CURRENT MISSION

Sapere Aude– Have the courage to pursue knowledge! And in all possible ways– though books, conversations, adventures, and so much much more.
"Whatever is the lot of humankind
I want to taste within my deepest self.
I want to seize the highest and the lowest,
to load its woe and bliss upon my breast,
and thus expand my single self titanically
and in the end go down with all the rest.”
- Goethe, Faust

ABOUT ME

I am student of philosophy, committed to social justice, and eager and hungry for new knowledge and experiences! I want to encounter radical diversity and attempt to understand this world by experiencing the people within it. I love long chats, groovy dancing, reading, laughing, and creating things :)

I am currently pursuing a Watson Fellowship project studying prison reform, education in prisons, and the possibility of teaching philosophy in prisons! I began in August 2016 in Norway, where I will spend three months, then moving on to South Africa, New Zealand, and Ireland for three months each, respectively.

A little big about my project, entitled "Freeing the Mind Behind Bars:"

In prisons throughout the world, rehabilitation and punishment are conceptualized in a variety of ways, and within many of them, education plays a key role. During my Watson Year, I will closely engage with four unique prison education systems, imagining the ideal configuration of prison education programs and exploring the potential of philosophical education within them. I will seek to learn from people who approach prison,education, and philosophy from diverse angles: prison administrators and education directors, psychologists and philosophers working on issues of moral reasoning and criminology, leaders and activists associated with reform organizations, and prisoners and ex-prisoners themselves.

PHILOSOPHY

Seeks beauty, seek understanding. "Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence in this world eternally justified" -Nietzsche
And having fun whilst doing it– I love music and grooving and dancing :)

Interests

Dancing/grooving/tunes, Reading (fiction, philosophy– especially Nietzsche and Russian Lit), music (one of the most important parts of my life), art history, (consuming art and culture, more generally), hiking/caving/climbing, meeting new faces, traveling, environmental issues, good vegetarian food , getting lost in the woods, festivals, long walks, communal living.

Music, Movies, and Books

What a difficult category.

Authors: Dostoevsky, Sartre, Simon de Beauvoir, Virginia Wolf, Milan Kundera, Faulkner, Camus, Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Kierkegaard, Kafka, Foucault, Nabokov, Joyce, Derrida, and many others!

Musicccc: Lots of funk/disco, afrobeat as well as indie stuff like Radiohead, Pink Floyd, TV on the Radio, Andrew Bird, The Velvet Underground, The Flaming Lips, LCD Sound System, The Talking Heads, Foals, MGMT, Alt-J, The Shins/Broken Bells, Cocorosie, Air, Jonsi, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Young, Beach House, Fleet Foxes, The National, Iron and Wine, Dr. Dog, The Beatles, Beck, Mac Demarco, Arcade Fire, Hot Chip, and countless more.

Movies: Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, If..., A Clockwork Orange, A Beautiful Mind, Amelie, 2001: A Space Oddessy, Anything David Lynch

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Visited a ghost town in the Namibian desert!

Teach, Learn, Share

I know quite a bit about existential and epistemological philosophy, Russian literature, formal logic, Art History, The Enlightenment, Early modern intellectual history and music as well as a little about 20th century continental philosophy and 18th century letter-writing.