Richard Shusterman
Richard Shusterman received a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and (after three years as an intelligence officer in the Israeli army) he then did his doctoral studies in Philosophy at St. John’s College, Oxford University. After teaching at the Hebrew University and the University of the Negev, he moved to the United States to continue his academic career, teaching at Temple University (Philadelphia) and the New School for Social Research (New York). He was Professor and Chair of Temple University’s Philosophy Department from 1998-2004, and then was awarded the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar Chair in the Humanities at Florida Atlantic University, where he directs the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture.
Shusterman’s international academic career includes appointments as Directeur d’études associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Visiting Professor at the Université de Paris 1: Panthéon-Sorbonne; as Directeur de programme at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris; as Fulbright Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin; and as Visiting Professor at the University of Oslo and Hiroshima University. His authored books include Surface and Depth (2002); Performing Live (2000); Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (1997); Sous l’interprétation (1994), Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (1992, 2nd edition 2000, and already translated into twelve languages); T.S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (1988); and The Object of Criticism (1984). The editor of Analytic Aesthetics (1989), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader (1999), and The Range of Pragmatism and the Limits of Philosophy (2004), Shusterman is also co-editor of The Interpretive Turn (1991) and Aesthetic Experience (2008). His most recent book, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics was published by Cambridge University Press, but its French translation Conscience du corps appeared first in 2007. It provides his most detailed formulation of the project of somaesthetics, which he has been developing since 1997. The French media, in reacting to this book that combines Western and Asian perspectives, describe him as a nomad philosopher and as a pragmatist thinker with a holistic orientation.
His many research awards include Senior Fulbright and National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowships, and a Humboldt Transcoop Grant. Dr. Shusterman has worked with UNESCO on the topic of music and urbanism, and he has written art criticism for important artworld venues such as Dokumenta. For more details, see the Wikipedia entry on Richard Shusterman or his web site.