grants.
