Nathan L. Smith Named ASA Dissertation Fellow for 2022-2023

The American Society for Aesthetics is pleased to announce that Nathan L. Smith (Duke University) has won the ASA Dissertation Fellowship for 2022-2023. He was selected from among a very competitive group of eight applicants by a review committee of senior ASA members.

His dissertation, directed by Fredric R. Jameson, is on "The Structure of Aesthetic Experience," and

. . . has the double task of explaining the nature of . . .  aesthetic experiences—what they are and the conditions under which they occur—and explaining why they matter (i.e. their normative weight or value) and hence our aesthetic reasons for action. The gambit of the project is that aesthetic properties (of particular focus, beauty) can explain the nature of aesthetic experience at the same time as grounding its value. To put the theory in capsule form, I argue that we act in pursuit of aesthetic properties because of the peculiarly valuable experiences they cause in us. The motivation is two-fold: compared with the mundane, aesthetic experiences have a peculiar phenomenal quality, including their pleasure . . .; and the experiences have a peculiar perceptual structure, namely that some aesthetic properties can be experienced singularly, which runs counter our usual complex perceptions. . . .

Smith earned his BA at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with Highest Honors in Philosophy and Cultural Studies. He has presented several papers at meetings of the ASA and the APA.

This is the eighth year for the ASA Dissertation Fellowship. Previous winners:

• 2021-22: Jenny Judge, New York University
• 2020-21: David Collins, McGill University
• 2019-20: Kathryn Wojtkiewicz, Graduate Center-City University of New York
• 2018-19: Caitlin Dolan, University of California, Berkeley
• 2017-18: Madeleine Ransom, University of British Columbia
• 2016-17: Marilynn Johnson, Graduate Center-City University of New York
• 2015-16: David Johnson, Northwestern University

The deadline for application for the 2023-2024 Fellowship will be January 1, 2023.  Guidelines