I teach philosophy at the College of Charleston. My work is mainly in 19th and 20th Century Continental philosophy, but I have a special interest in exploring connections between philosophy and literature, particularly the reading and writing of fiction and poetry. Fun fact: in 2007, I became the first woman to reach the rank of full professor in the College's Department of Philosophy—that is, since 1770 (well, since the early 19th-Century, when philosophy became part of the curriculum).
On this site you will find some of my work (papers on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Hume, Husserl, and the Pomo natives of Northern California) and links to my books, Nietzsche's Nootide Friend: The Self as Metaphoric Double, and The Hide, my first volume of poetry.
Contact
Professor Sheridan Hough
Department of Philosophy, College of Charleston, 66 George Street,
Charleston, SC 29424.
Email: houghs@cofc.edu
Background
I did my undergraduate work at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where I majored in Philosophy and English and minored in Theater. While at Trinity I wrote several plays that were produced by the Theater Department (including Gilt Cages and The Death of Goll; Musical, with music by Bill Alves and lyrics by Mark Harborth, premiered at the Church Theatre in San Antonio). In my senior year philosopher John Searle visited the campus to give the Phi Beta Kappa Lecture; he convinced me that Berkeley was the place to be if I wanted to do graduate work in philosophy. Second fun fact: my grandmother, Mary Griffis Cordell, and my godmother, Alma Couchman, both went to Berkeley in 1919; my uncle, Donald Browning, also went to Cal for medical school in 1952; my father, Vernon Hough, began his Masters of Chemical Engineering there in 1963. Following that familial trail, I too found myself at Berkeley, where I had the good fortune of working not only with Searle, but with Paul Feyerabend, Gregory Vlastos, Bernard Williams and, of course, Bert Dreyfus, who became my mentor and dissertation advisor. (Bert's influence is hard to overstate; let's just say that no one is the same after serving as Graduate Student Instructor for his legendary course on Being and Time). After I finished my Ph.D. (1990) I spent seven years teaching philosophy in the Honors College at the University of Houston. I came to the College of Charleston in 1996, where I fell in love with this historic city and her unique, eccentric inhabitants.
Research: Books
My book Nietzsche's Nootide Friend: The Self as Metaphoric Double was published in October 1997, by Pennsylvania State University Press, and nominated for the American Philosophical Association Younger Scholar Book Prize, in the Fall of 2000. The webpage at PennState has a short blurb about it. You can also order the book from Amazon or see a limited preview and Table of Contents on Google Books.From the dust jacket: "Ever since Heidegger lectured on Nietzsche, philosophers have stressed the active side of the Übermensch, the self who aggressively consumes and exploits value. Sheridan Hough, however, argues that there is a distinctly receptive and passive side to the Nietzschean self, and thus a pervasive doubleness in Nietzsche's thought that hasn't been explored before. This doubleness is the focus of Hough's attention here."
Here's what one critic says:
"A thoroughly original contribution to contemporary thinking on Nietzsche. This
is clearly the ripened fruit of a great deal of meditation."—Geoffrey Galt
Harpham, Tulane University
"In taking up the themes of arche-genealogy and the "male mother" that had been thoroughly developed elsewhere, most recently in David Farrell Krell's Infectious Nietzsche (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), Sheridan Hough assumes a tremendous task in attempting to break new ground. Her talent speaks most clearly in crafting a novel portrait of the Übermensch, which in her metaphoric reading, serves to add a compelling interpretation to a concept that Nietzsche scholars may forever dispute. Her engaging and penetrating work bespeaks an ardorous relationship with these complex motifs."
Research: Papers
My philosophical work is avowedly 'free range,' and moves around a variety of interconnected preoccupations. I am currently working on a book about Kierkegaard's understanding of the self; some of my previous thoughts on Kierkegaard have appeared in International Kierkegaard Commentary (edited by Robert Perkins; Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (vol. 15) & and Without Authority (vol. 18)).
Phenomenological issues also interest me, and I've explored them in a number of contexts, from the fiction of Virginia Woolf to the Pomo baskets of Native California (see my "Phenomenology, Pomo Baskets, and the Work of Mabel McKay," Hypatia, Volume 18, Number 2, Spring 2003).
Selected Articles:
"Übermensch or Untermensch: a Phenomenological Critique of Heidegger's Overman," International Studies in Philosophy (forthcoming, Spring 2008)
"What the Faithful Tax Collector Saw (Against the Understanding)," International Kierkegaard Commentary, Volume 18, Robert L. Perkins, Editor (October, 2006)
"'Halting is Movement': the Paradoxical Pause of Confession in Kierkegaard's Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits," International Kierkegaard Commentary, Volume 15, Robert L. Perkins, Editor (September, 2005)
"To the Lighthouse, Via the Things Themselves: Husserl, Woolf, and 'Androgynous Phenomenology'," International Studies in Philosophy, Issue XXXIV/4, 2002
"Humean Androgynes and the Nature of 'Nature'," Feminist Interpretations of David Hume, Anne Jaap Jacobson (editor), Penn State Press, 1999.
Literary Pursuits
My first volume of poetry The Hide was published by Inleaf Press in December of 2007. The Hide is beautifully illustrated with color plates of textiles created by the artist Susan Hull Walker. You may order your own copy by email or phone from Blue Bicycle Books. If you are in Charleston, do visit this wonderful bookstore at 420 King Street. Here is one of my poems.
Teaching
I teach the following course on a regular basis (click on the course to see a sample syllabus):
19th Century Continental Philosophy
Existentialism
Philosophical Issues in Literature
20th Century Continental Philosophy
Feminist Theory
I also offer special topics courses in both the Philosophy Department and the Honors College. Most recently, I team taught a fun course on Concepts of the Body and the Human Encounter with Disease with my historian colleague Peter McCandless.
This and That
I am the editor of Cheek, the magazine of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at the College. Cheek publishes short essays by faculty, brief notes on events sponsored by the WGS Program, and summaries of research by our students. The first two issues featured the work of local artists McLean Stith and Kristi Ryba (see attached covers). Copies of back issues are available at the WGS Office in Maybank Hall, room 119.Third fun fact: A female figure on the cover of our first issue of Cheek had to be altered. Here's my editorial comment:
"A funny thing happened on the way to our first issue: we at Cheek were draped for modesty's sake—nay, we were burhkaed. Yes! In the midst of digitally baring our words, images, and selves, Our (former, please note) Printer saw fit to cover our cover. (We very nearly ran with a brown paper wrapper-the 'grocery bag' approach to gender issues, yes?)-And what untoward doing was being done there, beneath the masthead? We were, to borrow the blurb from artist McLean Stith, in a "classical Venusian 'state of half-undress,' here inverted..." So. When a woman is properly half-undressed, which half—o canny Readers—is revealed? Indeed, and it was this 'breasts okay, nether regions not' approach that Stith was challenging in her painting: was challenging, until the printers made it clear that they would not run a cover with an 'inverted' Venusian nude."
Graphics by my colleague, Christian Coseru, Production Designer for Cheek