Bios Announced for ASA Trustee Nominees

The American Society for Aesthetics is pleased to provide information on the four nominees for ASA Trustee, nominated by the current Board of Trustees:

 Sondra Bacharach is an Associate Professor at Victoria University of Wellington. She been an active member of the aesthetics community since 1999, having served as the ASA Newsletter Editor, a Trustee, program committee member, Feminist Caucus co-chair, mentor for ASAGE, and a regular member of the Diversity Caucus. She’s published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the British Journal of Aesthetics, Monist and the Journal of Aesthetic Education, on topics like authorship, collaboration, street art, and hair and appropriation. She is grateful to the ASA for welcoming her into the aesthetics community. As a Trustee, she would like (1) to help the ASA be more inclusive in terms of its members and its research; (2) to increase the visibility of aesthetics to the broader philosophical community; (3) to support aestheticians whose jobs are at risk.

 Jennifer Judkins is newly retired from the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where she was Adjunct Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Musical Performance. An orchestral percussionist, she has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and New Music Group, and the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, among other ensembles. Her ASA experience includes co-chairing an ASA Pacific Division meeting, serving on the Finance Committee (2015-2020) and on a National Program Committee (Toronto 2017), in addition to two separate terms as a National Trustee. Recently, she had the pleasure of co-editing (with Jeanette Bicknell and Carolyn Korsmeyer) Philosophical Perspectives on Ruins, Monuments, and Memorials (Routledge 2020). Her goals for the ASA include maintaining our commitment to diversity in substance and membership, and in particular increasing our engagement with the performing arts.

 Mariana Ortega is Associate Professor of Philosophy; Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities Studies; and Latina/o Studies at Penn State. She specializes in Latina/x Feminisms, Phenomenology, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Aesthetics. Her books include In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self; Theories of the Flesh, Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation and Resistance (with Andrea Pitts and José Medina); and Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader (with Linda Martín-Alcoff). Currently, she is working on an anthology on phenomenology and aesthetics, and on a book-length project about phenomenology, photography, and Latinidad. She has served on the ASA Program and Diversity Committees and the Feminist Caucus. Her goals for the ASA include fomenting diversity and equity practices to welcome and support more scholars of color. Another goal is creating opportunities for discussing the intersection between philosophical aesthetics, artistic practices, and popular culture to foment interest in aesthetics.

  Sonia Sedivy is Professor in the tri-campus Department of Philosophy the University of Toronto and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at University of Toronto Scarborough. Her primary research interests are in the philosophy of mind, especially the philosophy of perception, in aesthetics with focus on visual art, and in the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein.Like much of her research, her Beauty and the End of Art: Wittgenstein, Plurality and Perception strives to integrate all three areas.  She has recently edited Art, Representation, and Make-Believe: Essays on the Philosophy of Kendall L. Walton.  She was Program Chair for the 2021 Annual Meeting of the ASA.  She is committed to diversity and would strive to promote greater inclusivity and outreach, as well as more dialogue with other areas of philosophy.

The two trustees elected will serve for three-year terms (February 1, 2022 - January 31, 2025). The nominations are being announced on the ASA Web site and via e-mail to all members. Bios of the nominees also will be available in the December 2021 ASA Newsletter and in October on this web site.

As provided in the ASA By-laws, Article VII, additional nominations can be made by any eight members of the Society. All such additional nominations, with the signatures of eight supporting members, must be filed with the Secretary-Treasurer no later than the two weeks following the annual meeting (December 4, 2021). These can be sent by e-mail (secretary-treasurer@aesthetics-online.org) or through the US Mail (American Society for Aesthetics, 1550 Larimer Street #644, Denver, CO 80202-1602).

Voting will be conducted on the ASA web site from December 5-31, 2021, with an announcement in early January. All members of ASA in 2021 are eligible to vote by logging into the web site, looking for the red "Members" button in the upper-right, and clicking the "Trustee elections" sub-menu. Members unable to vote on-line should notify the Secretary-Treasurer no later than December 1, 2021, and will be sent a mail-in ballot; notification should be sent to the ASA mailing address, above.

Keren Gorodeisky and Monique Roelofs will complete their terms as trustees on January 31, 2022. For more information on the current trustees and the ASA By-laws, see the ASA Web page (http://aesthetics-online.org). Look for the "ASA" red button in the upper-right and click the "About the ASA" sub-menu.