Center for Dewey Studies

@deweycenter.siu.edu

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The Center for Dewey Studies is the home of research, publishing, and archival materials that focus on the life, work, and legacy of John Dewey. Director: https://bsky.app/profile/thehangedman.com Website: https://deweycenter.siu.edu/

A photograph of the Dewey Center conference room
The International Dewey Centers Network Presents A Joint Online Colloquium Series Dorit Barchana-Lorand, “Advocacy for Art Education from a Deweyan Perspective” with comments by Michał Wieczorek. Representing the Irish Dewey Center at University College Dublin. Dorit Barchana-Lorand is visiting UCD from Kibbutzim College in Tel Aviv. Her research has evolved from engaging Kant’s aesthetics to exploring the intersection of art, education, and society. Her newest book is Philosophical Questions in Art Education (2025). Michał Wieczorek is an Ad Astra Fellow/Assistant Professor in the School of Education, UCD. He studies how new technologies impact the values, goals and practices of education.
A photograph of John Dewey looking through letters or photographs with two women
The International Dewey Centers Network Presents A Joint Online Colloquium Series Dorit Barchana-Lorand, “Advocacy for Art Education from a Deweyan Perspective” with comments by Michał Wieczorek. Representing the Irish Dewey Center at University College Dublin. Dorit Barchana-Lorand is visiting UCD from Kibbutzim College in Tel Aviv. Her research has evolved from engaging Kant’s aesthetics to exploring the intersection of art, education, and society. Her newest book is Philosophical Questions in Art Education (2025). Michał Wieczorek is an Ad Astra Fellow/Assistant Professor in the School of Education, UCD. He studies how new technologies impact the values, goals and practices of education.
A photograph of John Dewey reading.
W. E. B. Du Bois’s relationship to John Dewey illuminates Du Bois’s integration of aesthetics into social scientific inquiry. While Du Bois engaged Dewey’s view of truth as something that emerges through communal inquiry and contributes to the reconstruction of social life, he adapted this pragmatist framework to the particular demands of a racially stratified society. For Du Bois, truth required not only empirical rigor but also forms of expression capable of countering distortion and cultivating recognition where racial ideology blocked perception. Du Bois understood beauty as one such medium of truthful inquiry. The data visualizations he produced for the 1900 Paris Exposition shows how aesthetic form organized complexity, conferred dignity, and intervened against racist misrepresentation. In this sense, beauty functions for Du Bois as both a methodological and ethical instrument, enabling truth to accomplish the transformative work he believed it must do. Dr. Kimberly Harris is Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Corcoran Department of Philosophy at the University of Virginia, and author of The Truth of Race: The Philosophical Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois.
A photograph of John Dewey in China with several others.
A photograph of Arto Charpentier with text summarizing his upcoming talk reading: "Metaphysics as Method: A Methodological Reading of Dewey’s Metaphysical Theory? Whether Dewey can—and should—offer a metaphysics has long been a matter of intense interpretive dispute. Focusing on the programmatic formulations of his 1915 essay, “The Subject-Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry,” I defend two interrelated claims. First, by advancing the project of a science-based metaphysics in this early essay, Dewey shows how metaphysics can be pursued in a pragmatist way: not as an absolutist or foundationalist enterprise, but as a hypothetical, fallibilist, and experimental form of inquiry. Second, I argue that the primary value of Dewey’s metaphysical theory lies less in offering a definitive account of the “generic traits” of reality than in the methodological guidance it provides for conducting inquiry—guidance that should be tested and assessed in light of the concrete consequences of its use. My overall aim, then, is to elucidate the possibility of Dewey’s metaphysical theorizing and demonstrate its usefulness within his broader reconstructive project. Arto Charpentier is a postdoctoral fellow in philosophy at Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 (France). He earned his PhD from the École normale supérieure (Paris) in 2023 with a dissertation on John Dewey’s cultural naturalism and its instrumental function for social inquiry. His research lies at the intersection of pragmatism, social philosophy, and philosophy of science. He co-edited Repenser la nature. Dewey, Canguilhem, Plessner (Rethinking Nature: Dewey, Canguilhem, Plessner) (Rue d’Ulm, 2023) with Marco Dal Pozzolo and Matteo Pagan.
A photograph of the Center for Dewey Studies conference room
A photograph of John Dewey sitting in a chair with text reading “The crisis in liberalism is connected with failure to develop and lay hold of an adequate conception of intelligence integrated with social movements and a factor in giving them direction.” Citation: Liberalism and Social Action. (1935, LW 11: 33).
A photograph of the Center for Dewey Studies Reading Room
A photograph of John Dewey waiting to give a radio address with another man. Overlaid is text reading: “Destitution on the one side and wealth on the other are factors in the determination of that psychological and moral constitution which is the source and the measure of attained culture.” Citation: Individualism, Old and New (1930, LW 5: 103)
A photograph of John Dewey with several others in formal wear
A photograph of a young John Dewey and several of his classmates
A photograph of John Dewey
A photograph of John Dewey seated outdoors with a typewriter
A photograph of John Dewey giving a public radio address
