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Bruce Janz is chair of the department of philosophy at UCF, and director of the CAH Center for Humanities and Digital Research. He has been at UCF since 2003, and has been chair of the Philosophy department since 2008. Previously he was at Augustana University College (now the Augustana Faculty of University of Alberta), in Alberta, Canada. 

Education

• Ph.D. in Philosophy from U. of Waterloo (1992)

Research Interests

• Research on Place and Space
• Contemporary African Philosophy
• Cultural Philosophy
• Contemporary European Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Visual Culture
• History of Mysticism
• Interdisciplinarity

Selected Publications

Books

• Philosophy in an African Place. Lexington Books, 2009.

Articles/Essays

• Thinking Like a Mountain: Ethics and Place as Travelling Concepts in Drenthen, Martin, Jozef Keulartz and James Proctor, eds. New Visions of Nature: Complexity and Authenticity. Series: The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics. New York: Springer, 2009.
• “Making a Scene and Dwelling in Place: Exhaustion at the Edges of Modes of Place-Making” Textual Studies in Canada. (2008) Will Garrett-Petts, Craig Saper & John Craig Freeman, guest eds. Also in Rhizomes. (2008) Will Garrett-Petts, Craig Saper & John Craig Freeman, guest eds.
• Reason and Rationality in Ezes On Reason, South African Journal of Philosophy, 2008.
• “The Terror of the Place: Anxieties of Place and the Cultural Narrative of Terrorism”, Ethics, Place and Environment 11:2 (June 2008): 189-201.
• “African Philosophy” Constantin Boundas, ed., The Edinburgh Companion to 20th Century Philosophy. University of Edinburgh Press, 2007. Also in Constantin Boundas, ed., The Columbia Companion to 20th Century Philosophy. Columbia University Press, 2007.
• “Places that Disasters Leave Behind” FACS (Florida Atlantic Comparative Studies): An Interdisciplinary Journal 9 (2006-07): 33-51.
• “Whistler’s Fog and the Aesthetics of Place,” Reconstructions special edition (“Rhetoric of Place”, Michael Benton, ed.) 5:3 (Summer 2005) Available at: http://www.reconstruction.ws/053/janz.shtml
• “Bodies on Display: Bodies: The Exhibition” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. 7:1 (Winter 2005): 103-114. http://www.jcrt.org/
• “Walls and Borders: The Range of Place,” City and Community 4:1 (March 2005): 87-94.
• “Coming to Place,” Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology 15:3 (Fall 2004). Available at: http://www.arch.ksu.edu/seamon/janz.html
• “Philosophy As If Place Mattered: The Situation of African Philosophy,” Havi Carel and David Gomez, eds. What Philosophy Is. London: Continuum Publishers, 2004: 103-115.
• “Universities in Times of National Crisis: the Cases of Rwanda and Burundi,” Malinda Smith, ed. Globalizing Africa. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2003: 465-482.
• "The Territory Is Not The Map: Deleuze and Guattari's Relevance to the Concept of Place in African Philosophy" Philosophy Today, 45:4/5(Winter 2001): 388-400. Also published in Philosophia Africana 5:1 (March 2002): 1-18.
• "Debt and Duty: Kant, Derrida, and African Philosophy." Special issue of Janus Head, Winter 2001. Available at: http://www.janushead.org/gwu-2001/janz.cfm

Book Reviews

• Review of Sudye Cauthen, Southern Comforts: Rooted in a Florida Place, Florida Historical Quarterly 87:1 (Summer 2008).
• “Between the Particular and the Universal: “Cultural Inquiry” as the Encounter Between Anthropology and Philosophy.” Review of Ivan Karp & D. A. Masolo, eds. African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry for Polylog 4 (November 2003) http://lit.polylog.org/4/ejb-en.htm
• Review of Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony for H-Africa, March 2002. Review available at: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=122821016818245

Conference Papers/Presentations

• “Landscape as Place” Landscape in Language: A Transdisciplinary Workshop. Albuquerque, New Mexico, Oct. 26, 2008.
• “Practicality and African Philosophy” University of Fort Hare, Fort Hare, South Africa, September 1, 2008
• “Reason and Rationality in Eze’s On Reason”. Concluding Keynote, Spring Colloquium, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, SA, Sept. 7, 2008.
• “Digital Humanities: New Possibilities for Humanities in a Digital Age.” Rhodes University, Grahamstown, SA, August 14, 2008.
• “Philosophy-in-Place and the Limits of Dialogue.” Stellenbosch University, South Africa, August 8, 2008.
• “The Water is Wide: Risking Tears at the Met, and Elsewhere” Rhodes University, Grahamstown, SA, August 20, 2008.
• “Philosophy-in-Place and the Limits of Dialogue” Dialogues in Place: The Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy. Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, December 5-8, 2007.
• “Imagining and Imaging Place: Exhaustion and Creation at the Edges of Place-Making” WISER, Witswatersrand University, Johannesburg, SA, October 22, 2007.
• “The Concept as Object, Mode, and Catalyst in African Philosophy” Concluding Keynote, Philosophy/African Philosophy and the Future of Africa, Johannesburg, SA, October 23-25, 2007.
• “Thinking Like a Mountain: Ethics and Place as Travelling Concepts.” New Visions of Nature, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, May 31-June 2, 2007.
• “Making a Scene: Place-Making Imagination, Artistic Production, and Narratives in Urban Space.” Imaging Place: INVENT-L Conference, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, February 24-26, 2007.
• “What Does it Mean To Do Philosophy-In-Place?” Migrating Texts: The Jacques Maritain Society Conference, May 31, 2006, York University, Toronto, Canada.
• “Artistic Production as Place-Making Imagination” Symbolic Meanings of Places/Spaces, International Association for the Study of Environment, Space, and Place Conference, Tow­son University, April 30, 2005.
• “The Anatopistic Mystic, or Why Philosophers Should Read Mystical Texts” University of Alabama, Huntsville, Sept. 19, 2003.

Miscellaneous Publications

• (with Emmanuel Eze) Jacques Derrida 1930-2004. Philosophia Africana 8:1 (March 2005): 79-82.

Spring 2010 Courses

Department of Philosophy • College of Arts & Humanities at the University of Central Florida
Phone: 407-823-2273 Fax: 407-823-6658 • Web site Technical Support: cahweb@mail.ucf.edu