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Department of Philosophy - Faculty

Sarah Pessin

Associate Professor

Sturm Hall 266                                

303-871-7731   

spessin@du.edu

Education

B.A., Yeshiva University, Stern College

M.A. Columbia University

Ph.D The Ohio State University 

Areas

Jewish Philosophy; Neoplatonism (including the transmission of texts from Greek into Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin medieval traditions); comparative Jewish, Islamic, and Christian Medieval Philosophy and Mysticism

Courses Taught

Jewish Philosophy
Jewish Neoplatonism seminar
Discovering Philosophy
Health and Healing
Jewish and Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism
Religion and the Margin: Health and Healing in Religious and Philosophical Thought
Philosophy of Religion
Exploring Religious Meaning
Judaism and Islam: Spiritual Voices in Dialogue
Medieval Aesthetics: God, Nature and Beauty
Medieval Jewish Civilization (part of a three-quarter undergraduate core Jewish Studies sequence)
Reason and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought
Jewish Medieval Philosophy (Graduate Seminar)

Selected Publications

For more information about Sarah's publications, research, and classes, please visit her homepage:

http://portfolio.du.edu/spessin

Books

Embroidering the Hidden: Cosmic Desire and Love as Ground in Solomon Ibn Gabirol 2005 (under review)

Faith and the Art of Filigree: Love and Apophasis in Maimonides (in preparation)

Encyclopedia / Reference Entries

"Avicebron (Ibn Gabirol)," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online resource), in preparation

"Moses Maimonides (Islamic Influences)," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , June 2005

"Saadya," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online resource), May 2003

"Saadiah," The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages , edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy Noone (Blackwell Publishing, 2003)

"Gersonides," The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages , edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy Noone (Blackwell Publishing, 2003)

"Isaac Israeli," The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages , edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy Noone (Blackwell Publishing, 2003)

"Jewish Astrology," Reader's Guide to Judaism (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000)

"Jewish Numerology," Reader's Guide to Judaism (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000)

Articles

"Finding the Face of God: Maimonides and the Sacred Art of Teaching," invited contribution for volume edited by Tzvi Langermann; (forthcoming)

"Matter, Form and the Corporeal World," in The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century , edited by Tamar Rudavsky and Steven Nadler (Cambridge University Press); in preparation

"A Platonic Universe," in The Blackwell History of Philosophy in the Middle Ages , edited by John Inglis, Dan Frank, and Taneli Kukkonen (Blackwell); in preparation

"The Manifest Image: Revealing the Hidden in Halevi, Saadya and Gabirol," in Plato Redivivus: Studies in the History of Platonism, edited by John Finamore and Robert Berchman (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2005), pp. 253-270

"Loss, Presence, and Gabirol's Desire: Medieval Jewish Philosophy and the Possibility of a Feminist Ground," in Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy , edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 27-50

 "The Space of Healing," Textbook of Complementary and Alternative Medicine , second edition, edited by Drs. Chun Su Yuan and Eric J. Bieber (Parthenon Publishing; forthcoming)

"Jewish Neoplatonism: Being Above Being and Divine Emanation in Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Isaac Israeli," in Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy , edited by Dan Frank and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 91-110

"A New Medical Vision: On the Possibility of Reconceptualizing 'Conventional' Medicine," in Textbook of Complementary and Alternative Medicine , edited by Drs. Chun Su Yuan and Eric J. Bieber (Parthenon Publishing, 2003), pp. 225-233

"Matter, Metaphor, and Privative Pointing: Maimonides on the Complexity of Human Being," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76:1 (2002): 75-88

Proclean 'Remaining' and Avicenna on Existence as Accident: Neoplatonic Methodology and a Defense of 'Pre-Existing' Essences," in Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity , edited by John Inglis (Curzon Press, 2002), pp. 151-168

“Maimonides’ Opposition to Astrology: Critical Survey and
Neoplatonic Response,” Al-Masâq: Islam and the
Medieval Mediterranean 13 (2001): 25-41

"Boethius and the Neoplatonic Good: Hebdomads and the Nature of God in the Quomodo Substantiae ," Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society 10 (2001): 57-71

"Hebdomads: Boethius Meets the Neopythagoreans," Journal of the History of Philosophy 37:1 (1999): 29-48

Book Reviews

Review of The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy , edited by Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ancient Philosophy , forthcoming

Review of Diana Lobel's Between Mysticism and Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press), Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 72 (2003): 559-561

Review of James Arthur Diamond's Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment (Albany: SUNY Press), Journal of the History of Philosophy 41 (2003): 126-127

Department of Philosophy, 2000 East Asbury Ave., Sturm Hall 257, Denver, CO 80208
Telephone: 303.871.2063, FAX: 303.871.3082

University of Denver, 2199 South University Blvd., Denver, Colorado 80208, 303.871.2000
The University of Denver is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.