A photograph of John Dewey with text reading “Our latent nationalist exclusivism shows signs of becoming an offensive militant nationalism. We are in danger of surrendering our traditional feelings of amity for an arrogant self-sufficiency.” Citation: “Afterword in Charles Clayton Morrison’s The Outlawry of War.” (1927, LW 3: 351).
Joseph L. Smith, "On the Black Hand Side: Cornel West and the Black Prophetic Critique of Pragmatism" Cornel West is one of the foremost Black public intellectuals to engage classical American pragmatism as exemplary of the democratic possibilities in American culture. West also insists on grounding his work in the Black prophetic tradition, portraying the two traditions as complementary resources for confronting Black suffering and deepening democracy. Yet such a framing risks obscuring profound tensions. When Black thought is positioned as an additive to pragmatism rather than taken on its own term, the radical demands of the Black prophetic tradition—demands that unsettle the very philosophical frames offered by American pragmatists—are muted. This talk reconsiders West’s critiques of classical pragmatism from the vantage point of the veil, demonstrating that a fuller reckoning with the incompatibilities between these traditions opens new possibilities for radical democratic thought. Dr. Joseph L. Smith is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies at SIU. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from SIU (2020), LL.M. in International Economic Law from Xiamen University (2021), and M.A. in Black Theology from Union Theological Seminary in NYC (2006). Smith's teaching and research interests include Black Male Studies, Africana Philosophy, Foucault Studies, Prison Studies, and the emergence of the Breton-Woods Institute, WTO, and Trade Agreements.
A photograph of John Dewey with a dark background
Steven Fesmire, “Moral Fundamentalism, Stupid Decisions, and the Ends-Means Continuum.” Moral fundamentalists habitually act as if they have access to: (1) the exclusively right way to diagnose moral or political problems and (2) the single approvable practical solution to any particular problem. Building on the pragmatist tradition, I will argue that moral fundamentalism underwrites stupid decisions. In part, this is because it obstructs communication and constricts deliberation about what’s possible. But its implied methodology is even more worrisome, as it asks people to trust ends which are asserted autocratically. Instead of asking people to cooperatively trace varied consequences of the means being proposed, ends like liberty and justice are framed and understood as self-justifying finalities to be won at any price. Steven Fesmire is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Radford University. He is the author Beyond Moral Fundamentalism: Toward a Pragmatic Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2024). He edited The Oxford Handbook of Dewey (Oxford University Press, 2023), and his books John Dewey and Moral Imagination (Indiana University Press, 2003) and Dewey (Routledge Press, 2015) won Choice “Outstanding Academic Title” awards. A 2009 Fulbright Scholar in Japan, Fesmire’s public philosophy work has appeared in places like Salon, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and The Humanist.
Matthew J. Brown: "What is Pragmatist About the New 'Pragmatist' Philosophy of Science?" Philosophical pragmatism has been enjoying a renaissance in philosophy of science. Brown will bring this recent work into conversation with classical pragmatism to explore the question: What makes a philosophy of science pragmatist? The recent work is in some respects more faithful to the classical pragmatist tradition than earlier appropriations of i pragmatism, but it also differs in emphasis in ways that are problematic. Brown does not argue that there is some single, essential character of philosophical pragmatism, nor does he try to sort the “true pragmatists” from the pretenders. Rather, he attempts to articulate the value of the new pragmatist philosophy of science while also indicating valuable resources from the pragmatist tradition that have yet to receive their proper due, particularly concerning the interplay of science and values. Matthew J. Brown is the Jo Ann and Donald N. Boydston Chair of American Philosophy and Director of the Center for Dewey Studies at SIU. His research areas include the history of 19th and 20th century philosophy and the history and philosophy of science. He is the author of Science and Moral Imagination: A New Ideal for Values in Science (2020) and is currently editor-in-chief of HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science.
A photograph of John Dewey shaking hands with someone in front of an American Flag. Overlaid is text reading: “[Race] and color prejudice have never had such opportunity as they have now to poison the mind, while nationalism is elevated into a religion called patriotism.” Citation: “What I Believe: Living Philosophies–VII.” (1930, LW 5: 275).
The International Dewey Centers Network Presents a Joint Online Colloquim Series by Kenneth Stikkers titled "Max Scheler and John Dewey on Value and the Qualitative"
Cover image for the book described in this post.
A photograph of John Dewey reading a book with overlaid text that says “Democracy is a way of personal life controlled not merely by faith in human nature in general but by faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action if proper conditions are furnished.” Citation: "Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us” (1939, LW 14: 227).
A photograph of John Dewey's right profile.
A photograph of John Dewey shaking a man's hand in front of an American flag.
A photograph of John Dewey giving a radio address
Text reading "Experience, Musical Understanding & Aesthetic Value" with photographs of John Dewey and Wilhelm Dilthey.