These are our graduate program’s main strengths. We have a young and dynamic faculty, and their interests (and what you might prompt them to take an interest in!) will of course extend further. Please be assured that they will be pleased if you choose to contact them directly. (For more information about our faculty, their current areas of expertise and interest, where they studied, what gets them excited and so forth, click on their names below.)
With the UT College of Law, we also offer a dual degree M.A./J.D. option. To learn more about this option, please consult with the Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy or the Dean of the College of Law.
Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
(especially virtue ethics, the Kantian tradition, and issues in applied ethics)
Metaphysics and Epistemology
(especially free will, action theory, philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, science, and philosophy of religion)
History of Philosophy
(especially Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic Philosophy, Leibniz, Kant, Nietzsche, and Rawls)
Program Highlights
Super Seminars: Interact with the philosophers you read in class: We bring them to you! At least one graduate offering each year includes distinguished visiting speakers from outside the university.
Conferences: The department hosts an annual graduate student conference, and historically it has been the host for the Tennessee Value and Agency (“TVA”) conference in action theory, ethical theory, or political philosophy.
Further Highlights:
We make every effort to provide meaningful financial support for the professional travel of our graduate students so that they can present their work at conferences. Our graduate students present their work at prestigious and competitive conferences across North America and beyond.
Our teaching assistants receive a tuition waiver and competitive stipend. And we actively work to help secure supplemental stipends for eligible/qualifying students. While teaching assistantships are 9-month appointments, stipends are paid out over a 12-month schedule and tuition waivers cover the summer term. Health insurance is included.
The Department offers a summer dissertation fellowship to provide additional financial support for promising students in the final stages of dissertation writing.
There are opportunities for graduate student teaching during the summer.
Faculty are open to co-authoring papers with graduate students and many faculty have done that in recent years.