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Adam Cureton.

Cureton Awarded Lindsay Young Professorship

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Adam Cureton.

Adam Cureton, professor and director of undergraduate studies in the UT Department of Philosophy, has been named a Lindsay Young Professor. 

His work focuses on ethics, Immanuel Kant, and philosophy of disability. Cureton has written several books, most recently Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason, and Respecting Disability: Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships, both of which were published by Oxford University Press in 2025. He has published articles in scholarly journals and collections such as The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of John Rawls, and Philosophical Foundations of Disability Law. His research explores autonomy, freedom, dignity, disability, and the ideals of moral and civic life, as well as ethical questions raised by new and emerging technologies.

A winner of the Chancellor’s Excellence in Research and Creative Achievement award, Cureton has also served on the Chancellor’s Commission for Disability. He has received multiple fellowships, grants, and scholarships in his time as a researcher, including two fellowships from UT: the UT Humanities Center Fellowship in 2019 and the Donald S. and Jacquelyn L. Denbo Humanities Faculty Fellowship in 2021. His current work includes projects on public moral reasoning and on appreciation as a moral ideal, especially in relation to disability.

Established in 1980 by Knoxville lawyer Lindsay Young, these endowed professorships reward faculty who are outstanding teachers, researchers, and public servants. Ten awards are made each year: one in law, one in veterinary medicine, and eight in the humanities. This professorship will support Cureton’s work in moral philosophy, including his efforts to deepen our understanding of autonomy, respect, appreciation, and disability.

by Sloan Docekal

Glenn Graber.

In Memoriam: Glenn Graber

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Glenn Graber.

The Philosophy Department is very sorry to report that Dr. Glenn Graber has passed away after a brief illness.

Glenn and his wife Caroline, a nurse, arrived in Knoxville in 1968 after completing their professional training at the University of Michigan. Glenn spent more than 40 years in the Philosophy Department, where he was one of the founders of the graduate Medical Ethics program — one of the first in the country, and one of the very first to include a clinical component, sending students to practica at UT School of Medicine in Memphis and the UT Health Sciences Center here in Knoxville.

Glenn was a beloved teacher and mentor who contributed to the College and University through his service roles great and small, and to the broader community by serving on ethics committees and in giving public presentations on issues of broad public concern.

Glenn was the author of numerous articles and books, including some of the earliest and field-defining texts in bioethics, clinical ethics, and the ethics of euthanasia. In addition to this scholarship, he contributed to the evolution of pedagogy in applied ethics, publishing papers on innovative methods in bioethics education and engineering ethics education. Earlier in his career, he also published numerous articles in the area of religious ethics and the philosophy of religion.

Glenn continued contributing to the Philosophy department right up to the end of his life. The Prados-Graber fund supports PhD students by buying out their summer teaching, enabling them to focus on their dissertation work; in addition to having steered this major gift to the department in the first place, Glenn continued to serve on the prize committee up until this year. And in his role on the Phi Beta Kappa committee, Glenn catalyzed our successful request for the fall 2026 Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar, who will be here in September.

A memorial service will be held Friday, June 26 at 3:00 pm at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 800 S. Northshore Dr., Knoxville, 37919. All are welcome and encouraged to attend. In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial gifts be made to Ascension’s Friends of Music and the Arts (FOMA). (You may do this by sending a check to Church of the Ascension and putting “FOMA in memory of Glenn Graber” on the memo line.)

UT's Torchbearer statue holds a flame early in the morning.

Thalos Publishes New Book on Philosophy and Reasoning

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Mariam Thalos.

Mariam Thalos, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, has published a new book titled Reasoning in the Wild: The Public Works of Reason. 

Published in December of 2026, Thalos’s book intervenes with previous philosophical ideals by exploring reasoning as a social concept, something that public sentiment and individual processing can shape, rather than existing logical systems. It illuminates how shared understanding, the common mind, and communication influence reasoning, urging philosophers and scholars of social sciences to rethink our understanding of reason within the complex world of human connection. 

The book was published by Routledge. Reasoning in the Wild is also available via open access.

by Sloan Docekal 

Adam Cureton.

Cureton Publishes New Book on Respecting Disability

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Adam Cureton.

Adam Cureton, Lindsay Young Professor of Philosophy, has published a new book titled Respecting Disability. 

Cureton, the director of undergraduate studies in philosophy, researches ethics, political philosophy, Kant, and the philosophy of disability. Drawing on his own experiences as a legally blind person, Cureton’s book focuses on why expressing respect for disabled people is important, and how some benevolent attitudes towards disabled people can be morally problematic. It explains the moral hardships disabled people face, and explores how those who are disabled can understand themselves and maintain self-respect in a challenging social climate. 

The book was published by Oxford University Press in November of 2025.

by Sloan Docekal

Shaw teaches Classical Chinese Philosophy

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Professor Clerk Shaw has spent years preparing for the Classical Chinese course by reading texts from the 6th – 3rd centuries BCE, auditing a Chinese Intellectual History course, co-organizing a translation and discussion group that has met weekly. Some of the texts include the Analects (Confucius or Kongzi) and later texts from the entry of Buddhism into China. The course was created in response to undergraduates inquiring as to why there were no non-Western philosophy course taught. The assignments and texts selected for this course are designed to provide the student with an opportunity to “reflect on the intrinsic interest” of the text and “reflecting on how we learn new material in general”.

Course Description: Classical Chinese philosophy discusses the full range of topics familiar from other philosophical traditions: ethics, politics, epistemology, mind, language, and more. Its texts contain some views and arguments familiar from Western philosophy (e.g., forms of virtue ethics and impartialist consequentialism) but often in different forms (e.g., different core virtues or different arguments for impartiality). In other cases, the basic categories and views seem more fundamentally different (e.g. the relationship between the heart-mind [xin] and body as compared to Western discussions of metaphysics of mind). Studying classical Chinese philosophy thus stands to improve philosophical understanding and expand our sense of the views one might hold and of how one might defend them. Further, because its schools and texts have deeply influenced both Chinese and global life, culture, and politics, studying it can improve our grasp of history and of the modern world