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Professor Susan James to Lecture on Freedom and Nature as Part of W&L’s Ethics of Citizenship Series

Susan James, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College in London, will give a lecture at Washington and Lee University on April 7 at 5 p.m. in Huntley Hall 221.

She will speak on “Freedom and Nature: A Spinozist Invitation.” The talk is free and open to the public.

Her talk is part of the year-long series on The Ethics of Citizenship and is sponsored by W&L’s Roger Mudd Center for Ethics. For more information about this series, see: http://www.wlu.edu/mudd-center/programs-and-events/2015-2016-the-ethics-of-citizenship.

James’s overlapping areas of philosophical research are the history of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, political and social philosophy, and feminist philosophy. Within the history of early modern philosophy, her work has focused on the passions and their ethical and political implications.

She is the author of “Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise” (2012); “Margaret Cavendish: Political Writings” (2003); and “Passion and Action: The Emotions in Early Modern Philosophy” (1997); and a forthcoming collection of essays, “Spinoza on Learning to Live Together.”

Prior to teaching at Birbeck College, James worked at the University of Connecticut and the University of Cambridge. She has held visiting positions at Hebrew University, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Boston University and the University of Sydney. In 2013-14, she was a Laurance S. Rockefeller visiting faculty fellow at the Center for Human Values, Princeton University.

She is the president of the Aristotelian Society and was the previous president of the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy.